She, like millions of girls her age, liked to shoot Instagram reels. One she will never make is that of her death. The night this year opened, she was riding her scooter when a car hit her; but kept running for kilometres, dragging her body along on the road for about half an hour. Fatherless, her mother ill, she was the only one the family depended on for their daily bread. They didn’t even have the money for her last rites. Her story, like that of thousands of youth, is not special. But the media, with little to froth at the mouth except on Rahul Gandhi’s marmalade-making eccentricities, found it special on a dull news day. The nation wanted to know more.
What the nation must really know is that India is being held to ransom by unions. Truckers called for a strike, paralysing fuel supplies and inducing scare shopping. The new hit-and-run law passed under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita imposes a fine of Rs 7 lakh on the driver who flees the scene after a hit-and-run accident, and 10 years in jail; previous jail time was just two years. The statistics are frightful. The annual ‘Road Accidents in India’ report in 2022 noted 67,387 incidents of hit-and-run. 30,486 people were killed; nearly 85 victims a day or four people died per hour.
However, the new law applies not just to truck drivers, but to all drivers. However the truckers argue that only a small percentage of hit-and-run accidents are caused by them. The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic. How many more statistics must die bleeding and abandoned on the road? Why did the Centre, which stood resolute on CAA reportedly put a hold on the law, and said ‘Uncle’ to truckers? It is optics, stupid. Elections are just a few months away. Panic buying erodes confidence in governance.
Strike funk is India’s favourite pandemic. Any psychologist will tell you that today's mass hysteria is affecting consumers, truckers, bank employees, farmers and politicians with fat to fry. Psychologists define two distinct kinds of hysteria: mass anxiety hysteria and mass motor hysteria, pun unintended. The fuel of successful protest is mass hysteria. The striking truckers were perhaps infected by groupthink: mass hysteria caused by their leaders, which resulted in a shared fury; in this case against the new law. For three days, the victimised public was possessed by epidemic hysteria, which grips normal people in the face of any stress. For three days, people filled their fuel tanks, stocked vegetables and provisions and put travel plans on hold.
India exults in having a mutinous society. Labour strikes once plagued pre-liberalisation India. Then Manmohan Singh opened up a myriad of new employment avenues, which caused a decline in union power. However, kvetching unions still have the power to jolt the economy and spread mass insecurity. Banks still go on strike, forcing customers to rush to ATMs in droves. The farmers’ stir cordoned off New Delhi until the government promised a solution in the face of state elections. Frequent bus, taxi and autorickshaw strikes leave millions stranded. Water strikes compel people to stand in line at public taps to hoard water beforehand. Power strikes, now considerably reduced by privatisation, mean long blackouts in summer which require a beleaguered middle class to stretch the home budget to buy inverters.
Worker’s Rights was the clarion call of Socialism when incomes were low, and before consumerism and EMIs went shopping hand in hand. Unions are on a downward trajectory, but protest is a fundamental right. The right to harass the public is not. The law must apply equally to all offenders. That is justice.
Ravi Shankar
ravi@newindianexpress.com