One of the Deccan Queen bogies set on fire on Thursday

Mumbai, Dec. 1: The last two days’ Dalit protests have cost Maharashtra Rs 4 crore in damaged public property alone, the state government says.

The losses from the paralysis of business are yet to be estimated.

Mobs protesting the desecration of an Ambedkar statue in Kanpur had stoned and torched dozens of buses and three trains. The railways lost more than Rs 60 lakh, a senior official said.

The Mumbai-Pune Deccan Queen Express was stopped at Ulhasnagar railway station and five of its coaches set on fire by a mob protesting the death of a teenage boy in police firing.

Two commuter trains, too, were torched and several others stoned.

“At least 227 buses were damaged by the protesters in the past two days. We have suffered a loss of Rs 2.5 lakh,” said a spokesperson for BEST, which runs buses in Mumbai and its suburbs.

Attacks on buses and other vehicles were reported from across the state.

As the violence spread across towns, business came to a halt. Shops downed shutters and commuters rushed back home.

Mumbaikars are hardly strangers to disruptions in their daily lives. It happened in 1993 after the serial blasts. This year, the riots in Bhiwandi, followed by the train explosions in July also threw life out of gear.

In July last year, a cloudburst submerged the city for several days.

A small-time shop owner in the suburbs of Mumbai said he was fed up of los-ing business every now and then.

“I shut my shop as soon I came to know that there was trouble brewing in the city,” he said.

“How can we survive like this? Every day, there is some problem or the other.”

A single bandh or protest in the city — the country’s commercial capital — costs the government crores of rupees. According to a recent study, Maharashtra stands to lose at least Rs 100 crore during every bandh.

After the 7/11 blasts that brought the city to a standstill, the state exchequer was poorer by nearly Rs 5 crore and the railways by Rs 18 crore. The state lost business worth hundreds of crores.

In 2004, the BJP and the Shiv Sena were fined Rs 20 lakh each by Bombay High Court for calling a bandh in 2003 in protest against the blasts at Ghatkopar.

According to a PIL filed by AGNI, an NGO, the bandh cost the state Rs 50 crore as at least 200 trains had to be cancelled, and activists from both parties damaged trains and buses.

A businessman summed up the city’s feelings: “It’s time the state authorities took a look at Maharashtra’s decreasing bank balance and talked a little less about the spirit of Mumbai. With their inefficiency, they are helping neither!”