Dunlop Don't play the band now Deepa Deepa Mehta is accused of lifting from Sunil Ganguly's Book

For three months, they were denied their pay packets and then the company lords shut the gates on them; on Saturday, even as Dunlop India reopened after 25 months, there were several questions which rankled in the minds of the workers but few of which were answered. How can Dunlop be run with a corpus of only Rs 20 crores; why have the sales units remained shut and how will distribution take place and above all, the Ambattur example in which though the unit was reopened with some fanfare, production has not started yet. Have the salaries of the Ambattur employees been paid?

The 3,500-odd employees who were present during the reopening have understood this and the CITU president of the Dunlop unit Dipankar Roy made it clear that if the management had spent the money on celebrations to pay the employees some of their arrears, then there could have been some reason for rejoicing. The place was teeming with Trinamool Congress and Congress supporters who rushed by the gates once they were opened since there was no system of punching of cards on Saturday , thereby making a show of presence which was physical while mental spaces remained uncovered. All in all, it was sham and while the reopening can be celebrated as tokenism, there should be no reason to strike up a band right now.