Opinion | The civilisational salience of Bengal elections 2026

West Bengal will witness a tough competition between TMC and BJP.

• Bengal's decline traced to decades of destructive political rule
• State elections seen as a crucial chance for Bengal's revival
• Bengal struggles with economic stagnation and identity politics

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Bengal holds a special place in my heart. It was here, in the city of Kolkata, where I got my first job. My lingering memory from those early days is from March–April 2003. The Left Front government had approved a 10 per cent hike in bus fares which translated to roughly a 25-paise increase in the fares on most routes. In protest, the Left Front parties called a strike against their own government. The city shut down completely.

The small eatery near my house, where I used to have breakfast every morning, was closed, so I could not even have breakfast. I lived within walking distance of my office and reached there, among the very few who had managed to come in, as all those who had to take any kind of transport to reach the office stayed away for fear of violence. But lunch too was impossible because every outlet was shut. My first morsel of food came only late in the evening when, on the way back home, I finally found a small chai shop open. However, over the years and the decades since, what has stayed with me is not my own inconvenience. Rather, what stayed with me was the absurdity of the politics of Bengal, the bankruptcy of the political discourse, and the thought of the countless daily wage earners across the city who had lost a day’s income because politics had decided that the capital city must come to a halt. And for what? For a 25 paise increase in bus fares! That was the sum of economic aspirations that decades of Congress and Left Front rule had reduced Bengal to.

This memory captures the deeper tragedy of Bengal. A land that once stood at the intellectual, economic and cultural vanguard of India became trapped in a political culture that normalised shutdowns, strikes and economic paralysis at the whims of the same set of operators who pretended to govern the state.

Bengal was once the epicentre of the Indian renaissance in general and specifically the Hindu renaissance after more than 600 years of conquests. In literature, philosophy, spirituality, science and politics, Bengal produced giants who would command a place in any global history. Swami Vivekananda inspired spiritual self-confidence across continents. Rabindranath Tagore reshaped modern literature and became Asia’s first Nobel laureate. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose embodied the militant resolve of India’s freedom struggle. Jagadish Chandra Bose, Satyendra Nath Bose and Prafulla Chandra Ray made foundational contributions to modern science. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay wrote the immortal “Vande Mataram" that galvanised an entire civilisation. Even those born in other regions of the country travelled to Kolkata to get educated and impact human history. Few regions in the world have produced such a constellation of talent in such a short historical period.

Imagine the compounding effect that such a civilisational base could have generated had the renaissance continued! Bengal could have become not just India’s but the world’s intellectual capital, an economic powerhouse and a global cultural centre simultaneously.

Instead, the story of Bengal over the past century has been one of steady withering and of almost standing at its nadir.

The British partition of Bengal in 1905 injected two deep poisons into its social fabric that have hobbled it since. In some ways, it was the most successful long-term sabotage of Indian society that the British engineered.

The first poison that the British injected was the normalisation of political violence in society. The second was the encouragement of Muslim separatist politics as an instrument of colonial control. These forces permanently fractured a society that had once led India’s nationalist awakening.

Independence should have been the moment when these poisons were removed from Bengal’s body politic. Instead, post-independence political leadership chose to weaponise them.

The Congress rule, post-independence, gave shelter to such characters as Syed Badrudduja, who participated in the Direct Action Day massacre sponsored by the Muslim League in 1946 but later became a Congress MLA and even MP post-partition. The politics that Congress set in the 1950s institutionalised the poison that the British had injected.

However, if the Congress laid the foundation of the decline of Bengal, then the first systemic, deliberate and planned erosion of Bengal unfolded under Communist rule. For 34 uninterrupted years from 1977 to 2011, the Left Front governed Bengal. During this period, the state witnessed the rise of Naxalism, which had originally taken root in the small village of Naxalbari in 1967. Entire generations of bright young Bengalis were drawn into a violent ideological movement that consumed talent rather than nurturing it.

The economic consequences were devastating. In the 1950s and early 1960s, West Bengal was among India’s most industrialised states. It accounted for roughly a quarter of India’s industrial output. Kolkata was one of Asia’s great commercial hubs. Yet by the late 1990s and early 2000s, industrial stagnation had become entrenched. Labour militancy, political interference and an anti-enterprise environment drove existing businesses away and scared away any new enterprise.

The numbers tell the story starkly. In 1961, West Bengal contributed 10.5 per cent to the national GDP. In 1977 (the advent of Left rule), this was reduced to 8.8 per cent. By 2011 (end of Left rule), it had further reduced to 6.7 per cent. In 2026 (15 years of TMC rule), it stands at a mere 5.6 per cent.

The same tragedy repeats across almost all economic indicators. In terms of per capita income, Bengal was at the 10th position among Indian states in 1977. By 2011, it had fallen to 18th, and in 2026 it stands at 27th.

Industrial output as a share of national output has crashed from 27 per cent in 1951 to 11 per cent in 1977, to about 5 per cent in 2011, and to a mere 3–3.5 per cent in 2026.

In terms of debt-to-GDP ratio, the trend follows the same trajectory — from roughly 20 per cent in 1977 (about Rs 6,000 crore) to about 39 per cent in 2026 (Rs 7.9 lakh crore).

