Then Lenin died, the Soviet Union observed a one-minute shutdown in silence. The country could not afford to miss more than that-only work would help the communist state materialise.

The march towards a socialist utopia continues here in Nepal but our communists have adopted exactly the opposite means to that end. They believe in shutting down business and bringing life to a complete halt to make a political point. In the last decade since the re-introduction of multi-party democracy, one or the other of the assortment of socialist groups have been involved in more than 80 percent of the nearly 50 national and valley-wide bandhs. (See box)

This time around, the consortium of nine minor leftist parties called for an unprecedented two-day bandh to protest the 14 October fuel price hike. The government initially pretended not to notice but made some attempt at negotiations at the last moment. Predictably, the effort failed and the nation was saddled with a bandh that couldn't have come at a worse time.

The business community believe losses will be two times more this week since the two-day bandh comes smack in the middle of the peak tourist season. Following the two-day bandh is a weekend. "Business loss of four days in a week is suicidal," says a peeved wholesaler at New Road.

The tourism sector-which contributes 20 percent of Nepal's total foreign exchange earnings and employs around 700,000 people-is another major loser. The industry is only just getting back to its feet after a disastrous first half-year due to adverse publicity following the Indian Airlines plane hijack from Kathmandu last December and the concerns raised by various diplomatic missions about law and order in the country due to increased Maoist activity. The bandh was something that the country could least afford at this juncture. Even if the government had succeeded in getting the bandh called off, the damage had already been done. Industry insiders reported mass cancellations of both hotel bookings and trekking groups in anticipation of the uncertain political climate.

To add to the woes, a host of foreign VIPs and more than 700 big names in the global environmental movement were in Kathmandu to attend the annual meeting of the World Wide Fund for Nature. Rather than revel in the wonderful opportunity the event provided to make a show of Nepal's successes in conservation practices, the bandhs cast a dark shadow over the proceedings and only contributed to causing long-lasting damage to Nepal's reputation.

There has been no comprehensive study on the negative impact of these shutdowns on the Nepali economy, but a survey carried out by a Kathmandu-based independent research institution three years ago, estimated that a day's closure of business can cause losses of about Rs 30 million in Kathmandu alone. A fact that political leaders are not entirely ignorant of. They, however, resort to philosophical rhetoric to justify their action. "We have to lose some to gain some," says parliamentarian Lila Mani Pokharel of the United People's Front, one of the nine leftist groups. He also argued that the bandh call was a last resort against a government that has turned impervious to reason.

But past record shows that none of the demands voiced during the 50 or so bandhs of the last ten years have yielded results. As recent as September, the same leftist coalition called a day-long national shutdown to force the government into agreeing to a host of issues, including the immediate implementation of a two-year-old understanding between the government and the communist grouping. Transport, educational institutions, factories and markets ground to a halt but it all came to naught as far as wringing concessions from the government was concerned.

Besides the effectiveness of bandhs, the very premise of bandhs is worth questioning. The shutters do come down, but everyone knows it is definitely not in support of the bandh call. Closures are forced on a people responding to fears of the potential for violence from bandh organisers. It is far removed from the 1990 People's Movement when calls for shutdowns had mass public support and the momentum of the agitation led to one popular bandh after another. But this legitimate political tactic has since degenerated to small sections of society holding the rest hostage to their whims. The most absurd of them all was the one organised by the Rastriya Prajatantra Party in 1998 to protest the murder of one of their MPs with well-known criminal antecedents, Mirza Dilshad Beg, in a gang war. It is ironical how even that was a success.

It could be that the Bangladesh experience gives hope to bandh organisers. Having successfully been used to bring down two governments, the effectiveness of a series of bandhs was clearly demonstrated in the neighbouring country. But, as a Bangladeshi journalist points out, there is a great difference between the two countries. While Dhaka is a sprawling metropolis, Kathmandu is little more than a large town where almost every place is within walking distance. Hence, the impact of bandhs is considerably less. Also, because the number of urban poor is relatively less in Kathmandu, the sum of human misery caused by bandhs is not great enough to affect governments. But most important of all, he says, is that since Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala is pre-occupied with inner-party wrangling and the larger issue of the Maoist insurgency, the present bandh can only be an irritant.

Adacemic Surendra KC is even more blunt. "Bandhs are irrelevant in the present context; they symbolise lack of vision and an absence of intellectual and social sensitivity among the political leadership," says KC, a Tribhuvan University historian who has studied Nepal's communist movement. "Bandhs can be counterproductive especially for communists in Nepal. People have pinned hope on the communist parties to relieve them from the burden of social and economic disparities but when they cause difficulties by calling for irrelevant political displays like bandhs people could turn unsympathetic to them," he adds.

MP Pokharel doesn't buy that argument but avoids a direct response when asked if the national shutdown will force the government to reduce fuel prices. What he has to say, however, can only be cause for greater concern: "Our protests might not always be peaceful like this."

That threat does not seem to have deterred other political parties-from the right-wing Rastriya Prajatantra Party and Nepal Sadbhavana Party to the main opposition Communist Party of Nepal (UML)-from extending support to the shutdown. Even the Maoists declared they were all for it. Lost in there somewhere is the realisation that the ruling party will use the same tactics to force the country to a standstill if and when they sit in the opposition. And having suffered bandhs during their tenure they will not need to be apologetic about it at all.

One can only hope that two-dayers are the most our politicians will impose on us. And that they don't take comfort from and emulate the fact that fellow politician Subhas Ghising did get away with a 40-day bandh at the height of the Gorkhaland movement in Darjeeling in the 1980s.