Beneath the Surface: The Deepening Crises of West Bengal

by Shamayita Sen

Introduction

West Bengal's (WB) political landscape is at a critical juncture. The systematic decline of the Left in opposition role has created a political vacuum, fundamentally reshaping the state's power dynamics. Into this chasm has stepped the Hindu Right, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerging as the principal adversary to the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC). As the state prepares for another fierce Assembly election in 2026, the rivalry between these two party forces have intensified over a few burning political questions.

This article, through five distinct vignettes, explores the critical issues confronting WB. It begins by teasing out the theoretical distinctions between the TMC and BJP's modes of conducting politics. The subsequent four sections then assess other pressing matters that are pivotal to understanding the state's current political trajectory.

1

Political scientist Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya has characterized the political modus operandi of the TMC in WB as a "franchise model." This framework, as articulated by Bhattacharyya, posits that the party, under the overarching brand of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, operates through a network of local leaders who function as semi-autonomous "franchisees." These leaders leverage the party's political power and Banerjee's personal appeal to establish and run their own domains of influence and, in many cases, "unregulated businesses."

At the core of this model is the centralized authority of Mamata Banerjee, who acts as the "franchisor." Her image and political capital form the brand that the local leaders, or "franchisees," utilize. In return for their allegiance and their ability to mobilize votes and control their respective areas, these local strongmen are afforded a considerable degree of autonomy to manage local affairs. This includes the distribution of patronage and the control of economic activities.

Come to think of it, an analysis of the BJP governance at the Union and state levels reveals striking parallels, as well as fundamental differences to this Franchise Model.

The most direct parallel lies in the cultivation of a supreme, charismatic leader whose personal brand becomes synonymous with the party and its government. Secondly, both TMC and BJP have successfully created a vast base of beneficiaries, fostering a sense of dependency and political loyalty. However, their methods of distribution differ. TMC's franchise model describes a decentralized system of patronage. Local "franchisee" leaders control economic activities ranging from syndicates to local contracts which includes the distribution of benefits like jobs, cash, and social scheme access directly. This makes the local leader the immediate patron. The BJP has mastered a model of centralized welfare. Schemes like the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN), Ujjwala Yojana (LPG connections), and Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (housing) deliver benefits directly to individuals, bypassing ‘corrupt’ state governments and local intermediaries. The credit for these schemes is attributed directly to the central leader, PM Modi, creating a large, national class of beneficiaries who are also called Labharthis. This direct benefit transfer model aims to create a direct line of loyalty between the voter and the central leadership. If these are the similarities, there are also differences.

The nature and autonomy of the party's functionaries on the ground present the most critical point of divergence. Local TMC leaders are akin to entrepreneurs who run their own political and economic enterprises under the Party's umbrella. They enjoy significant autonomy in their day-to-day operations and in managing their local turf, as long as they deliver votes and remain loyal to the top leadership. In the BJP's model, state and local leaders, including Chief Ministers and MPs, function more like centrally-vetted "branch managers" than autonomous "franchisees." The BJP's powerful central leadership, often referred to as the 'High Command,' maintains tight control over key decisions, from candidate selection to the appointment of Chief Ministers. While state leaders implement policy, the vision and direction are provided by a pair from the Center. Their power is derived less from personal enterprise and more from their alignment with the central leadership's agenda.

The foundational structure of the two parties explains yet another difference in their operational models. The TMC is a personality-driven party with a loose, flexible organization built around a network of loyalists. The BJP is built on the deep, disciplined, and ideological cadre base of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). This provides a rigid organizational spine that the TMC lacks. BJP is supported by an ideologically committed workforce. The "franchise" is not for local enterprise, but for the centrally-directed delivery of welfare and the amplification of a national narrative.

In this kind of a political dynamic, the electorate is the principal loser trapped between two disempowering systems: TMC's network of unaccountable local strongmen and the BJP's highly centralized machinery that diminishes regional autonomy. Both models foster a culture of dependency over empowerment, reducing citizens to mere beneficiaries. This stark choice highlights the critical necessity for an organized and politically aware Third Front in Bengal, one that can shift the political discourse from personality cults and patronage to programmatic policies and the restoration of institutional integrity. If only Bengal does. So far, it has only shouted in empty slogans.

2

In For a Just Republic, Partha Chatterjee sees the Indian capitalist economy as divided into three interrelated zones comprising of the core growth regions (such as Gujarat and Tamil Nadu), the resource-extracting regions (such as Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh), and the labour-supplying regions (including West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, and Uttar Pradesh). While somewhat schematic, this tripartite division offers a useful heuristic to understand the spatial configuration of capital and labour in contemporary India. Most Indian states can be located at the intersection of these zones, depending on the temporality and structure of capitalist development within them.

