The Hindu Business Line : <I>Viva la Huelga!</I>

A MONTH ago, sitting at a wayside tea-stall near the DMS complex in Chennai, a middle-aged government employee was passionately backing the strike call by his compatriots.

The self employed tea-stall owner-cum-employee, however, struck a jarring note: "Even `in the good days' I do not think the government employees do a spot of work during the day; so, why should they go on strike?"

Add to this the public perception that all government employees are corrupt, and the recent strike by the State Government staff hardly evoked any sympathetic chord among the citizens at large. Long past are the days when strikes by government employees created a sense of national crisis and earned public sympathy.

The handling of the strike this time around was firm, although it appeared at times vindictive.

The background for such treatment, as it were, has been in place for sometime now, in the form of a series of observations and pronouncements from the judiciary on the matter of strikes, hartals, processions and other forms of public coercion.

Ordinary citizens all over the country, except — inevitably — in West Bengal, can now hope for a spell of anxiety-free planning of their daily chores and transactions.

However, top honours for striking frequently without a care in the world should go to the white-collar employees of the banks and insurance companies.

They have become so inured to public sentiment that they choose the day to strike work so that transactions can be paralysed for a week.

Not far behind are government doctors and technical staff of the telecom department. Strange as it may seem, even lawyers who are self employed resort to strikes in this country. Evidently, all these excesses against society are on the rebound now, coming to haunt their perpetrators. The kid-glove treatment of strikes by public sector employees by the government started way back in 1968.

However, the massive strike organised by Mr George Fernandes, when the railwaymen struck work, takes the cake for tormenting the entire nation for a prolonged period.

The coercive tactics honed by marxists in Kerala and West Bengal since bank nationalisation whetted the appetite of lumpen elements to practise mass bullying at will until the early 1990s.

Economic liberalisation and the consequent strangulation of job opportunities in the public sector have changed the paradigm of public discourse on labour which the union leaders of government staff refuse to realise.

The administration, indifferent and unconcerned as it is its wont, resorts to solving issues concerning its personnel only after they reach a feverish pitch with imminent threats and stoppage of work.

In fact, it does not even emphasise what ought to be its own agenda — improvement of productivity, punctuality, promptness, customer service and costs — in the various bodies created for joint consultation with the staff.

On the contrary, items of interest to the federations or joint action bodies are discussed desultorily at the official level, provoking the latter to greater confrontation.

The iniquity in passing on all the ill-effects of economic distress management to low-grade employees while retaining the privileges of the superior services and ministers will not keep the lid on the simmering discontent for long.

The government cannot always count on the public apathy and judicial remedies for solving its own management problems. Unless it wakes up and stops gloating about its temporary triumph, the strikes will return!

R. Sundaram

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