The last nine years of a violent Maoist rebellion has taken its toll. And now in the name of pressurising the government, they have started to organise a series of bandas in which the innocent civilians suffer the most. Fed up with the frequent strikes, the Nepali public has started to question the Maoists' real intentions. After all, it's the civilians who suffer the most, affecting their livelihood, health and children's education. And the worst situation is for the daily wage laborers who have to work everyday to make a meagre income. They lose a day's meal if there is a banda. While the business community complain about the country bearing a loss of a billion rupees in a single day's banda, there are other significant problems faced by the ordinary people. In the five-day banda, a pregnant woman in Dharan lost her life when she was not able to reach the hospital on time. Strikes are nothing new for the Nepalis. During the multi-party governance also, people had to go through the same ordeal of the politicians using strikes as their weapon against the government to fulfill their political aims. And it was especially the CPN-UML that organised most of the strikes when they were the main opposition party against the Congress government. But now people have started to rebel, they are fed up with the Maoist attitude that they can intimidate anyone. Even the Maoists eventually gave in to the public frustration that they decided to call off the strike on the third of a five-day strike. What surprised everyone was the government's cowardice by not mobilising their white-plated vehicles. On the other hand, civilians were brave enough to take out their cars and motorcycles on the street.

The Maoists have to realise that their anti-people activities will never make their movement a success. And this is possible only if they stop the killing, violence, spreading terror as well as calling for strikes.