Bengal - The great capital of bhadraloks – ‘Going numb’

“What Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow” - These words were said by Gopal Krishna Gokhale more than a hundred years ago, this is accurately reflected in the aspirations of Bengal at the time. However, West Bengal represents a fascinating tale of decline in its most prolific manner. It is a spectacular demise of both economic and social legacy. It is a state living in its inherited culture of the past and the social reality of today seems more of a mirage, this plight is more than any other state and keeps on assuming significance year after year. States in India have been associated with episodic instances of lawlessness specifically during elections, this is unavoidable even in developed countries, however Bengal represents a different set of events accentuated by factors such as insurgency, social upheaval, mass migrations and political vendetta.

Bengal and its affiliation with sustained violence driven poverty and its gradual endemic acceptance

Bengal has seen its fair share of pristine, divine, and unadulterated forms of violence. In 17th century Shah Shuja, the emperor of Bengal (son of Emperor Shah Jahan) at that point of time had made an unbelievable and yet simple description of the region as a fertile land of opium consuming idle villagers. The laziness was due to the fact that the fertility of the land allowed for maximization of crop yield with minimalistic effort.

This peaceful and bountiful picture of Bengal as it was, got shattered in the next hundred years as Bengal transformed into a lifeless impoverished state with an influx of famines, deaths and associated forms of violence in the later part of 1770s. Descriptions made in journals like the Annals of Rural Bengal in 1865 by W.W. Hunter (an imperialist colonial officer) and novelist Bankin Chandra’s Anadamath recalled the horror of vultures and jackals roaming with limbs of lifeless beings on the streets. The state was again hit by a prolonged famine during 1870-1880, all concerned stakeholders like the administration and the literary contributors of that generation found linkages and analogies of the two phases, but it did not end there, Bengal underwent a third cataclysmic famine in 1943 also known as “The great Bengal Famine”. In the next five years, the Bengali population, due to sustained conditions of prolonged turmoil were eager to break free, leading to a slew of communal clashes and subsequent riots paving the way for ‘The great Bengal killings’ of 1946, the ‘Tebhaga Movement’ of 1946-1947 (During the Tebhaga Movement, sharecroppers refused to pay half their harvest as tax to the landlord, as they used to before, and insisted instead on paying only one third) and the Naxalbari Movement in 1967. Bengal experienced mass exodus of refugees from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). A major bulk of refugees entered West Bengal and intermingled with the residents; it hence became a searing hot pot for communal violence paving the path to the 1946 Calcutta Riots.

Surprisingly, the 1943 famine which was an artificially induced massacre by the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill led to extermination of close to 3 million Bengalis, it was however not considered an act of violence, but killings of 1946 were. This was the phase of intermingling of violence and regional political agendas in Bengal, which created an urge for a response as a call of the ‘great revolutionary justice’. This represented refuge to radical ideologies and hence, they were fanned for politically motivated discourses.

Bengal was at the forefront of the revolutionary movement against British colonial rule, with groups like Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar engaging in violent activities aimed at overthrowing the imperialistic regime. The Partition of Bengal further fueled radical nationalist sentiments, leading to widespread protests and political and social confrontations. The forms of such violence over time have mutated, amalgamated, transformed, and diversified themselves, which are currently manifested in the ideological impulses of the helm of affairs in the state.

Historical overview of the systemic erosion of economic and social fabric of Bengal

The form of protest and rebellion in Bengal has changed over time, so did the nature of exploitation of the land. The violent acts during the colonial regime changed their form in the post-independence era. Violence in this period manifested in the form of street warfare and it progressively strengthened the mafia economy, with extortion and informal tax collections being on the rise progressively. Another contributing factor to this changed form of economic erosion was a particular kind of development model that started taking shape in this period – the model saw various rent-seeking ‘padha’ syndicates or lynchpins resorting to extreme forms of violence in extracting income from land development, construction industry and in some cases established middle and upper middle-class businessmen. This created a strained economy which was excessively dependent on Jute and ancillary textile manufacturing, which was devoid of the gift of the natural fertility of the land, which unfortunately went to Bangladesh (erstwhile East Bengal or East Pakistan) post partition.

Moreover, turning a blind eye on sustainable economic models specifically the state-run infrastructure was also prevalent. The tradition of resisting user charge imposition and cost recovery is long and entrenched in the state. In 1953, the Calcutta Tramways Company (CTC) tried to revise its second-class fares, the same had remained unchanged since 1922. To counter the same protests were implanted by the Tram and Bus Fare Enhancement Resistance Committee, also known as the ‘Pratirodh Committee’, the same would be subsequently taken forward by political parties and were used as a narrative/template defining the logic of intentional stagnation to arrest price rise. The aversion to development manifested in various forms post the same. Bengal is one of the few states where its capital city, Kolkata does not have a water tariff and the population is forced to drink ground water contaminated with major pollutants like arsenic and fluorides to avoid the water tariffs leading to dilapidation of existing assets and loss of quality, this has led to the state becoming a hub of cancer cases as compared to other metropolitan cities.

The various political regimes and the legacy of agrarian conflicts and urban rural divide

The state has seen governments led by different political parties since Independence, they include the Indian National Congress (INC), they were the incumbent for more than two decades, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front were present for over for three decades, and the All-India Trinamool Congress (AITC or TMC) that heads the incumbent government is now closing in on a decade.

Bengal in 1980s had close to 67% of the population which was agriculture dependent. It represented the section of society which was far more gullible and deprived at that time. All the parties which were voted to power understood the importance of keeping this vote bank activated and played on increasing the urban rural divide. This was also the time when Bengal faced increased immigration from neighbors, this steady stream eventually went and established themselves in the rural heartland. These pockets of the population were appeased by successive governments by utilizing their ignorance about welfare policies and entrenched them into the mainstream by introducing them into the party system.