Chatterjee’s analysis of WB is particularly poignant. Once a leading industrial hub, Bengal has, over the decades, witnessed a gradual decline into a labour-exporting region. The collapse of traditional industries, combined with the withdrawal of state investment and the political economy of rent-seeking, has led to large-scale outmigration. While Chatterjee notes the emergence of a new entrepreneurial class, he remains skeptical about their transformative potential because these ventures remain individuated and lack the "stamp of social approval", mostly for their individuated motives.

This background offers a critical lens through which to examine the recent controversy surrounding the Bengali language. On the surface, the dispute appears to be cultural or linguistic (while important as lenses). However, seen through the deeper structural dynamics of WB’s political economy, the controversy reveals more complex stakes. With agricultural incomes plummeting, industrial decline accelerating, and the informalisation of the labour market deepening, migration from Bengal has shifted from being largely seasonal to permanent. Migrant workers from the state, often poorly educated due to the crumbling public education infrastructure, overwhelmingly find themselves in the informal sector where legal protections are either minimal or absent.

It is in this context that the BJP's position needs to be interpreted. The party's vocal indifference (or at times hostility) towards the Bengali language, as seen in statements by figures like Amit Malviya or the Delhi Police's insinuations about "Bangladeshi" language, are not mere linguistic slights. They are as much ideological maneuvers to obscure deeper economic operations. The BJP does not merely oppose the Bengali language per se. Its strategy is to instrumentalise linguistic and religious anxieties to further marginalize an already precarious laboring population.

Crucially, Bengal, as a “labour-supplying region”, competes with other such regions like Bihar, Odisha, and Uttar Pradesh. All these states are currently under BJP or allied governments. WB remains the only significant labour-exporting state outside the BJP’s political stronghold. This makes it both a site of contestation and a laboratory for ideological experimentation. The mobilization around the Bangladeshi refugee issue and the communalization of the Muslim identity are not isolated phenomena. They can be read as part of a larger strategy of discrediting the region’s labour force by casting them as suspect—culturally, linguistically, and religiously.

While elite, upper-caste/class Bengalis often interpret these developments as an affront to their cultural identity, migrant laborers, many of whom are from backward castes and religious minorities, experience these attacks as part of a broader regime of economic marginalization. A close reading of their testimonies reveals anxieties not just about language but about work, dignity, and survival. These migrants are often those engaged in non-specialized, replaceable forms of labour. Precisely the kind of workers most vulnerable to discrimination, harassment, and displacement.

Interestingly, in other regions of India, Bengali-speaking migrants who are engaged in specialized labour—be it in skilled construction, tailoring, or service industries—face relatively fewer attacks. This distinction highlights the selective nature of exclusion. The logic is not merely ethno-linguistic but also economic: surplus, unskilled, informal workers are the ones primarily targeted. Occasional incidents of discrimination against upper-class Bengali professionals, such as denial of service at hotels, while problematic, are largely symbolic. They serve more as performative acts to veil the systematic exploitation and dispossession of poorer, working-class Bengali migrants.

The Bengali language controversy must therefore be situated within the broader transformation of WB into a labour-exporting zone within India's capitalist framework. The BJP’s politics of linguistic and religious Othering are as much about culture as it is about consolidating control over a floating, mobile, and vulnerable labour force. The politics of migration, language, and labour are thus deeply entangled, and any analysis that exclusively confines itself to cultural registers without addressing the underlying economic imperatives risks missing the deeper dynamics at play.

3

The rise of TMC has actively sharpened the fangs of communitarian politics in WB. While the public discourse is dominated by a monolithic "Bengali identity”, beneath its surface, the most critical fault lines are no longer just about religion or language. They are about caste and community associations. This is the new currency of political negotiation, a deliberate fragmentation that serves the powerful.

The weaponization of borders and the figure of the "Bangladeshi" can be seen in this context. The debate is maliciously framed as a simple binary: a minority Hindu from Bangladesh is a refugee deserving of a safe haven, while a Muslim is an infiltrator. This narrative is a dangerous oversimplification. It willfully ignores the complex reality of intersectionality. What place does this framework have for a Muslim from Bangladesh who may also be fleeing oppression based on their caste, their indigenous Adivasi identity, or their dissenting political beliefs back home? Their identity is not singular; their experience of oppression is layered. Yet, here in WB, these crucial nuances are erased, and their entire existence is flattened into a single, 'threatening' religious identity by mostly the Hindu Right. All of this is well-packaged rhetoric. The constant focus on the Muslim-as-Bangladeshi trope is a masterstroke of distraction that serves the Hindu Right perfectly.

