Singur drives Bengal to the dark ages of bandh

Kolkata, Dec 19: Six years of laborious image building to drive away the demons of four decades of darkness, lay in ruins in face five image wrecking bandhs this month.

A double whammy of bandhs announced by Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee over December 21-22 has driven Bengal right back to the brink of the dark ages of the 60s and 70s.

Never in the history of independent India had there been five bandhs in a month, the dates being December one, five 13, 14 and now on Thursday-Friday.

Yesterday, the unthinkable happened when Mamata said, "I call for a 48-hour bandh in protest against the tragic murder of a young girl in Singur." "We do not believe in calling bandhs frequently. But today's ghastly incident in Singur forced us to call a 48-hour Bangla bandh.

Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has compelled us to call the bandh. I offer my apology to the people for the inconvenience," she added.

Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee today said, "Enough is enough. There can be no more bandhs. This cannot be allowed." Meanwhile, reactions to the bandh have not at all been favourable. "It affects the academic life bigtime. We are an autonomous univesity now. And we had meetings of our moderators on Thursday and Friday. Everything will have to be rescheduled and the classes suffer," Fr. Patrick Eaton, Controller of Examinations, St.

Xavier's College (Autonomous University), told UNI.

"The Xavotsav is on December 21 and 22 and now it has to be rescheduled too. Everyone is harrassed," he said. The Xavotsav is the biggest cultural college extravagenza in Eastern India.

Mamata, however, spared the IT sector, as is the fad now. But reactions from the IT industry has been sharp and scathing.

Cognizant CEO Eastern Region Siddhartha Mukherjee said, "The bandh will casue major disruption to the industry. This bandh is not going to help anybody and dampen the image created by Team Buddha." It has been an irritant for the smalltime traders also. A cake shop owner says, "We do brisk business in this time due to Christmas. We will face huge loss. This is so unwanted and irritating." For the Christians its like holding their celebrations on hold.

Vanessa Bhagwati said, "We wont be able to shop for Christmas.

The roads will be unsafe also. The celebrations will have to be put on hold. We will be confined to our houses. The Yuletide spirit has been robbed by these bandhs."

UNI