On my first day in Nepal there was a banda. Banda means strike. I have talked in previous entries about how in the past five years more than 400 days of general strike have been called, and how this excessive striking is clearly a significant challenge being faced by Nepal. Roughly speaking I think we can categorize all the different bandas into four general categories based on the intention behind the strikers. The first category of banda is the purely political, second is the awareness banda, third dispute banda and finally the complaint banda.

Political bandas are called by political parties or groups with political affiliation either to push for their policies or contest the policies of the government or other parties. The awareness banda is called by any type of group in order to draw attention to their demands or problems. Recently this type of awareness banda has been used by minority or marginalized groups to draw attention to the challenges facing their communities. Dispute bandas are called in reaction to parties arguing with the government over a specific issue and is designed to force the government to initiate discussions regarding the topic under dispute. The final type of banda, the complaint banda, is perhaps the most intriguing.

Essentially this banda can be called for any reason by anyone. Political groups or just local villagers can disrupt life and traffic simply by rolling out a few tree trunks onto one of the major roads. While the political parties can shut down the country, local bandas might only disrupt traffic on one road, but infrastructure being what it is in Nepal, shutting down one road is often a significant blow to the entire region.

This local type of banda happens regularly. On any day on any road there is a fair chance you will find traffic at a standstill for hours or even days. I came across such a situation recently while making the short trip from Nepalgunj to Guleriya. There is one road connecting these two district capitals, and it usually takes about 1 hour to go between the two. On this particular day though the bus I had boarded suddenly stopped halfway. After letting all the passengers off, the bus then turned around and sped back towards Nepalgunj. All the other passengers just started walking in the direction of Guleriya, so I followed suite and started down the road. Several kilometers later I finally reached a small market which I recognized as being near to my co-worker Krishna’s house. 20 minutes later I was on the back of his motorbike heading to Guleriya.

Krishna not only saved me from a 4 or 5 hour walk, he also fully explained why the bus had turned back. It was of course a banda, this time called by one local village located along the road. Apparently the previous day one of the many buses speeding down the road had lost control and ended up plunging into a field. One villager was struck by the bus and killed. In Nepal traffic incidents are scary things and usually lead to mobs and often vigilante justice of sorts.

Once in Kathmandu a few friends and I witnessed a taxi hit a biker late at night. The bike had been in the middle of the road and was unlit, so that the biker was struck was not entirely the fault of the taxi. Despite this fact one random passerby and two policemen dragged the taxi driver out of his car and started beating him up. Helping the man who had been struck was clearly a distant second priority to punishing the taxi driver themselves.

In the case of the villagers reacting to the death of their neighbor, justice was the burning of two buses. They then tipped one of the buses over to block the road and declared a banda. What exactly the purpose of the banda was is unclear. They did not have any specific demands. They simply wanted to express their anger over the death of a fellow villager. In the context of Nepal the banda is now the most common and accepted way to express these types of feelings so their reaction was viewed as unremarkable. No police would come to the scene and the people who burned the buses would not be punished. The entire area would just wait for the villagers to allow the road to be unblocked.

I think it is clear that while the villagers might have had a viable reason to be upset, the burning of buses and stopping of traffic simply cannot be accepted. At some point this culture of constant disruptions by any aggrieved party must be ended. It is difficult to calculate how much these banda’s disrupt the economy and the efficient running of the country, but there is no doubt the cost is high.

Perhaps in the particular case it was the bus drivers who suffered the most as they had to suspend half of their routes until the banda was over. Most people I spoke found the entire event was rather commonplace. I also seemed to be the only person who grasped the irony of the bus drivers’ reaction to the villager’s banda. How did they respond to the burning of their buses and the blocking of their bus routes? Well, they called a banda of course.