The core issue however is more insidious. This narrative, by artificially spotlighting the predicament of one community through a distorted lens, systematically downplays and delegitimizes other, more politically potent subaltern affiliations. The grand, all-encompassing debate about "Bengalis" is an inevitable lure. It is a hegemonic project designed to manufacture the most noise from the Brahmanical class, effectively subsuming and silencing the nascent voices of a potential Dalit-Adivasi-Muslim-Backward Class coalition. If there is a genuine way forward, it must be routed through this collective, however difficult this might sound as a political project. The approach to politics cannot be top-down; it must be vetted and built from the bottoms-up.

As long as we remain entangled in the snare of this imposed, upper-caste Bengali nationalism, more common people will be dealt with roguishly by sycophant supporters of the patriarchs in power. As observers and analysts, we are just as complicit. Especially when we furnish simple 'solutions' for profoundly complicated situations.

4

To speak of complexity, the political discourse in the state remains saturated with references to Moulobaad or Fundamentalism. In the deeply polarized political landscape of WB, a potent narrative advanced by the Hindu Right posits that the state government, under the TMC, actively promotes minority fundamentalism while simultaneously combating its majoritarian counterpart. This accusation, however, simplifies a far more complex and cynical political game. In response, two distinct arguments have emerged. One camp, engaging in a comparative ethics of bigotry, contends that majoritarian fundamentalism, by its very nature and scale, poses a more significant threat to the pluralistic fabric of the nation than minority fundamentalism. Another camp points to the TMC's own strategic overtures to the majority community. They argue that the WB government engages in a parallel form of majoritarian appeasement. They cite substantial state funding for local clubs to organize Durga Puja, the construction of a grand Jagannath temple in Digha amidst nosediving state economy, and the annual state-sponsored Durga Puja carnival on Red Road as clear evidence of this strategy.

The TMC, for its part, demonstrates a calculated indifference to these critiques, continuing its intricate game of community-based politics. Its strategy is twofold and deceptively simple. On one hand, it works to maintain the consolidation of the Muslim community as a reliable vote bank. On the other, it actively sharpens and exploits pre-existing social and caste-based cleavages within Hindu and Adivasi communities. This is more than a mere tactic of "divide and rule". It is a sophisticated expression of its model of political franchising. The Party treats distinct communities as individual constituencies. It enters into transactional relationships where political allegiance is exchanged for specific forms of capital—be it financial grants, social recognition, or political patronage. This prevents the formation of a monolithic opposition bloc while ensuring a fragmented but loyal local base.

This fraught dynamic of majority/minority communalism was recently thrust into the spotlight when organizations like Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind and the Wahyain Foundation objected to the participation of Urdu poet and lyricist Javed Akhtar, a self-proclaimed atheist, in a program organized by the West Bengal Urdu Academy. While the event was not cancelled, its postponement to a time of reduced controversy speaks volumes about the state's capitulation to fundamentalist pressures. Crucially, this incident elicited sharp criticism from within the Muslim community itself. Progressive voices warned that such acts of minority fundamentalism directly strengthen the hand of the Hindu Right, providing it with the very justification it seeks. They argued that these incidents serve as self-inflicted wounds that undermine the broader struggle against the RSS's ideological advance in Bengal.

This entire imbroglio points to a more profound crisis. It indicates the brazen failure of secular politics in the state. The preceding Left Front regime, in its ideological commitment to bracketing religion from public life, effectively pushed faith under the doormat. Their emphasis on class politics presumed that primordial identities like caste and religion would wither away. But opiates have their own seductive power. These identities merely lay dormant, breathing beneath the surface of secular rhetoric. Upon assuming power, Mamata Banerjee opened these Pandora's boxes, and they erupted with a force that proved too powerful to administer effectively.

Indian secularism, as articulated by political theorist Rajeev Bhargava, is not about a strict separation but about maintaining a "principled distance". This distance, however, is not fixed. Its application is a political assessment made by those in power. WB offers a powerful case study of how both extremes—the Left's attempted effacement of religion and the TMC's cynical instrumentalization of it—are perilous. On the ruins of a secularism that was either too neglectful or too opportunistic, communalism inevitably blooms.

The path forward is fraught with complexity. A necessary starting point is the unequivocal and consistent condemnation of communalism of all kinds, across the entire political and social spectrum. This, however, is insufficient. The solution lies not in ignoring religion, but in fostering a new mode of secular engagement. This requires cultivating a public sphere where faith can be a matter of private conviction and cultural expression, but is delegitimized as a tool for political mobilization and public coercion.

Furthermore, the focus must shift towards strengthening civic and constitutional institutions that operate across community lines. When robust public education, healthcare, and economic opportunities become the primary sites of citizen-state interaction, the salience of religious identity as a vehicle for grievance and aspiration diminishes.

