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        It is ironically appropriate that the nation today - the day the man who pioneered the idea of civil disobedience in India was born - should be debating about the moral right of political parties calling for bandhs and strikes. The Supreme Court, with its trenchant comments on bandhs and strikes, has made the political class to close ranks. The Apex Court's observations, certainly populist in certain respects, strikes at the very root of the politicos' stock in trade - the right to enforce a strike or bandh. The politicians of this land are wily enough to spot a threat when they see one. That is why we see an unseemly haste and eagerness on their part to slam this 'judicial intrusion'. Look at the unconcealed rage that the politicos are whipping themselves into. Prakash Karat, the pointsman for the Left parties, naturally sees this as an 'uncalled for judicial encroachment'. But the Left parties, who call for strikes and bandhs, more often that Elizabeth Taylor changed her husbands, cannot be expected to think otherwise. T R Baalu, the Union Minister of Shipping, of the DMK, who is so bent on continuing with the Sethu project in the same controversial alignment, is typically foaming at the mouth. 'How can judges be right all the time? If that was so, there won't be any appeals and reviews,' he has said with the usual Dravidian style of rhetoric that is low on logic but high on emotion. He also dropped the threat of impeaching the Supeme Court judges. All this are clear signals that the politicos are both shaken and stirred.

        The Supreme Court's observations are, however, politically correct and strikes a vital blow for individual liberty - a concept that would seem to be at cross purposes with the collective ethos of this country. In a nation, which is steeped in family culture and seeks to see unity in diversity, the right of a lone individual is usually subsumed or not even considered. But the social mores are changing. And at any rate, the liberty of individuals cannot be ridden rough shod over by forces that have brazenly appropriated the representative right. There is a lot of hollowness and untruth when politicians say that they resort to strikes or bandhs only for the good of the people. Make no mistake about it, 'representing the common man' is the most dubious of ruses ever invented by the politicians. The court has niftily seen through politicos' stratagem and pointed out the difference between a strike in protest against an organisation and a total 'cessation of all work'. What the DMK and its allies attempted to do was the latter, and troublingly, something which was sought to be done through brute force and by the control that they hold over the unions. The court also talked of the enormity of economic losses accruing out of such strikes. The message implicit in all this is that the politicos need to think beyond their noses.

        Where the Supreme Court might have erred is on the side of overenthusiasm. The observations vis-a-vis about possibly imposing President's rule in Tamilnadu are certainly a touch too strong. It is not a matter for the court to comment on. It was certainly inconsistent with the Supreme Court's established ideas against the use of the Article 356. The court should logically have stopped with pointing about the failure of the constitutional machinery in Tamilnadu. Perhaps the court just got carried away. Or more likely, it made same the mistake that the politicians routinely make: Playing to the gallery. But beyond this quibble, there is nothing to find fault with the SC's bid to strike down strikes and bandhs.