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By:

Kiran D. Tare

21 August 2024 at 11:23:13 am

Bengal’s Ludwig Erhard

For decades, Swapan Dasgupta made a career of diagnosing India’s political ailments. As a columnist, editor, author and public intellectual, the erudite and scintillating Dasgupta dissected challenged orthodoxies and defended the intellectual traditions of the Indian Right. However, following his new appointment as the new Finance Minister of a West Bengal in economic doldrums, he perhaps faces the most demanding assignment of his career. His supporters however are confident that if there is...

Bengal’s Ludwig Erhard

For decades, Swapan Dasgupta made a career of diagnosing India’s political ailments. As a columnist, editor, author and public intellectual, the erudite and scintillating Dasgupta dissected challenged orthodoxies and defended the intellectual traditions of the Indian Right. However, following his new appointment as the new Finance Minister of a West Bengal in economic doldrums, he perhaps faces the most demanding assignment of his career. His supporters however are confident that if there is anyone most suited to sort out Bengal’s messy economy, it is Dasgupta. His appointment following the Bharatiya Janata Party’s ascent to power in Bengal after overthrowing Mamata Banerjee’s TMC regime is among the more intriguing political transitions in recent Indian political memory. India has seen journalists cross into politics before. M.J. Akbar moved from the newsroom to the Ministry of External Affairs. Arun Shourie, one of India’s most formidable investigative journalists, became a reform-minded minister in Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government. Others, from Manish Sisodia to Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi and Chandan Mitra, have made similar journeys. Yet Dasgupta’s case is distinctive. Unlike many journalists-turned-politicians, he was never merely a ‘reporter.’ Whether in debate or through his prolific and trenchant writings, he has always been an intellectual combatant, a scholar of political ideas with a sweeping knowledge of world history by which he leavens those ideas. Dasgupta has always been one of the most articulate exponents of modern Indian conservatism. Educated at La Martiniere College in Kolkata, St Stephen’s College in Delhi and later the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, where he earned a doctorate, Dasgupta cultivated a reputation for formidable scholarship. His books, including Awakening Bharat Mata: The Political Beliefs of the Indian Right and The Ayodhya Reference, revealed an uncommon ability to place contemporary political disputes within a broader historical and ideological framework. For his supporters, he was among the few intellectuals capable of articulating conservative ideas in a language usually dominated by the Left. To critics, he was a sophisticated polemicist. Yet, even his opponents seldom questioned the breadth of his reading or the sharpness of his arguments. However, the challenge facing Dasgupta now is no longer intellectual but administrative. The Bengal he inherits bears little resemblance to the state that once led India in industry, commerce and scientific innovation. As he himself quipped in trademark fashion with a sharp historical analogy, the state’s economy resembled postwar Germany. The figures are sobering. West Bengal’s state debt has ballooned to around Rs. 8 lakh crore during the TMC regime. Thousands of companies have relocated or curtailed operations over the years amid a hostile investment climate. The new BJP government has inherited not merely a fiscal challenge but a crisis of confidence. “We are left with a near-bankrupt treasury,” Dasgupta said. Equally troubling, in his view, is the erosion of trust among investors and entrepreneurs. Bengal’s relationship with business has been uneasy to say the least. First the long night of the Left, followed by the TMC’s anti-business, appeasement brand of politics has ensured that the scars of industrial disputes and land controversies remain fresh. In this dire situation, reviving private investment will require convincing businesses that Bengal has changed. In this respect, Dasgupta’s strengths may prove unexpectedly useful. Throughout his career he displayed an ability to engage with ideas, institutions and stakeholders across ideological divides. His early moves hint at a broader vision. Rather than confining pre-budget consultations to Kolkata, Dasgupta shifted the Finance Department’s attention to Siliguri in a moved suffused with deliberate symbolism. North Bengal has long complained of neglect by governments centred on the state’s southern districts. By engaging tea producers, agricultural interests, tourism operators and local business groups, the newly-minted finance minister appears eager to demonstrate that economic revival will not just be a Kolkata-centric project. That said, debt servicing consumes a substantial portion of state revenues. Welfare commitments are politically difficult to unwind and infrastructure deficits remain significant. While public intellectuals excel at identifying problems, governing demands compromises and the acceptance of imperfect solutions. Still, Bengal’s new finance minister possesses as fine an appreciation of history than any Indian politician around. He knows that states decline not just because economic mistakes but because they lose faith in their future. Restoring that confidence may be the central task of his tenure. For years Swapan Dasgupta chronicled India’s political story from the sidelines. Now he finds himself at the centre of one of its most consequential state-level experiments. Whatever the outcome of his tenure, few would deny that Bengal’s finances have acquired perhaps their most learned custodian in decades.

Quiet Triumph

For a state as fractious and combustible as West Bengal, the first phase of the 2026 assembly election delivered a record 92.89 percent turnout, which was roughly ten percentage points higher than in 2021. The credit for this disciplined exercise, in no small measure, belongs to the Election Commission which managed to conduct a largely peaceful poll in a state where elections have historically been anything but tranquil.


Following a controversial Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, nearly 90.8 lakh names were struck off, about 12 percent of the electorate. The revised base shrank to roughly 6.75 crore voters; for Phase 1, the rolls listed 3.61 crore, of whom 3.35 crore cast ballots.


The SIR itself became the campaign’s fault line. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s ruling All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) had cried foul, alleging that the exercise led to targeted deletions of its minority votebank that could affect the poll outcome. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, by contrast, embraced the clean-up as a long overdue exercise and a much-needed purge of duplicates and illegal entries.


In Malda, officials tasked with verification faced severe intimidation, being held hostage without basic amenities while the bureaucracy and police, in thrall of the ruling TMC government, refused to act until nudged into action by the iron hand of the Supreme Court. In such cases, the SIR became a trial-by-fire of the Commission’s writ on the ground.


The high turnout is being read as a harbinger of change with both principal contenders – the TMC and the BJP - rushing to claim the numbers as vindication of their poll campaign. But regardless of the outcome, the turnout reflects public confidence in the act of voting. Reports suggest fewer instances of violence given West Bengal’s volatile reputation. Here, comparisons with India’s wealthier urban centres are instructive. One has seen that even in cities like Mumbai and Pune, with their superior infrastructure and access, such a high voter turnout is rare.


The EC’s role in this deserves plaudits. Conducting elections in India is a logistical feat at the best of times. By pushing through the SIR despite all the controversies and run-ins with the TMC government, the EC showed steel. It wagered that a cleaner roll, even if contested, would enhance the legitimacy of the outcome. Phase 1 suggests that wager may yet pay off.


Democracies are judged not by the absence of controversy, but by their capacity to manage it without descending into chaos. On that count, Bengal’s first phase offers cautious optimism. A fiercely contested election has proceeded with relative calm while the SIR, far from derailing participation, saw millions queuing to cast their votes. It proves that even in an overheated political climate, institutions can still hold. For the Election Commission of India, often subject to vicious opposition criticism, this is no small achievement.

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