There remain question marks about the Trinamool’s governance agenda and about its co-opting of riff-raff to counter the Left. But those are questions for the future. For the moment, proof that the Left can be bested will certainly snowball, reducing cynicism and fatalism among fence-sitters. Change in West Bengal will be believed to be feasible.

Soul-searching and cleansing should be good for the Left too. Historically, it has been identified with honesty and integrity, traits increasingly absent in West Bengal. The Left in West Bengal has instead become identified with corruption, graft, criminalisation, violence and scant respect for the rule of law. Governance is non-existent and administration has yielded to party fiat.

This is good neither for democracy, nor for West Bengal. 2009 doesn’t directly change the status quo, but shows it can be changed. High growth since 1991 has benefited India, but certain geographical regions remain deprived. Other than central India, these areas are to the east and Northeast. (Even MP, Bihar and Orissa have begun to change.) What sticks out like a sore thumb is West Bengal, critical to the Northeast’s development too. Some indicators in that state are inferior to those in Bangladesh, suggesting possible reverse migration if these trends continue. For a state that was once supposed to think today what India thought tomorrow, this is nothing short of pathetic. Human and financial capital have fled. Unskilled and semi-skilled labour in west and north India now comes from northern West Bengal, not eastern UP or Bihar. The Left’s decimation should help change this. Overall, there is much for West Bengal’s voters and India’s citizens to celebrate.

... contd.