West Bengal Built the Floor, Not the Ceiling
Four parts of data, one common theme, and an election that didn't help.
The political discourse in this country rarely makes room for nuance. The states are also no exception. West Bengal is one of them. On one hand, you will constantly hear words like “Sonar Bangla” ("The Golden Bengal”), and on the other hand “Waste Bengal”. That prompted me to do a 4-part Data Series about the state, and see what’s happening on the ground. What the numbers are saying. Not the slogan, or the rhetoric, but rather the reality.
In this post, I will try to capture the common theme that I saw across the 4 parts, along with some personal opinion on the polls.
The opinions expressed here are my own. Doesn’t reflect any organisation I'm part of.
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If I have to sum up what I observed across the 4 pieces (and spending 24+ hours), it would be this: West Bengal lifted the floor. It didn’t raise the ceiling.
Let’s start from the top: health. The state is able to save infants (or at least do a comparatively better job) but not mothers. States like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka have been doing a better job in this aspect continuously. And then there is a set of states that have been quite poor. West Bengal is stuck somewhere in between. It has done comparatively better in some of the primary access metrics. But when it comes to providing holistic care, the state is just not there.
When we shift to IT services, there is a similar pattern. It is not a leading state, by any means. We have the southern states (minus Kerala)1, Maharashtra, and NCR taking the lead there. But compared to rest of the states, WB is not doing a bad job. Even the IT services export has been more than most other states. But still, it is roughly 1/17th of what Karnataka does (the leading state). For a state to grow in this economic climate, you need more investments being made in the knowledge work economy. More values need to be generated, more jobs need to be created.
Again for manufacturing and industries, there is a similar pattern. We have the leaders in Gujarat & Odisha, who have a comparatively less IT exports than WB. But they have increased their share of manufacturing outputs over the years. They seem to be intentional in taking a particular (or multiple) route.
West Bengal’s approach in industrialization seems wide, but shallow. I don’t know if it is a bug or a feature. If it is intentional, then it is a feature. A generalist economic strategy is not inherently wrong. There can be a version of the state that is deliberately pluralist. Open to bidi, jute, IT exports & trades simultaneously. Where you don’t want to take a particular vertical, but be open to everything.
But even in that case, you would need a more aggressive approach. Generalist strategies would also require some aggressive execution. Specially when you are in the bottom half as per the per capita income figures. You are competing against states that have picked up particular lanes and running very hard on that.
Gujarat knows what it is. Telangana knew what it wanted to become and moved toward it. If WB's answer is "we want to be open to everything," then the follow-up question is: what did you do to make everything easier? The investment climate, the land acquisition process, the labour relations history, the private sector confidence, these are the conditions that make a generalist strategy viable. And the data doesn't show those conditions are being built or nurtured.
So, it doesn’t look like a feature. Rather a drift (a bug). And the drift has been accumulated over decades, across governments and policies. Being at odds with the central government for 50+ years didn't help the cause either.2
The floor is what gets you re-elected. The ceiling is the hard-work that compounds over the time. Which doesn’t have a instant gratification, and for that reason often gets ignored.
If you are aware of the cities of India, when you think of Bangalore, you would automatically think about Tech. Mumbai - Finance. Hyderabad - GCCs & pharma. Chennai (or rather Tamil Nadu) - large scale manufacturing. What about Kolkata? I can’t think of any USP. And this is a policy failure. A massive one. Small scale MSME sectors - that are hard to formalize & tax, and even harder to attract investments - can’t be your USP. The question is why this drift was never corrected. And the answer is partly structural, and partly political incentives.
The floor is what gets you re-elected. The ceiling is the hard-work that compounds over the time. Which doesn’t have a instant gratification, and for that reason often gets ignored.
Welfare schemes like Lakshmir Bhandar, Kanyashree, Duare Sarkar etc., have visible effects. A woman receives ₹1,000 in her account. She knows who sent it. That is a rational political exchange and it works. The data also confirms it works on its own terms: poverty fell, access improved, welfare reached people.
But industrial policy is different. The benefits of a big semiconductor plant,or a formal manufacturing cluster takes decades to show up in the per capita income numbers. Building a secondary school infra in a remote district often won’t have a face on it. And more often the government who started it, loses power in the meantime. The voter who got her share of Lakshmir Bhandar will vote in the election. The worker who could have had a formal job, in a plant that was never built, would never know what they missed.
This is not a problem which is only unique to the state of West Bengal. The structural incentives of democracies are present everywhere. But it becomes hugely important for a low-income state where the immediate need is quite real, and the patience for a long-horizon investment is limited, and often not politically viable.
The problem is that rationality at the political level and rationality at the developmental level are pointing in opposite directions. Elections reward the floor. Nothing rewards the ceiling. So the floor got built, and the ceiling didn’t. There are no indications that someone is attempting to build the ceiling either.
Coming to the elections, it was a very disappointing affair seeing how the leading two parties behaved. Their core message relied heavily on polarization. One opted for a region based (Bengali cultural identity), another religion based.
It was widely covered by many leading news agencies how the parties used fish, meat as a theme to promote themselves3. It is good for generating content, some memes here and there. A few viral reels, perhaps. But I personally found it utterly ridiculous. Highly disappointing.
The highest court of India rightly pointed out how polarizing and politically charged the atmosphere is in West Bengal. After judicial officials were harassed in Malda. They were on point with respect to that. But I don't know how they casually dismissed the voting concerns of millions. Offering this as reassurance: that the rights of voters purged from the rolls cannot be "washed away forever".
There is always a next election. That is exactly what people in a polarized state are told, every five years, by someone.
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Kerala almost disappears completely when we move from health to industry.
West Bengal and the Centre have not had the same party in government since 1967 (~nearly six decades). Though the whole narrative of 'double engine government’ quietly undermines the federal structure of Indian democracy, it is a real electoral argument.
Yes. This actually happened. https://www.siasat.com/bjp-embraces-fish-in-bengal-highlighting-power-of-tmcs-identity-pitch-3445591/
Maach & Mutton for mission Bengal. https://theprint.in/opinion/maach-mutton-for-mission-bengal-what-bjp-tmc-are-cooking-in-new-poll-battleground/2896035/
On 2 they had their chance in 96, when Jyoti Basu was offered leadership of UF (and thus PM post). He decided moral win was superior to actual wins.