Bengal epitomizes the concept of party driven policy making. Its always ‘party first’. The entity has penetrated deep into the rural heartland defining the tokenization of loyalty and creation of a political society. Every other social and government institution, such as the landlord’s house, the caste and gram councils, the religious bodies, sectarian societies/foundations, schools, sporting clubs, traders’ association, urban local bodies, and Nagar panchayats etc. have either been eliminated or marginalized as a subservient entity to the ‘party’.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front an alliance of local radical parties reinforced the culture of mindless political violence in the 1960s. They had embarked on a collision course with the ruling Congress, and this led to murders of prominent individuals and led to the normalization of the ‘gun culture’ right until 1970s. As this government grew it silenced opposition with force and routine forms of harassment. This led to entrenchment of corruption deep into the rural institutions creating trust deficits amidst the masses, this led to the Congress party returning to power from 1972-77 based on opposition aspersions of election rigging and use of mercenaries and selectively use of state police machinery. These outcomes were further aggravated by the Bangladesh Liberation war in 1971 and the nationwide Emergency Rule was declared from 1975-77 lasting 21 months.

The shifting political landscapes and governance structures have massively played their part in defining the growth narrative. During the Left Front regime, social violence gradually decreased, and politically motivated forms of violence were normalized and encouraged along with popularization of emancipatory rural reforms pertaining to land. This created a political juggernaut that lasted 34 years. This was fueled by the Naxalbari movements in 1960s stemming from flawed land grabbing policies and forceful alienation of employment opportunities, which enraged local communities. This movement subsumed all other types and forms of violence fueled by caste, gender, and religion.

The TMC, led by current Chief Minister dethroned the three-decade long Left Front government in 2011. In its election campaign, the TMC had emphasized it would not continue the “politics of retribution” practiced by the Left. However, once the TMC won power, its cadres pursued the same violent methods of its predecessor government, attacking and killing opposition party workers.

According to the latest NCRB report of 2021, West Bengal has recorded the highest number of political murders in the country. It seems the state now has become notorious for monopolizing violence in a ‘legitimate’ manner.

The big picture - Bengal’s obsession with peasant economy and its ripeness for development

Bengal ranked first in terms of per capital income rankings of 1961. It was the most industrialized state in India till that point of time. However, if we extrapolate the rankings to 2023 it had dropped all the way down to the sixth position. To understand this and deep dive into the same, we must consider the fact that the long years of the Left front rule created Bengal’s excessive dependence on agriculture due to their focus on strengthening Panchayati Raj Institutions. The focus on land reforms for enhancing the peasant economy resulted in increased productivity and high growth within the sector. These focused reforms and associated policy resulted in higher-than-normal productivity and sectoral growth amongst the Indian states and points to the unilateral focus on agriculture which led to lack of industrialization. However, the activity still contributes to 12 percent of the state GDP and 14 percent of India’s total rice production even now. However, if the metric for measuring optimization in the sector is considered we observe that the primary crop which is rice had productivity of around 2,958 kg/hectare which was far below than the global yield of 4250 kg/hectare and Indian average of 4366 kg/hectare (Punjab). Since the state has 65 percent of the total registered workers in the agricultural sector a result which is lower than two-thirds of the global average can be considered an awfully suboptimal performance.

On the other side of this equation, there are fewer factories in West Bengal compared to its relative potential. Its erstwhile peers like Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Tamil Nadu have two to four times the number of factories. West Bengal’s manufacturing sector is focused on areas such as metals, chemicals, and food processing. These don’t generate the multiplier effects of newer sunrise industries such as electronics, diamond cutting, data centers services with its associated logistics management and automobile manufacturing in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu. This is clearly indicated in Bengal’s lack of productive and service- oriented job ecosystem in terms of numbers. According to the 16th Finance Commission reports the state has ‘Own tax revenue as a percentage of GSDP estimated at 5.2%’ in 2023-24, signifying majority nature of the economy being agrarian and being informally managed. This ideally means the state is heavily dependent on central government grants and subsidies to run its operations implying lack of an innovative service ecosystem which can add value and iterate its offerings based on its ability to sustain outcome based customizations for the market across non agrarian sectors.

Since the state does not have economic inflows through established industrial promotion structures, it has lacked economic buoyancy, leading to the steady rise of its inability to invest in human development parameters. There is a crippling lack of jobs for its young. Over the last two decades, there has been a continuous rise in movement from Bengal to other states in search of a livelihood. A study published in the Economic and Political Weekly in 2021 revealed that during the 2010s, there was a net outflow of people from the state, surpassing the number of individuals who moved in. While the initial signs of this crisis emerged towards the end of the Left Front government’s rule, the situation has deteriorated further under the current regime. Bengali youth currently are left with limited employment options hence, they are migrating away. This makes them vulnerable to anger from the native population of youths in other states, who feel that their local jobs are being taken away by them.

But to Bengal’s credit, it still has a relatively robust interest of industrial units aspiring to invest and experience the relative ease of access to talented and educated human resources. MSMEs account for more than 90% of the active industrial units, 50% of the industrial production, and 40% of the exports from the State. It has a base that’s ready for greater industrialization as economists have long argued.

The state may not find success in replicating the manufacturing stories of other states, but it is well placed to innovate and create its own sunrise sectors like aquaculture, seafood processing, storage, and logistics and create a unique revival story independent of its past failures to get out of its inertia.