agitation;a wrong trend

IN ordering the removal of Jat agitators from railway tracks forthwith, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has done what should have actually been done by the administration in the first place. But the Haryana Government has been going soft on the agitation demanding reservation, which has been causing immense hardship to the common man. With railway tracks blocked at various places, anybody wanting to travel through Haryana has been hit. Particularly vulnerable have been students and daily commuters. The state has been suffering huge losses and even the thermal plant at Hisar has been panting for want of coal. Yet, the government has been taking it easy, as if it was none of its concern. Things could well worsen, with the Jats threatening to blockade Delhi and deprive it of milk and vegetables.

Unfortunately, that line of least resistance is not adopted in Haryana alone. The governments in almost all states tend to look the other way when the agitators take the law into their own hands and the man on the street does not know to whom to turn to for help. There is a virtual unhealthy competition among various groups of protesters as to who can cause the maximum disruption and inconvenience to the public because that is considered the measure of the success of an agitation.

Instead of curbing the tendency, the governments tend to encourage it, by offering concessions only after the “justice-seekers” have taken to the agitation path. That prods yet another group to “take to the streets till we get our dues”. Bengal is a classic case of how a vibrant state got reduced to a wretched existence, thanks to the never-ending morchas, bandhs and agitations. The model must not be replicated on an all-India scale. The court intervention recently put a halt to the Jat agitation in Uttar Pradesh. Perhaps the same may also happen in Haryana. But this is one issue on which the government needs to come to the people’s rescue, before the judiciary does.