Parallel to the decline of industry came the persistence of another political instrument: the mobilisation of Muslim identity as a vote bank. The poison of Muslim separatism that had culminated in Direct Action Day in 1946 and the horrors of Partition should have been buried after independence. Instead, it was preserved and cultivated by successive regimes.

The result was a steady erosion of economic vitality. When entrepreneurship is discouraged, when law and order becomes uncertain, and when identity politics replaces development, the consequences are predictable. Those who could leave Bengal left. Professionals migrated to Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and abroad. Those who remained were forced to navigate a society where economic stagnation and political patronage went hand in hand.

In such an environment, another phenomenon inevitably emerges, as we have seen countless times in failed countries in Africa and Latin America. When the economy weakens and violence becomes normalised, local henchmen rise to fill the vacuum. Extractive political networks emerge where muscle power replaces merit and patronage replaces productivity. The meagre economic resources are then managed and disbursed by those who command local street power.

This model of politics, first invented unsparingly by the Left, did not disappear with the fall of the Communists in 2011. It merely changed its political vehicle. The Trinamool Congress under Mamata Banerjee inherited much of the same political ecosystem. The networks of local thugs remained.

Simultaneously, identity-based Muslim mobilisation intensified. Large-scale infiltration from Bangladesh was not overlooked but actively encouraged. Many border districts have effectively become no-go zones for mainstream administration, while even cities like Kolkata are frequently paralysed through the street power of a “Muslim veto".

The politics of the “Muslim veto" in Bengal was normalised by the Congress when it mainstreamed Muslim League leftovers, then institutionalised by the Left through strategically enabled infiltration, and finally converted into street-level thug power under the TMC.

Such is the state of affairs that in 2026, Mamata Banerjee inverted all political wisdom when, at a rally, she reportedly made these comments in Bengali — “It is because we are here that you all are doing well. And if we are not there, if such a day ever comes, it will take only one second — when a community unites, when they surround you — in one second, they will finish you off completely!" Imagine a situation where Mamata Banerjee herself is warning about the predatory nature of the threat that her party has nurtured for the past 15 years!

The stakes in Bengal’s 2026 state elections are therefore far larger than a routine change of government. They represent a civilisational crossroads. Will Bengal survive as a state that represents the Indian ethos, or will it permanently regress into the kind of Islamist extremism that we witness in Bangladesh?

If, on the one hand, Bengal under Congress, the Left and finally under TMC represents one kind of destructive politics, then on the other hand, across India, a pattern has emerged in states where the Bharatiya Janata Party has come to power after long periods of stagnation.

The model was first conceived and perfected in Gujarat under Narendra Modi. His tenure as Chief Minister between 2001 and 2014 ended decades of communal riots that bedevilled the state under Congress rule and pioneered agricultural, industrial, manufacturing, sports and infrastructure reforms that made it one of India’s fastest-growing states and an economic powerhouse.

Madhya Pradesh under Shivraj Singh Chouhan transformed agricultural productivity and rural infrastructure, and the state emerged from the pejoratively used BIMARU tag. Bihar under Nitish Kumar, in coalition with the BJP, rid the state of goonda raj, improved security and safety for women, and created an environment for economic progress. Uttar Pradesh under Yogi Adityanath curbed the mafia raj that permeated the state, and under him UP has emerged as an economic powerhouse in the North.

Assam under Himanta Biswa Sarma has successfully tackled insurgency, illegal infiltration and infrastructure deficits simultaneously.

Maharashtra under Devendra Fadnavis pushed large urban infrastructure projects that were stuck for decades, along with digital governance reforms.

The people of Bengal should not take anyone’s claims at face value. But they can look at these examples and ask a simple question: which political model across India, except the BJP, has consistently reversed decades of stagnation? Which party, except the BJP, has provided security to all citizens in the state and ended street violence with an iron hand? Which party, except the BJP, has a track record of ending thuggery and mafia raj, ridding the state of systemic corruption, and powering economic opportunities not just in one state but across every region of the country — from the West to the North, and from the North-East to the South?

The coming election may well be Bengal’s last major opportunity for a course correction before it falls into irreversible decline.

Equally, for the Bengali “bhadralok" intelligentsia, this moment demands honest introspection. For decades, many among the educated middle classes rationalised or tolerated political models that prioritised ideological symbolism over economic dynamism. The cumulative loss is visible for all to see. Bengal began independent India with some of the strongest intellectual and industrial foundations in the country. Few regions possessed such advantages.

The opportunity cost of the loss of the past seventy years is therefore enormous.

If the current trajectory continues, the incentives for political actors to change course will diminish even further. Once entrenched political ecosystems solidify, reversing them becomes extremely difficult.

Meanwhile, the geopolitical environment around Bengal is also evolving for the worse. Bangladesh has in recent years witnessed growing political volatility and the rise of an even more virulent form of Islamist extremism. If large-scale illegal migration continues unchecked, demographic and security challenges will only intensify.

History rarely offers unlimited opportunities for course correction. Bengal once set the intellectual and cultural model for the entire country. The question today is whether it wishes to rediscover that role.

The current election may therefore be remembered not merely as another state contest, but as a moment when Bengal decided whether it would reclaim its historic potential or continue down a path of decline.

Narendra Modi will not remain Prime Minister forever. The state that once led India’s awakening must decide whether it wants to align itself with a national wave of transformation in the Modi era and have at least a decade or more of sustained revival under his leadership.

Bengal once showed India the way. It still has one final chance to do so again.