History, ideology and negotiation: the politics of policy transition in West Bengal, India

The thesis offers an examination of a distinct chapter in the era of economic reforms in India - the case of the state of West Bengal - and narrates the politics of an economic policy transition spearheaded by the Left Front coalition government that ruled the state from 1977 to 2011. In 1991, the Government of India began to pursue a far more liberal policy of economic development, with emphasis being placed on non-agricultural growth, the role of the private sector, and the merits of foreign direct investment (FDI). This caused serious political challenges for the Communist Party of India - Marxist (CPIM), the main party in the Left Front. Historically, the CPIM was committed to pro-poor policies focused on the countryside and had spoken out strongly against privatisation and FDI; however it could not ignore the stagnating industrial economy of the state, and was thus compelled to court private investment and take advantage of the liberalised policy environment. The nature of this dichotomy – one that characterised the political economy of West Bengal over the last two decades – is studied in this research as a set of why-how questions. Firstly, why did the CPIM/Left Front take upon itself the task of engineering a transition from an erstwhile landreform and agriculture based growth model to a pro-market development agenda post-1991? And secondly, how was such a choice justified to/negotiated with the various stakeholders (the rank and file of the CPIM itself, other coalition member parties, trade unions, the industrial class, etc.) while sustaining the party’s traditional rhetoric and partisan character? In examining the second part, the thesis also ventures into the recent cases of huge opposition to land acquisition for industrial plants at Singur and Nandigram, and demonstrates how the mandate of the top brass of party leadership in Calcutta was being implemented, translated or contested at the local levels. On the whole, this thesis attempts a reappraisal of the politicaleconomic history of the Left Front regime and particularly that of its majority partner, the CPIM, over the last two decades. It also places the case in a broader Indian context and contributes to wider debates on the changing nature of federalism in India and the politics of economic reform

Chronic crisis: migrant workers and India's COVID-19 lockdown

India’s nationwide lockdown amidst the coronavirus pandemic has created a severe dislocation in the lives of its migrant population. Based on their research in Noida, a hotspot of the crisis, Ritanjan Das (University of Portsmouth) and Nilotpal Kumar (Azim Premji University, Bangalore) explain how the pandemic exacerbates the ‘chronic crisis’ in the everyday existence of migrants to unprecedented proportions

Politics of a transformative rural: development, dispossession and changing caste-relations in West Bengal, India

This paper explores the political churnings around an almost twenty-year-old process of land acquisition and development in Rajarhat, an erstwhile rural settlement in the Indian state of West Bengal. The narrative takes shape against the backdrop of a neo-liberal state in the global South acting as a corporate facilitator, the concomitant dispossession, and particularly the transformation of the villages and rural livelihoods. The paper tries to trace the nature of this transformation by mapping the socio-economic changes on the one hand, and the reinvention of traditional caste-based social hierarchies brought about by such changes on the other, and highlights the formation of “syndicates” (low-level cartels) in the area as a unique manifestation of the latter. Such developments, the paper argues, symbolize a qualitative shift in rural social relations, brought about by rapid urbanization in neoliberal India

The Politics of Land, Consent, and Negotiation: Revisiting the Development-Displacement Narratives from Singur in West Bengal

India’s rapid economic growth has frequently been marred by struggles over land acquisition and displacement. This paper re-examines one such case. In 2006, protests erupted in Singur (a small cluster of villages in West Bengal) against government initiatives to acquire land for a private industrial project. The protests gathered enough momentum to stall the project, and went on to have a decisive impact on the electoral fortunes of the government, thus attaining a cult status in the country’s development-displacement narratives. This paper presents the Singur story in a new light, arguing that there was a political character to the entire episode, largely ignored by mainstream literature. Based on the idea of the ‘shadow-state’ (Harriss-White 2003), the paper examines the role played by the political managers of the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist)—CPI(M)—and highlights three themes—choice of land, acquiring consent, and negotiation—to build its narrative