Beyond Personalities: A System, Not an Individual
The instinct to view the Trinamool Congress (TMC)’s conduct
as a personality-driven phenomenon centred on Mamata Banerjee is
understandable—but fundamentally flawed. What we are witnessing is not an
aberration, but the continuation of a deeply embedded political structure.
Under the Left Front regime (1977–2011), panchayats evolved
far beyond their constitutional mandate as local self-governing bodies. They
became the primary distribution nodes for state resources—BPL cards, NREGA
employment, agricultural subsidies, and ration entitlements.
Political scientist Partha Sarathi Banerjee has demonstrated
how governance itself was subsumed into party structures. Welfare was not
administered by the state as an impartial entity but mediated through party
affiliation. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) thus transformed into an
all-encompassing instrument of rural life.
When Governance Becomes Conditional Loyalty
The consequences of this fusion of party and state were
profound—and corrosive.
Access to essential services became contingent upon
political allegiance. Entire villages operated under informal but rigid systems
of exclusion. Social structures warped: inter-family relations, including
marriages, increasingly aligned along political lines. The neutrality of law
enforcement eroded, with the police often complicit in suppressing dissent.
Electoral competition itself was hollowed out. In the 2003
panchayat elections, thousands of seats were won uncontested before polling
even began. Estimates suggest that between 1977 and 2009, nearly 55,000
political killings occurred in the state—an average of five per day.
Continuity Under a New Political Banner
When the TMC came to power in 2011, it did not dismantle
this entrenched architecture. It inherited and repurposed it.
The structural logic remained intact: control over the state
machinery—especially the police—enabled dominance at the grassroots level.
Panchayats continued to function as instruments of political consolidation
rather than democratic decentralisation.
The data reflects this continuity. In 2018, approximately
34% of panchayat seats were won uncontested amid widespread allegations that
opposition candidates were prevented from filing nominations. The 2023
elections witnessed lethal violence, with multiple deaths on polling day.
Reports documented booth capture, ballot destruction, proxy voting, and even
polling officials fleeing under threat.
Violence Reframed as Dissent
The Ideological Justification
Statements by leaders such as Mahua Moitra are often
dismissed as rhetorical excess. In reality, they reflect the distilled logic of
a long-standing political operating system.
Across regimes—Congress pre-1977, Left Front (1977–2011),
and TMC post-2011—the core principle has remained unchanged:
Opposition is not disagreement; it is illegitimacy.
To oppose the ruling party is framed as opposing Bengal
itself.
The Role of Intellectual Ecosystems
What sustains this system is not merely political power but
intellectual validation.
Segments of Bengal’s commentariat routinely reinterpret
institutional confrontation as democratic resistance. When a sitting chief
minister challenges the Election Commission of India, it is framed not as
institutional erosion but as resistance against central overreach.
Similarly, confrontational rhetoric toward constitutional
authorities is often valorised as “speaking truth to power.” Procedural
tools—such as impeachment motions—are reported as routine parliamentary
developments rather than potential instruments of institutional pressure.
This ecosystem performs a crucial function: it launders
institutional aggression into the language of democratic virtue.
The Migration of Force
From Booth Capture to Institutional Pressure
The Election Commission has made significant progress in
securing polling stations. Through webcasting, central force deployment, and
surveillance mechanisms, traditional methods of electoral coercion—booth
capturing, ballot stuffing, voter intimidation—have become increasingly risky.
By 2026, this represents one of the most robust attempts to
ensure electoral integrity in a violence-prone environment.
However, this success addresses only one dimension: physical
coercion.
What it does not address is the evolution of coercion into
forms that are legally permissible yet institutionally corrosive.
The Rise of Legally Sanitised Coercion
Modern political contestation has adapted. Today’s
instruments include:
- Parliamentary
motions (including impeachment threats)
- Public
protests targeting institutions
- Political
rhetoric that delegitimises constitutional authorities
- Social
mobilisation framed as democratic expression
Each of these operates within legal boundaries, making them
difficult to regulate or prosecute.
The result is a paradox:
As crude violence becomes costly, sophisticated coercion becomes dominant.
Why Bengal Is Different
Institutional Literacy as a Force Multiplier
Comparisons with states like Bihar under Lalu Prasad Yadav
or Uttar Pradesh under Akhilesh Yadav are instructive—but limited.
In those cases, sustained Election Commission intervention
altered the cost-benefit calculus of electoral violence. Booth capture declined
because the system could not easily escalate beyond physical coercion.
West Bengal presents a more complex challenge.
Decades of political evolution have produced not only
entrenched party structures but also a sophisticated understanding of
constitutional mechanisms. The same ecosystem that witnessed events like the Marichjhapi
massacre has also produced generations well-versed in legal and institutional
processes.
This creates a unique dynamic:
When control over the booth becomes difficult, the conflict migrates upward—into
institutions.
Not About Lathis: The Real Impulse
Territoriality, Not Violence, Is the Core
Bengal’s electoral violence has never been fundamentally
about physical force. The lathi was merely the most accessible tool.
The deeper impulse is territorial:
to treat elections not as contests, but as domains to be controlled.
When one instrument becomes expensive or ineffective,
another replaces it. The underlying objective remains unchanged.
The Limits of Surveillance Democracy
Technological solutions—cameras, AI monitoring, digital
tracking—can deter physical malpractice. But they struggle to address
institutional manipulation.
- Cameras
can catch ballot stuffing.
- But
who monitors the misuse of parliamentary procedures?
- AI
can track crowds at polling booths.
- But
what tracks systematic delegitimisation of constitutional bodies?
This asymmetry creates a new vulnerability within democratic
systems.
Conclusion: The Clausewitzian Inversion
The Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz famously argued
that war is the continuation of politics by other means.
West Bengal appears to be moving toward a troubling
inversion:
Institutional confrontation is becoming the continuation
of violence by other means.
This evolution is more dangerous than overt violence.
Physical coercion is visible, measurable, and condemnable. Institutional
coercion, by contrast, operates under the cover of legality and democratic
vocabulary.
The lathis may disappear. The cameras will ensure that.
But the underlying contest—for control, not competition—will
persist.
It will simply move to arenas where the cameras cannot see.
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