Key Points
Kolkata/Birbhum: In 2019, West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee issued a fiat to the rank and file of her party: Return cut money (euphemism for commission) taken from government schemes, or face jail...
The grievances of Birbhum people the control of local resources through panchayats, having to pay cut money for availing government schemes, allegations of rigged elections, and having a powerful local strongman point towards a generalised pattern of the TMC rule in Bengal...
As argued by academics Subho Basu and Auritro Majumder in an essay titled The Rise and Fall of the Left in West Bengal, the Left created a mass base both in urban and rural areas, which included small-time agrarian tenants struggling for land reforms, refugees demanding the recognition of squatter colonies in urban areas, white-collar working classes demanding better wages as well as the industrial working classes...
Meanwhile, a powerful cultural movement spearheaded by Left-leaning, party-affiliated intelligentsia led by the Indian Peoples Theatre Association helped the communists capture the imagination of the socially powerful and culturally hegemonic middle classes of West Bengal through poetry, theatre, songs and films...
Moreover, as argued by independent researcher Partha Sarathi Banerjee, in Party, Power and Political Violence in West Bengal, it would further consolidate the Left Fronts base among the landless and the poor who belonged principally to the scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and the minorities, who together constitute over 67 percent of the states total population,..
