The Animated Debate on Populism in Bengal: A Comment

By Maidul Islam

The Frontier web magazine, in its new avatar, has carried an animated debate between Kalyan Kumar Das and Bishakha Nandy on the populist regime in contemporary Bengal. There was a gentle request from the editorial team of the Frontier to comment on such a debate. Hence, the comments would be restricted to the essays written by both Das and Nandy, with some observations and corrective suggestions to theorise populism in general and its current version in contemporary Bengal. Both Das and Nandy agree that the ruling regime in the Indian state of West Bengal is ‘populist’. Nandy states, ‘Examples of populist governance all over the world also tell us something. Populism served with a high dose of authoritarianism and anti-pluralism (Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Narendra Modi) tends to pull the most crowd in our times.’ Such a view is a very liberal and selective reading of the populist phenomenon, as it equates populism solely with the alt-right or right-wing populists in the contemporary world. Given that Nandy takes refuge in a liberal thinker like John Dewey, it is not surprising to see her position similar to that of liberal democratic academics and liberal political discourse, in which populism has often been viewed in a pejorative light. In contrast, although Das provides the necessary explanation of the merits of populism in West Bengal, he does not carefully make a distinction between the populist regime in Bengal and the examples of right-wing populists that Nandy has mentioned in her essay.

Interestingly, both scholars have overlooked Ernesto Laclau, a prominent political theorist whose groundbreaking works on populism have had a distinct impact on the academy and political discourse in parts of Latin America and Europe. Laclau gives a very straight answer to the question of what populism is: “by ‘populism’ we do not understand a type of movement—identifiable with either a special social base or a particular ideological orientation—but a political logic” (Laclau 2005, 117). Thus, serious scholars in the field of political theory regard populism as a governing principle of democratic political practice, a necessary political logic and the only substantive strategy of political mobilisation under conditions of representative democracy. Political parties and movements, regardless of their ideological persuasions, adopt populist rhetoric and articulate populist political agendas to appeal to various plebeian and heterogeneous sectors of the population, thereby mobilising them against the antagonistic frontier(s) for popular action.

From the experiences in Britain, one could argue that Left-wing populists are ‘more socio-economically focussed’ and ‘more inclusionary’ than right-wing populists (March 2017). While agreeing with such an analysis, one could contend that, in the current conjuncture, the left populists, at least, promise an alternative to neoliberalism. Right-wing populists, although occasionally critical of a select set of neoliberal policies, do not have a vision of transcending neoliberal capitalism. Moreover, left-wing populism is based on hope with socially progressive policies, promising redistributive programmes as part of its ideological vocabulary. In contrast, right-wing populism has been based mainly on fear, a fear of the immigrant with a strong xenophobic character ‘and the fact that in all cases immigrants are presented as a threat to the identity of the people, while multiculturalism is perceived as being imposed by the elites against the popular will’ (Mouffe 2005, 69). Besides the academic study of left and right populisms, there is a difference between the mainstream research orientations that treat all kinds of populism as a danger to democracy, as in the works of Müller (2017) and Weyland (2013) and those who think that populism might not be necessarily associated with the extreme right and argue that populism can be only leftwing and may not be the most appropriate category to conceptualise outright nationalist, racist and fascist movements (Stavrakakis and Katsambekis 2014). 

In this context, I agree with Laclau’s substantive definition and Mouffe’s analytical differentiation between the ideological expressions of right and left populism. In the light of such an academic discourse, it is prudent to make a fundamental difference between the populist articulations of AITC in Bengal and the Modi-led BJP and not to be tempted into a false trap to equate Modi and Mamata. If one examines the contemporary political debates on numerous issues in Bengal over the last two decades, a simple articulation in the domain of everyday politics is the use of Amra (we/us) and Ora (them). Even in recent mobilisations against the government, slogans like Amra kara (who are we?) can be heard in urban streets. It is a classic populist moment where the political logic of an antagonistic ‘we/they’ relationship is often established in a political mobilisation or TV debate by defining ‘who are we’ and ‘who are they’. No political party, including the AITC, differs from such a populist articulation, where the Laclauian logic of people versus power bloc is articulated in a discursive practice through a performative manner. However, such binary constructions of ‘us versus them’ are instead a similarity between the political articulations of AITC and other mass political parties, such as the BJP and the CPI(M). What about the difference between AITC and BJP? In this context, one must remember that on the questions of pluralism and heterogeneity, the AITC is more inclusionary than the BJP if one carefully analyses the explicit rhetorical practices on the issues of minority rights and the NRC-CAA debates, where the BJP’s xenophobic character is exposed as opposed to the AITC’s stated positions and mass mobilisations along with the popular mobilisations by various progressive groups in West Bengal during the CAA-NRC protests before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Nandy is correct to point out that the AITC sweep of all by-polls after the RG Kar protests, even though scores of AITC leaders are either in jail or under investigation for allegations of corruption and the larger allegations of systemic corruption in the health and education sector in West Bengal should not be read as a plebiscite for all crimes allegedly committed by sections of the party. Here, Das tries to answer why AITC gets re-elected by noting the successful mechanics of a new politics of governmentality instead of a Nehruvian developmentalism by engaging with the extant literature on the reversal of the effects of primitive accumulation by taking refuge in the celebrated works of Kalyan Sanyal and Partha Chatterjee and the more recent interventions of Prathama Banerjee. I have argued elsewhere that state populism is the new template of governance through which populists get re-elected by ensuring the electorate that they do not just forget the promises made to the electorate, but act as their true representatives by offering concrete welfare measures, even though such demands for welfare schemes are not placed before the government. My basic argument was that state populism, besides building the Laclauian equivalential logics, also accommodates democratic demands through a new logic of governance in anticipation of the articulation of such demands (Islam 2022, 10).

