West Bengal is an Indian state in the eastern part of the country, and the only one in India with an incumbent woman Chief Minister — Mamata Banerjee.
The region, which was the political heart of the Bengal Presidency during British Rule, was divided into East and West Bengal in 1947. Bengal was a hotbed of the Indian Independence movement and has remained one of the country’s great artistic and intellectual centres, being home to Nobel laureates Rabindranath Tagore, Mother Teresa, Amartya Sen and Abhijit Banerjee as well as freedom fighter Subhash Chandra Bose and Oscar winner Satyajit Ray.
Geographically, the state is happily situated with the Himalayas in the north and the Sundarbans in the south. It shares a roughly 2,200-sqkm border with Bangladesh (East Bengal at the time of Partition).
For the first 30 years, the Congress ruled Bengal, but made way for Left domination for the next 34 years. In 2011, Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress — a breakaway from the Congress — came to power.
Ms. Banerjie’s priorities are grossly misplaced. Ever since the election results were declared, Bengal has been ravaged with political violence, Taliban style kangaroo courts, extortions/hooliganism and widespread protests against TMC’s anti-hawker drive. Lumpen elements like Tejamul (JCB), Jayant Singh, Jamal-ud-din Sardar, etc. have hogged the limelight and for all the wrong reasons.
Yet, Ms. Banerjie chooses to focus on some random art gallery organizing a Frida Kahlo exhibition – a typical case of the Bengali “intellectual” bhadralok whose head is in the clouds and the feet so far above the ground that it just cannot feel the ground burning.