Its an auspicious day to start this Blog as I am sitting at home surfing the net because I have no work. Is it a holiday? No. Yesterday was. It was May 1st, or Labour Day and was a National Holiday. But today is just another Friday. Only in Kerala, its a holiday for everyone, because the BJP has decided that its a Hartal. So you can't shop, work, study, step out of your house, take your car anywhere, or do anything useful.
We normally claim that we work a six day week. But really its a 5 day week. You take out the strikes, bandhs, political rally's in town, bus strikes, lorry strikes, and at the end of the year, you'll find you've only worked a five day week. This wouldn't be so bad if all the parties decided to do all this tamasha on a Saturday. Any time there's a bandh, it must be called on a Saturday. So you could plan your week and work around this, but no, it has to be the middle of the week.
Take this week for example. Thursday is a holiday. Friday is a bandh. Which means nothing much is going to happen on Saturday since most people take a half day. So you have a 3 day week.
The BJP has called this latest Hartal to protest and fight price rise. They're doing it to help us, the working people in this state. They're helping us by forcing us to stay at home with the threat of violence if you go out. I know somebody who lost an eye, when he got stabbed through his car window, for driving around on a Hartal. The High Court has banned Bandhs, so everybody calls it Hartal and continue to do it.
From a business point of view, you have to have a pretty strong reason to base your business out of Kerala. Otherwise why not just set up in Tamil Nadu or Gujarat or somewhere where such problems almost non existent. Which is what everyone does.