Laclau’s logic of difference corresponds to those democratic demands that can be accommodated in isolation from other democratic demands when such demands are placed before the power bloc. In other words, the power bloc, including the state, can only fulfil some sectoral demands of the population after they are articulated in some form. This is how Mamata Banerjee has dealt with issues of chit funds by giving back money to some who were affected (compensation to those losing money less than Rs. 10,000/-) through Justice Shyamal Sen Commission in 2013-14 or listening to the demands of Bhangar movement in 2017-18 and the doctor’s agitation in 2019 and 2024. However, no populist leader can sustain themselves for long by relying solely on the logic of difference. Here, a new logic of governance comes to the rescue, one that is expressed through the implementation of various populist welfare schemes (Islam 2022, 180). In this regard, it is worth noting that the specific schemes implemented by the AITC-led state government were not the result of any political movement. The electorate did not ask for those schemes from the state. Instead, welfare schemes are the handiwork of specific techniques of governance prepared by the bureaucracy. It was an administrative exercise. The specific welfare schemes struck a chord with the people because of an existing lack on certain fronts among the population. Once the schemes are implemented, it is difficult for any government to disband them completely. Increasingly, people identify themselves with these schemes, as they have had a positive impact on their lives. They begin to believe that they deserve those schemes instead of looking at them as a mere charitable exercise on behalf of the government.

Thus, the implementation of welfare schemes as a mode of governance is technically different from the logic of difference. It is because while the Laclauian logic of difference operates through an accommodationist strategy, the logic of governance primarily operates through an implementation strategy. Laclau relates the equivalential logic to the logic of the people, while the differential logic is the logic of the power bloc. However, the logic of governance adds another dimension to the power of the power bloc. The power bloc, or the executive of the state in this case, has not only the power to accommodate democratic demands articulated in some form but also the power to implement specific policies before any articulation of demands. The logic of governance operates through the state’s apparatuses before the articulation of democratic demands, expressing itself as the general template of state populism (Islam 2022, 180-181).

Thus, while populism in Laclau’s works has the dual logic of equivalence and difference, the nature of state populism in India operates through a triad: the logic of equivalence, difference and governance (Islam 2022, 10). Thus, state populism, besides building the equivalential logic, constructing political enemies, and accommodating democratic demands, also operates through a logic of governance (Islam 173). The political logic of state populism is a supply-side mechanics on behalf of the state before the demand-side dynamics are appropriately channelised. Much like the logic of difference, the chief agent of the logic of governance is the name and the figure of the popular sovereign, namely the populist leader, embodying the power of both the state and the people (Islam 2022, 183). While one must not ignore the role of the so-called ‘freebies’ and ‘doles’ in analysing the electoral success of both national and regional parties, there are more factors why electors choose one out of several parties and why parties win elections. Those are lack of opposition unity that leads to fragmentation of opposition votes, factionalism in the opposition camp that could lead to political incoherence to which people could be confused and hardly trust the opposition as a credible alternative to the ruling regime, and lack of credible mass leaders in the opposition camp in an era when the personality cult status and the image of a strong leader is increasingly getting popular. Moreover, with the rise of populist leaders, the party form is being radically questioned, thanks to the penetration of television and social media among the electorate. Like anywhere in the world, populism is likely to persist in Bengal, as it is another name for politics and a synonym for the very construction of the political domain in one form or another, even if there is a change in government in the long run.

References:

Islam, Maidul. 2022. Political Theory and South Asian Counter-Narratives. New York: Routledge.

Laclau, Ernesto. 2005. On Populist Reason. London: Verso.

March, Luke. 2017. ‘Left and right populism compared: The British case’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 19(2): 282–303.

Mouffe, Chantal. 2005. “The ‘End of Politics’ and the Challenge of Right-wing Populism”, in Francisco Panizza (ed.), Populism and the Mirror of Democracy. London: Verso.

 Müller, Jan-Werner. 2017. What is Populism? [2016], With a new Afterword. London: Penguin Books.

Stavrakakis, Yannis and Giorgos Katsambekis. 2014. ‘Left-wing populism in the European periphery: the case of SYRIZA’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 19(2): 119–142.

 Weyland, Kurt. 2013. ‘The Threat from the Populist Left: Latin America’s Authoritarian Drift’, Journal of Democracy, 24(3): 18–32.

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Dr Maidul Islam is Professor of Political Science at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta