“Opinion | The Civilisational Salience Of Bengal Elections2026”, News 18, March 17, 2026
“Bengal holds a special place in my heart. It was here, in the city of Kolkata, where I got my first job. My lingering memory from those early days is from March-April 2003. The Left Front government had approved a 10 per cent hike in bus fares which translated to roughly a 25-paise increase in the fares on most routes. In protest, the Left Front parties called a strike against their own. government. The city shut down completely.
The small eatery near my house, where I used to have breakfast every morning, was closed, so 1 could not even have breakfast. I lived within walking distance of my office and reached there, among the very few who had managed to come in, as all those who had to take any kind of transport to reach the office stayed away for fear of violence. But lunch too was impossible because every outlet was shut. My first morsel of food came only late in the evening when, on the way back home, I finally found a small chai shop open. However, over the years and the decades since, what has stayed with me is not my own inconvenience. Rather, what stayed with me was the absurdity of the politics of Bengal, the bankruptcy of the political discourse, and the thought of the countless daily wage earners across the city who had lost a day’s income because politics had decided that the capital city must come to a halt. And for what? For a 25 paise increase in bus fares! That was the sum of economic aspirations. that decades of Congress and Left Front rule had reduced Bengal to.
This memory captures the deeper tragedy of Bengal. A land that once stood at the intellectual, economic and cultural vanguard of India became trapped in a political culture that normalised shutdowns, strikes and economic paralysis at the whims of the same set of operators who pretended to govern the state……”
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