While We Voted

Voting season is ending, tomorrow (04.06.24) harvest will be distributed to the parties 80 days after the formal start of the election process and hence, formal start of election campaign till the counting of votes and declaration of results. From that fantastic book published a century and half ago we know that the Frenchman showed how it was possible to circle Around the World in 80 Days that time and we can imagine so many things can happen in 80 days save the parliamentary election of our vast country, where we saw how heatstroke took lives of workers toiling for the election process to roads getting choked by severe snowfall and rain in Himachal, perhaps taking so much time for phased election was not much necessary due to technical reasons. Anyway, we Indians know how to create Bureaucratic layers with lots of power and unquestionable authority.

While citizens and also would be voters were made busy with gigabytes of election related and unrelated news of celebrities naturally, the Fourth Pillar was too busy to discuss in detail many trivialities, like, thousands of textile workers of Arvind Mills were on strike for weeks, they gathered in thousands in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, on May 27 and a workers’ delegation went to meet the Assistant Labour Commissioner madame who gave 30 minutes’ hearing to the workers. All Law and Order loving citizens should notice the efficiency of our bureaucracy in monitoring even such small happenings, newspaper Desh Gujarat informs, “A large number of policemen were deployed in Gandhinagar due to the presence of thousands of laborers. However, the protest remained peaceful.”

But peace gets torn now and then. One Kishan Kumar or Uttar Pradesh died in Kudgi 4000MW supercritical thermal power plant of NTPC falling straight from a height of 133 feet (forty and half metre) while working on a chimney on May 14, Tuesday. He was a contractual worker working for this same factory for 3 years according to some workers. He fell down as workers often have to do high risk jobs without safety equipment, which the contractors do not give. This fall and death gave rise to a protest. All workers stopped working! It may be termed as a wildcat strike that happened on the next day, Wednesday, perhaps otherwise some newspapers would not have published this news; another reason might be that Karnataka elections were over by that time. Incidentally, in this report, the Hindustan Times informed that another such incident occurred on May 2 in Karnataka, one Tousif Khan from Bihar died in Jindal Aluminium factory there, where also the worker concerned did not get proper safety equipment.

In that fateful month of May another accident occurred and that was in Chhattisgarh. On May 25, Saturday, a huge blast, sound of which was audible from places 5km away, happened in the factory of Special Blasts limited, a ‘privately owned company’. SP of Police refused to divulge the name of the owners to the media saying he ‘cannot’, but the workers told that the factory belonged to ‘Chowdhury brothers’ who were very close to ruling BJP. The police registered an FIR almost a week later, which too was not very pleasing to the media persons (of Times of India). Relatives of dead and ‘missing’ workers were seen protesting at the gate. (Later police said that they found some body parts under the debris.) At the time of the blast some 100 workers were in the factory in their duties.

More such incidents that took place within those 80 days can be added. Also, in that May, two contractor workers of two premier institutes of learning, IIT-Bombay and JNU, left our world by hanging, being unable to digest the injustice by the contractor or by the institute. To end this untoward and disturbing article let us stop seeing another little example of ‘life’ that citizens got to endure.

Let us quote Desh Gujarat: “In response to reports of rats biting three patients, including two females, a campaign was launched in the government hospital early in the morning. A total of 40 rats were trapped during the operation…. Three patients were bitten by rats in the Plastic Surgery Department…. Previously, patients in the super specialty department…. took matters into their own hands, bringing traps… themselves…” This happened in Rajkot Civil Hospital, Gujarat on June 1, 2024.

Let us conclude here without writing any conclusion, and we shall be back to ‘dance of democracy’ (a term coined by a big media house) shortly.

Sandeep Banerjee is a political commentator