Hubris in West Bengal

Party-sponsored violence must

Violence in West Bengal has been a permanent feature of the state’s political landscape for decades, with major political parties routinely raising the stakes ahead of elections. As long as the state was dominated by a single party, violence was regarded as an inevitable side-show of the political theatre. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had frequently been at the receiving end of the Left Front’s monopoly of violence, which she leveraged to great political benefit. When the Trinamool Congress came to power in 2011 after 34 years of Left Front rule, local goons simply swapped party allegiance. This happened again when