Articles by Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya

​Land Dispossession and Everyday Politics in Rural Eastern India by Kenneth Bo Nielsen, London and New York: Anthem Press, 2018; pp 221, £70, hardcover.

Losses by the long ruling Left Front in a series of local and national elections since 2008 cannot be explained without an understanding of the nature of "party-society" in rural West Bengal. The preponderance of the party over the social space, the transformation of the party from a hegemonic force into a violative one and ultimately the ruptures in the "party-society" have all gone on to loosen the dominance of the Left Front in West Bengal. As marginalised civil society reasserts itself and as the opposition coalesces around the resentment engendered against the ruling coalition, a new kind of oppositional politics is emerging in West Bengal, possibly on identitarian lines.

A combination of factors have been responsible for the incidents in late 2007 involving the public distribution system in West Bengal. While the central policy of Targeted Public Distribution System and decreased allocations to the state have been primary contributory factors, local level dynamics that have affected the panchayati raj system are also of significance. This article tries to combine a field study in rural West Bengal with macro-level analysis to analyse the problem.

The Trinamul Congress (TMC) is a party focused on elections, specifically, on unseating the Left Front in West Bengal for which it is not chary of using its varied alliances even at the cost of its long-term credibility. While a Mayawati, or a Laloo Yadav, can play on the slippery ground of disparate alliances, switching partners can only prove terminal for Mamata Banerjee; she has no stable social segment to fall back upon in the bad times. The TMC has failed to translate its electoral promises into a social presence, which could have been its only guarantee against a premature demise.