There was a time when hartal and blockade would come upon us once in a blue moon forcing everyone to stay home and making us real worried. Now, however, these once dreadful words- hartal, oborodh, dhormoghot- have become so familiar to people that they hardly care about them. Although the form and type of violence have been horrible lately, unlike strikes of the past, they can do little to make us cower. It seems they lost their scariness over the time like a failed monster of Monster Inc, an animation movie of Disney. They scream louder than before, yet the child (people) laughs. The monster has turned into a motley-clad joker. And here lies the big concern for everyone concerned.

Hartals, blockades were never meant to be anything dreadful, nor they were supposed to be such laughable. These had purpose once; a noble purpose I should say. To protest against oppressive governments, to gain people’s rights, to be heard in a democratic state- these, and lot more others of course, were the purposes of strikes. These used to be just and peaceful means for democratic ends. But everything’s changed now.

In spite of the extreme danger lurking outside on a hartal day, people take to the road; it is their lives and survival they care more than anything. There are some reasons behind this change in people’s response. First of all enforcement of strikes for weeks, sometimes months, has made the abnormality and danger of such strikes very commonplace phenomena. Secondly and most importantly people have come to realize that these strikes, that were once called to serve their interests, are no longer for them. They, therefore, carry on or at least make the hectic effort to continue the normalcy in their lives. But will those (I mean the politicians of course), who are actually needed to be normal, be normal in their actions?