With his government's failure to stem retrenchment in the industrial field, sustain its few achievements in the countryside, and provide basic amenities and a clean administration for all its citizens, the picture is indeed bleak in West Bengal. In order to explain away this failure, the CPI(M) has today found a scapegoat - the Bangladeshi infiltrators. But such a choice has ominous implications - given the tense communal situation in the country today, as well as the historical background of Hindu-Muslim relations in West Bengal.