Finally, the path forward demands the cultivation of what Dr. B.R. Ambedkar called "constitutional morality". It calls for a deep-seated public commitment to the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity that overrides sectarian loyalties. This is a long-term cultural project. It requires nurturing progressive, reformist voices within all communities who can challenge their own fundamentalist elements, thereby breaking the symbiotic cycle that fuels “competitive communalism”. Without this deeply introspective and institution-building approach, WB’s politics will remain trapped in this dangerous and ultimately self-defeating spiral of rising fundamentalist and communal assertions.

5

The rise and rise of competitive communalism in the state points to a deeper structural impasse. WB’s socio-political landscape is undergoing a profound, yet under-analyzed, transformation in its civil society leadership. This shift is defined by the gradual displacement of the educator, the respected Mastarmoshai, by a new stratum of religious and communitarian leaders. This is not a mere substitution of personnel. It can be seen as a fundamental restructuring of the public sphere, signaling the erosion of a secular, mediating class. The systematic dismantling of the teacher's role as a trusted social intermediary has created a critical vacuum, weakening civil society and its role in interrogating the establishment.

Dwaipayan Bhattacharya informs us that when the Left Front was consolidating its rule in Bengal, from around the 1970s, teachers, especially in rural and semi-urban areas, were indispensable to its efforts at spawning hegemony. Functioning as organic intellectuals, they served as a vital interface between the state and its citizens. With considerable social capital and public trust, they translated the complex language of governance into a vernacular the masses could understand, while also articulating local grievances in a formal language the state could process. This mediating function made them secular anchors of their communities and pillars of the ‘party-society’, embodying an institutional form of local leadership that could bridge social and political divides.

The current political regime under the TMC has fundamentally altered this arrangement. The institutional leadership represented by teachers has been progressively undermined, replaced by an ascendant class of religious and community-based figures. The state now frequently engages directly with imams, priests, and other sectarian leaders, positioning them as the primary interlocutors for their respective communities. As inter-community tensions rise, this approach often exacerbates social cleavages by legitimizing sectarian mobilization over institutional dialogue. This dynamic directly feeds the narrative of the Hindu Right, which portrays the Hindu majority as being perpetually at risk in a state governed by minority appeasement.

A clear illustration of this new political alignment is the nature of recent protests concerning The Waqf Act, 1995. In previous eras, discourse on such matters would have been led by jurists, academics, and retired judges. They framed the debate in secular, legal-constitutional terms. Today, the most prominent voices are politicians and religious leaders from within the affected community. The Chief Minister’s highly publicized meetings with imams to strategize opposition to central policies exemplifies this shift, where leadership has moved from the courtroom and seminar hall to the pulpit and political rally.

Concurrently, the public standing of teachers has plummeted. The most damaging blow has been the massive School Service Commission (SSC) recruitment scam, where allegations of corruption led to the court-ordered cancellation of over twenty-thousand appointments. When those who lost their jobs held protracted demonstrations in Salt Lake and prominent places in Kolkata, the state capital, they garnered media attention but failed to inspire any significant public solidarity. This palpable apathy contrasts sharply with the reverence teachers once commanded. A perception of a corrupt "teacher-government nexus" further fueled by prolonged disputes over salaries, conflicts with university administrators, and academic delays has tainted the image of the educator. This has critically compromised their credibility and effectiveness as representatives of civil society in public eyes.

The eclipse of the Mastarmoshai signifies a dangerous constriction of WB's secular and deliberative civil society. The systemic replacement of this trusted, mediating intellectual removes a critical buffer against sectarian passions. As this space for reasoned dialogue shrinks, it is inevitably filled by the polarizing politics of religious and community identity. This structural decay of public discourse provides a direct windfall for the Hindu Right, whose majoritarian agenda thrives in an environment of division and mistrust. The silencing of the educator’s moderate voice leaves society vulnerable to a gathering darkness. Mastarmoshai must admit to seeing things, the time to turn his complicit head is long gone.

Conclusion?

This article does not aim to arrive at a definitive conclusion or deliver a final verdict. Its primary objective is to ignite a necessary discussion on the critical issues confronting WB's political destiny. These matters are far too consequential to be left solely in the hands of politicians. They demand direct engagement, not silent avoidance from the broader society. The path ahead is indeed fraught with difficulties with the society lying fractured and fragmented. While the fragments have to be defended, the faultlines that are being usurped and widened by politicians to turn one fragment against another, have to be identified, addressed, and if possible, mended. Ultimately, the transactional nature of the monetary politics now rife in Bengal must give way to a principled politics of genuine ideological underpinnings. This must be achieved through a ground-up movement, not led by the upper class/caste elite, but by Other communities asserting themselves across every domain, from education and economy to culture and politics. Indeed, while a 'logic of differences' has divided these communities, their political salvation rests on the ability to subsume those divisions within a 'logic of equivalence', and in doing so, hem themselves together to secure the political future of WB.