The CITU’s call for nationwide strike by unorganized labour on August 8 has left the masses thoroughly confused —- while CITU’s campaign over the past three months gave an impression of a complete general strike, its statement Monday here seemed to leave out the urban areas.
At the last moment, the CITU here has stressed that the public transport sector would be left untouched, barring taxis and autorickshaws. With private buses exempt from the strike, commuters are not expected to face much of a problem, since these are the mainstay of road transport. The railways, which bring lakhs of people to the city every day, were in any case out of the strike.
In New Delhi, the CITU had announced on Monday that the strike would take the character of a general strike that would paralyse, among other things, private road transport.
In West Bengal, however, the CITU seemed to have softened its position after the CPI(M) state headquarters at Alimuddin Street stepped into the picture, party sourcea said.
The sources said that Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and commerce & industries minister Nirupam Sen do not want the strike to paralyse life in general. The Chief Minister had discussed the issue at last Friday’s meeting of the CPI(M) state secretariat, in the presence of CITU state president Shyamal Chakraborty.
The CITU later announced that the strike will not affect private buses, including mini buses, chartered buses, school buses and ferries in the transport sector.
Kali Ghosh, state secretary of the CITU, told FE on Tuesday evening that they do not want life to be paralysed in West Bengal. “We do not want it to take the shape of a general strike, which is why we have exempted private buses and mini-buses,” Ghosh said.
“Some quarters are trying to propagate that CITU is all set to paralyse the state, which is not true” Ghosh said. “Life will be normal tomorrow.”
In West Bengal, the strike will not affect power utilities, hospital services, water supply, ambulances, burning ghats/ crematoriums, cemeteries, newspaper distribution, hotels and restaurants (including roadside eateries and small ones with less than 20 workers), doctors’ chambers and medicine shops. The list goes on.
So who are the people supposed to be on strike? And how will the common man be affected?
The CITU’s list has 57 categories —- covering mostly small industries in rural areas. Some examples of industries: oil and pulse mills, book-binderies, coir, brass, bidis, rice husking mills, bonemeal, cashew, glass bangles, kite-making, calligraphy and potters.
For the past three months, the CITU has been organizing a strident campaign to drum up support for its strike, although the tone has been much softer in West Bengal than in other parts of India.
Ghosh, defending the decision to exempt private bus services, said: “In other states, the absence of private buses does not hamper public transport the way it does in West Bengal.”
