Bangalore Bandh

Fortunately, this is something that does not affect me directly anymore, what with me being out of B'lore and all. But I always find bandhs a bit strange. For the life of me I cannot recall any time where a bandh actually had some effect on the policies of the government. This current bandh is supposed to put pressure on the Central government to do something or the other about the Maharashtra-Karnataka border dispute. I wonder how making a nuisance in Bangalore is going to make any difference to the Central government.

I wonder what the powers-that-were were thinking when they created states on a linguistic basis. Something like longitude is not open to subjective interpretation, but linguistic majority is something I wouldn't want to dabble in. What happens if some reasonably large area of Bangalore suddenly becomes Marathi-speaking? Does it become a part of Maharashtra?

This "states paradigm" has also led to the creation of the domicile concept. I ran headlong into it during my last few school years. "Domicile" for some states meant living continuously in that state for 4 or more years (or some such equally pointless number). If you are not domiciled in that state when you pass your 12th standard Board exams, bang- you're ineligible for the state's colleges! Unless you're a Central government employee's child or one of defence personnel, you're so out of luck. Of course, this runs totally contrary to the IT industry's norm of changing jobs every few years - so if your children are anywhere near the age where the domicile factor comes into play you should stay put where you are.


Back to the bandh... at least it was supposedly peaceful. For all practical purposes, it was apparently a holiday. Reminds me of someone who said that bandhs in Bengal were calculated to be around weekends so that people could have a long holiday. On the other hand, what's with bandhs and buses? News reports say there was "some" damage to BMTC and KSRTC buses. What does some damage mean? Who are the people who go around damaging buses at the least provocation? Why aren't they stopped? Protests is one thing, but damaging public property is a complete no-no.

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