

The ghost of the Left: Why Mamata Banerjee’s 15-year reign now faces its own ‘Poriborton’ moment
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Hooghly/Durgapur/Murshidabad/Medinipur/Kolkata: On a sultry April afternoon in Singur, Hooghly, a group of men sit shirtless on the cool floor under a tin shed, taking turns drinking cold water from a jug to beat the heat as they chat about the upcoming elections.“We’ve seen the Trinamool Congress government for 15 years now and there really isn’t much work that has been done. Development and infrastructure are lacking, and unemployment is a big concern,” says Pranab Parui, a vegetable seller.
“Moreover, cut money—local leaders extorting money even from poor people like us—is the worst legacy of this government. We have supported didi in the past with all earnestness, but now it is time for poriborton (change).”‘Poriborton’ is a big buzzword across West Bengal, with 15 years of Trinamool Congress (TMC) incumbency throwing up a slew of complaints, from lack of development to widespread unemployment, rampant grassroots corruption, crumbling law and order and a perpetuation of the old, Left-front like systems.West Bengal has been among the most fascinating and keenly watched elections in India in recent years.
This, because of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s aggressive attempts to wrest the state from Mamata Banerjee’s TMC and the chief minister’s combative efforts to prevent that.This is a contest between an ambitious and popular prime minister and a popular chief minister, or as voters say in Bengal, a fight between “didi” (elder sister) and “dada” (elder brother). So far, Bengal’s beloved didi has managed to keep dada at bay, with the BJP forced to confine its ambitions to emerging as the main opposition party in a state where it traditionally has had no
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