Zaad. Mahmood and Soham’s Bhattacharya (2025), “The Roots of Populist Governors: Studying the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal”, Indian political studies, 1-18, Lokniti, Research Center for Development Center.
tThe 2011 parliamentary elections are a watershed for West Bengal politics. It saw the end of the front-left era and the rise of the Trinamool Congress, which has since become the state’s main political party, winning in the 2016 and 2021 polls.
Political scientists deployed multiple registries to explain the political transformation under Trinamool’s rule. Some have cited “political secondary,” clientism, rent-seeking, kindness and identityism, while others have praised Party chief Mamata Banerjee, “his popularity splits to local leaders, centralized authority, cultural outreach and populism in government” and “politics in organizations” and “politics in organizations”, “although all of these are factors, they are also traits of classic populism, such as “charm, individualistic leadership”, and “division between people and elites, Banerjee is a champion of marginalized people who communicate directly with people in an emotional style”.
The authors of the study argue that these views, while illuminating, do not explain changes in the organizational structure and leadership of Trinamool since 2011. This article helps debate the changing nature of Bengali politics on two levels: first, it reveals the c-Caste-like composition of Trinamool’s support base; second, assuming that “government policy is shaped by interests that are primarily supported”, it analyzes the budget allocation of Trinamool’s government to “explore the material benefits served by regimes outside the scope”.
Politics beyond welfareism
The main understanding of Trinamool’s governance approach is that in the absence of economic growth, it seeks “ideal re-adjustable results” through welfare. Compared to the “partisan delivery system promoted by the left front line,” their welfare delivery model “depends on local customers.” In fact, this means that the expected beneficiaries of the welfare program must “pay a certain percentage of their rights to the local Trinamool leader in order to obtain the conditions for the benefit”. This has led to an increasing acceptance of corruption as the “necessary evil of transaction fees”. However, in the absence of strong political organizations, this incentive structure of “rental sharing” is crucial for Trinamool to retain party workers.
At the same time, after the collapse of the “party society”, other changes have occurred, characterized by the front-left era, marked by Badala Locke’s hegemony in the social and cultural environment. For example, one question raised is whether the “Badralok leader” was on the leadership of Bangladesh politics in the Trinamool era. If so, is this the leader’s sub-level? Or is it composed of other parts of the bhadralok value that are attempting to be appropriate?
To answer these questions, the authors analyzed the socio-economic profiles of candidates nominated (not only elected) to participate in the state’s elections.
Relying on data from the Association for Democratic Reform (ADR) database, they studied four characteristics of each candidate: caste, self-reported career, educational level, and declared assets. They created a dataset that is all candidates for the four leading political forms of the state – the Left Front (CPI-CPIM-RSP-AIFB), the Trinamool Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress – they fought for the polls in 2011, 2016 and 2021.
Caste information from 2011 to 2021
To map the changing nature of the state’s political leadership, the author first summarizes the political terrain under the left front regime – which is “a leadership consisting primarily of middle-class socio-economic classes that are filled with certain cultural and social capital.” Although the front line on the left emerged with the support of social poverty and marginal areas, leadership remained in the hands of urban and rural middle classes.
Of course, in the late period of the Left Front regime, after this situation began to change liberalization, when “the stagnation of the agricultural economy and the rise of the private sector led to the proliferation of commercial activity and trade in middle-class areas”, ultimately changing its character. Some scholars attribute the non-characteristic policy of the left forward to a change in the characteristics of the middle class, which also continues under the Trinamool regime.
This article seeks an empirical basis in these transformations in the image of Trinamool candidates that has been changing over time over time. For beginners, it records a steady increase in representations of non-vanguard castes and SC/ST in Trinamool MLA. “India lowers caste-Dalit-Adivasi’s candidates increase [Trinamool] From 19.4% in 2011 to 22.8% in 2016, more than 25% in the 2021 General Assembly elections.
Representatives of lower castes, including SC/ST, rose from 20% in 2011 to 25% in 2021, prompting some to interpret it as the “lower class” of politics. However, this argument is flat given that the Hindu non-Brahmin forward caste has also increased its representation dramatically (from 18% in 2011 to 24% in 2021).
Career, education and wealth
The paper notes that caste is not the only register for lagging, so other indicators are considered: career and education of Trinamool candidates. Over time, the number of candidates who self-identify their career as “business” has increased from 25% in 2011 (56 of 227 candidates) to 32.7% in 2021 (95 of 290). Another category that witnessed the spike was “social and political workers” (agents for full-time politicians), which rose from 16% in 2011 to nearly 30% in 2021.
The rise in both categories is accompanied by a decline in candidates for the “Professional/Service” category adopted by formal public or private sectors. Interestingly, an increase in the percentage of candidates for business or political/social work can be seen in all caste categories. The author provides three possible explanations for this: a larger political claim among the upper and middle classes that emerged in the backcaste through Trinamool Congress; two, political parties prefer candidates to have deeper pockets; and three parties “become avenues for wealth creation and rent-seeking through business representatives.”
The next level of analysis focuses on the declared education level and candidate wealth. The share of “graduate and above” among Trinamool candidates increased from 48% in 2011 to 63% in 2021, while the average annual assets of Trinamool candidates increased by 8.8% at a symbolic rate starting in 2011. From 2011 to 2016, its average asset value rose from the average asset value in 2011 to Rs 2.85 in 2021.
Although the left front candidates had the least average assets, the wealthy candidates for Trinamool and BJP had the largest growth. The authors thus obscured these findings – due to rising election costs, Trinamool and BJP may nominate wealthier candidates, or wealthier individuals may attract these two major parties. Second, “Party parties seem to have evolved into platforms for wealth accumulation and rent-seeking.” This explanation also coincides with the expanding literary institution, which emphasizes “the interconnection of criminal networks, politicians, bureaucrats and businesses, revealing how political funding, clientism, black economy, black economy and patronage intersect with kinship and community relations to maintain the form of criminal politics”.
After comparing changes in candidate profiles for the parties and over time (2011-2021), the authors observed that “the opposite of other parties” differed from other parties in the decline of the share of the professional middle class, as well as the expanding share of the business and full-time party workers and full-time party workers. “From this, they infer that the Trinamool Congress has become a “place for educated and rich classes, distributed in non-Brahmin forward castes and backward classes, and involved in business and politics. “This grouping is different from the traditional middle class in the field of professionalism and service. Its origins are not cultural capital, but economic capital of “non-company nature.”
What does the national budget reveal
To find out whether this new business class “dominates and can influence policy,” the authors incorporated another dimension in their research: an analysis of national budget documents between 2016 and 2021.
It is expected that given Trinamool’s driving force for direct beneficiary transfer and the “programme-led” development model, the largest share of revenue expenditure is the social sector (43%). But importantly, an analysis of capital expenditure shows that 31% enter the economic sector, while only 22% belong to the social sector. The 31% breakdown shows that manufacturing has received only 6%, agriculture and Allied forces have received 11% revenue, while 26% go to transport, followed by irrigation and flood control (22.7%), and rural development and special area programs (21.7%).
The paper states that transferring capital expenditures to sectors such as transportation and rural development “is a mechanism for establishing capital indirect social indirect expenses”, which tends to “go to sectors with interest in Trinamool Elites.” Although these investments are beneficial to society, “they also act as indirect support for areas such as real estate, wholesale and retail trade, tourism and transportation, which is dominated by non-corporate business elites.”
The conclusion of this article is that Trinamool finds an effective means to consolidate political and economic capabilities by combining marginal interests with indirect sponsorship of the “non-socile business class”.
publishing – April 17, 2025 at 08:30 am IST
