Nobody in West Bengal needs to be told that an element of coercion, direct or indirect, is embedded in the call for a strike or a bandh. A political party calls a strike, people stay at home because they are frightened of violence and this passivity is then interpreted by the concerned political party as spontaneous support for the bandh. This has become a tedious scenario, and in West Bengal, because of the Bengalis' proverbial aversion to work, bandhs have become a matter of enjoyment, a holiday invariably tagged on to the weekend. Is this attitude a sign of coercion or support? Coercion, in a strike, is a dicey business. Despite this, the judgment of the Supreme Court against the use of force to guarantee the success of a strike is to be welcomed. If implemented and taken seriously by the political parties, it could lead to an end of the practice of strike organizers of stopping employees not sympathetic to their cause from going about their work. Strikers must be reminded that if the right to strike is a democratic right, the freedom to dissent and the right to work are equally fundamental to democratic practice. Democracy, by no definition, can mean the brute force of a majority. Minority opinion, the right to voice an opinion and to act according to that opinion are crucial to the health of a democracy. In India, those who protest loudly against the oppression of minorities in other spheres often perpetrate coercion on those who differ from them and are in a minority. The Supreme Court's ruling does not address a crucial issue: what will happen to those political parties who defy the ruling and continue to use coercion in strikes? The Kerala high court had opined that such parties should be derecognized by the Election Commission. Most political parties had objected to the Kerala high court's judgment, and the Supreme Court is justified in overturning that ruling. Derecognition of a political party is much too serious a matter to be left to the EC, whose position cannot be held to be analogous to that of a court. It will not be unfair to suggest that till a system of punishments in this matter is put in place by the apex court, its ruling will be left at the mercy of the goodwill of political parties. Goodwill is not a virtue that is prominent by its presence in the ethos and functioning of Indian political parties. There is another aspect to the ruling of the Supreme Court which is significant. The ruling marks a shift in its attitude to labour. Time was when courts extended protection to labour as a weaker section of society against the alleged oppression of capitalists and the state. It is now correcting this tendency. In a democracy, the idea of equality before the law must have precedence over notions of welfare and protection of the weak.