Diagnosing the Problems of West Bengal.
(Chapter 4)
West Bengal has problems which do not reflect in numbers. Before we go into numbers, let us reflect its problem of being in stasis for too long.
A State in Time Warp
It was in 2008 when I had to visit Kolkata, a number of times. It was a shock. Barring few main roads, it did not look like a capital city. It was an old slum of bricks and mortar. It appeared as it time machine to me back in time by 50-70 years. Lawyers at High Court, called Old Post Office Street, were using dial up network. WiFi was available in my Hotel where I stayed but it was so expensive that average person could not afford it.
It is the most unfriendly place for tourists. The Sony digital camera, which I forgot in official taxi never got back to me. Police or even the Registrar of High Court did not help or could not help. Ordinary policeman feigned as if he did not understand any language other than Bangla.
The result after first visit is that I changed to a better hotel and asked them to provide their trusted taxi to travel around. In all my subsequent visits Mujeeb Rehman was my chauffeur who would pick me from airport in his Ambassador Taxi of Yellow and Black colour. It had no air conditioning in a city which is humid and has only two weathers. Hot and very hot. The infrastructure there was so good that a journey from Airport to down town Chowrangee used to take 4-5 hours. Flight from Delhi to Kolkata took less than half of that time.
The State with its low average income is also the cheapest place in India. One could buy a tshirt for as little as Rs.15/- and a Puchka or Jhal for Rupee 1or 2 only in 2008. Just a few days ago PM Modi purchased the Jhal for Rs. 10/- during election campaign in Kolkata.
If the city of Kolkata could not find a better name for ‘old post office street’, the State of West Bengal could not find a suitable name for a district called ’24 Pargana’ which literally translates “24th Sub Division”. Nobody was interested in administration of city or State. Neither then nor now. It was communist party which was in power in 2008. People wanted the change and they got one in 2011.
The Mamata Without Compassion
In 2011 the hope was filled in air. Mamata Banerjee rode to power with central force protection and genuine public anger. People rejoiced. They expected change in administration and in their fortune. What they got was the same machine with a new operator. 15 years have passed and she did nothing except being in Government and borrowing more and more to run it. We have discussed the violence and corruption in Chapter 2. As she started to become unpopular she made an alliance with Moulvies.
Polarization Politics
Every political strategy contains the seed of its own undoing. Mamata Banerjee’s undoing was arithmetic that worked brilliantly for fifteen years and then worked against her all at once.
West Bengal has a 27 percent Muslim population, concentrated enough in certain districts to be decisive in a significant number of seats. Mamata built her coalition around this base with methodical consistency. Imam stipends. Minority scholarships. Festival accommodations. A 145 crore self employment scheme specifically for Muslims in 2011. OBC quota adjustments that shifted benefits toward minority communities. She secured approximately 80 percent of Muslim votes in Muslim heavy seats, which is not a voting preference. It is a bloc.
The strategy had an internal logic. A consolidated minority vote combined with a divided Hindu vote produces reliable majorities. It worked in 2011.
It is claimed to have worked more emphatically in 2021 but numbers tell a different story. Now we know there was a sudden inflation of 9 million votes between 2016 and 2021. The approximate number which is removed by SIR. This number actually worked for her.
What changed between 2021 and 2026 was not Mamata’s strategy. She continued doing exactly what she had always done. She would invoke Allah and ask Muslims not to vote for Kafirs. What changed was the Hindu response to it.
Bangladesh in 2024 showed Bengali Hindus what organised minority violence against their community looks like when the state either cannot or will not protect them. Sandeshkhali showed them what it looks like inside their own state when the state actively protects the perpetrator. RG Kar showed them what institutional impunity looks like when the victim is one of their own daughters. Ram Navami procession restrictions in a Hindu majority country told them whose festivals the state considered worth protecting.
Each of these alone might have been absorbed. Together they produced what analysts are calling reverse polarisation, which is a clinical term for a simple human reaction. People who had been voting on various considerations, began voting on a single consolidated identity because of threat to that identity itself.
Mamata did read the signal albeit late. Her pivot to soft Hindutva, temple funding, Sanskrit slogans, the appearance of religious inclusivity, arrived in the final months of her third tenure. Voters are not sophisticated analysts but they are not foolish either. The strategy that built her majority created the conditions for a counter majority.
As if it was not enough Mamata in a recent public speech told the people that she was holding back one community and they can be harmed but for her. Here are her exact words:
“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!”
That a Chief Minister said this in a democracy and expected no electoral consequence tells how completely she had lost touch with the arithmetic she herself had created.
People learned the lesson and this caused the 25 to 30 percent turnout surge in many constituencies. The irony that will occupy political scientists for years is that Mamata’s appeasement strategy, designed to make her unbeatable, may have triggered the majority against her.
Financial Problems
Before any government can rebuild West Bengal it must first understand what it is inheriting. Total liabilities of West Bengal stand at 7.7 lakh crore rupees as of 2026. Every citizen of the state, including the one rupee street food vendor and the lawyer with the dial up modem, carries a personal share of approximately 70,653 rupees in state debt. They did not borrow it. It was borrowed on their behalf by governments that spent it on salaries, pensions and welfare schemes designed to purchase votes rather than build productive capacity.
Between 20 and 28 percent of every rupee of revenue West Bengal earns goes directly to servicing debt before a single road is built or a single school is staffed. Other states spend between 5 and 15 percent on interest. The infrastructure deficit is the mathematical result of a state spending its revenue on debt before it could spend it on its people.
The debt is not stabilising. It is projected to reach 8.15 lakh crore by March 2027, growing at 6.5 percent annually. The 2025-26 fiscal deficit stood at 3.6 to 4 percent of GSDP. Borrowings surged to 1.24 lakh crore in a single year.
The state is not spending on capital expenditure which builds future capacity but on salaries, pensions and subsidies which are consumed immediately and leave nothing behind. Capital expenditure, the spending that builds roads, ports, factories and institutions,is symbolic at approximately 1.9 percent of GSDP.
That number explains in a single figure why Bengal’s geography, its port, its river system, its proximity to Bangladesh and the Northeast, has remained potential rather than becoming reality. These numbers are not merely bad. They are the financial portrait of a state that has been systematically looted across generations and then handed an unpayable bill.
Any government that wins on May 4 inherits not just a state but a compounding obligation that will constrain every decision it makes for at least a decade.
In Next Chapter 5 we will grapple with Abdali problem in West Bengal. Yes, I am aware that Ahmed Shah Abdali, the Afghan raider never attacked Bengal but others have. That fear handicaps the people,
References:
- Rampant corruption to Muslim appeasement: https://organiser.org/2024/05/27/239557/bharat/obc-category-to-muslims-how-calcutta-high-court-exposed-mamatas-minority-appeasement/
- Fear Mongering and Polarisation in West Bengal: https://thewire.in/communalism/you-are-safe-because-we-are-here-mamata-banerjees-speech-raises-concern-over-fear-mongering-polarisation-in-west-bengal
- Mamata invokes Allah: https://navbharattimes.indiatimes.com/state/west-bengal/kolkata/west-bengal-slams-cm-mamata-banerjee-controversial-kafir-jibe-on-who-support-bjp-in-all-faith-march-in-kolkata/articleshow/107084889.cms