Calcutta, described by the late Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru as ‘a city of processions’ is now a city of bundhs. It is going to be even more so during the coming week. The various political units under the control of the Communist Party (Marxist) have declared their intention to start a series of strikes from 26th August. The party has also called for a gherao of Dalhousie Square (this is where Writers’ Building, which houses the Secretariat, is located) on August 31st; evidently, the C.P.M. is bent on paralysing the administrative machinery too, besides dislocating business life around the area where the largest business houses, including the Reserve Bank, are situated. The C.P.M. has come a cropper in Durgapur, because of the fact that the INTUC and the C.P.I.-led AITUC unions would not co-operate in the indefinite strike it called. The Union Deputy Minister for Industrial Development told the Rajya Sabha that as many as 165 factories had closed down in West Bengal till May this year because of factors among which labour indiscipline appeared to be the predominant one. But an unofficial estimate has put the number of closed factories at 300.
