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Comrades apply double standards

Their discriminatory act has made a vast section of readers suspect that the strike being spearheaded by the Centre for Indian Trade Union (CITU) is engineered by the CPM with the ulterior motive of pushing the circulation of party mouthpiece ‘Deshabhimani’. Many senior political leaders including Minister for Public Relations K C Joseph have openly aired this allegation.

However, the allegation has not deterred the striking agents. They have refused to scale down their demands and have vowed to continue the strike until all their demands are met. The agents are demanding a 100 per cent hike in the trade discount, additional charges for supplements, festival allowance, pension etc.

Labour Minister Shibhu Baby John, who convened a meeting of the representatives of the striking agents early this week to amicably settle the strike, said his ministry had nothing to do with it as it was mostly a social issue. The agents are apparently not employees of the newspapers.

The relationship is similar to the one between a retailer of goods and the manufacturer of the same. In such a relationship, the prime concern of a retailer should be the interest of the consumer. However, in the present case, the newspaper agents are least concerned about the newspaper subscribers. Many feel that the agents could have adopted other methods to press their demand without hurting the readers’ interests i.e. his right to know.

The readers have been thronging the circulation offices of the newspapers since the strike began on March 20. Many of them have also been collecting newspaper bundles and distributing among their neighbours. They included religious leaders, jurists, writers, film artistes and several other prominent classes of citizens.

Later several social, religious and cultural orgwanisations took up the distribution of the newspapers. This has brought home delivery of certain newspapers to normal in several parts of the state. The agents may not have anticipated such a mass response from the readers, for whom a newspaper has become part of the life.

Though half a dozen exclusive television news channels, Internet editions of more than a dozen newspapers and equal number of exclusive online news portals disseminate news 24/7, the people in the 100 per cent literate state cannot start their day without going through their favourite newspaper.

The newspaper agents say the present trade discount of 28 per cent they are getting was not remunerative as they cannot get boys to distribute newspapers without paying high commission. 
 news@khaleejtimes.com