THE newly formed State Co-ordination Committee of Coal Owners, Miners and Dealers Forum which is opposed to the National Green Tribunal (NGT) order banning coal mining since April this year is calling a bandh on August 6 from dawn to dusk. While the Forum had pointed to the failures of the State Government in following through the NGT’s directives of June 9 to assess the quantum of extracted coal so that it could be evacuated after the stock-taking. The NGT had ruled that a Committee comprising Government officials and outside experts should complete this task in two weeks time. The Committee never functioned. The NGT has given strong strictures on this failure of the State Government. So if the Forum has a grouse against the Government it cannot punish the general public by calling a bandh and thereby bringing life to a grinding. Bandhs are essentially a last resort because they are anti-people. It is ordinary citizens pursuing their daily livelihoods who are affected by the bandh; not the Government or its employees.
The Forum speaks of thousands of ordinary people being affected by the ban on coal mining but the very fact that the Forum it has created includes only coal mine owners, miners and dealers is enough to suggest that those ‘ordinary, poor’ people whose voices have been co-opted as being affected by the ban on mining are kept out of this exclusive club. The grouses of a small section of the population cannot be allowed to affect the even tenor of life of the large majority of citizens. This step taken by the coal mine owners Forum is seen as self-centred and self-serving. People are voicing their disgust that a group with corporate interests should be holding the Government and citizens to ransom.
A bandh is successful if citizens choose to make to it so. If they decide to violate the bandh call because they value their liberty then the bandh culture will become passé. But if they choose to stay home and follow the diktat of bandh callers then they have themselves to blame for forfeiting their rights in a free country.
