Book Review: Jyotiprasad Chatterjee and Suprio Basu. Left Front and After: Understanding the Dynamics of Poriborton in West Bengal and Suman Nath. People-Party-Policy Interplay in India: Micro-dynamics of Everyday Politics in West Bengal, c. 2008–2016
| Published date | 01 June 2021 |
| Date | 01 June 2021 |
| Author | Ayan Guha |
| DOI | 10.1177/2321023021999218 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Book Reviews 139
constitutionalism, which focus on constitutional interpretation, this work emphasizes India’s founding
and democratic origins. The book is interdisciplinary in its approach and is a remarkable synthesis of
intellectual history and political theory.
Alisha Dhingra
Satyawati College (Morning), University of Delhi
Email: adhingra001@gmail.com
Jyotiprasad Chatterjee and Suprio Basu. Left Front and After: Understanding the Dynamics of Poriborton in
West Bengal. New Delhi, India: Sage. 2020. 255 pages. `1,195.
Suman Nath. People-Party-Policy Interplay in India: Micro-dynamics of Everyday Politics in West Bengal, c.
2008–2016. New Delhi, India: Routledge. 2020. 221 pages. `995.
DOI: 10.1177/2321023021999218
Scholarly interest in the politics of West Bengal has been growing significantly since the electoral
debacle of the Left Front (LF) led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI[M]) in 2011. The
termination of the world’s longest serving democratically elected communist government (1977–2011)
continues to inspire rigorous re-examination of many of the taken-for-granted assumptions about West
Bengal politics. The two books under review attempt to make sense of the landmark political transition
that followed the electoral defeat of the LF by the Trinamool Congress (TMC). Nath’s work is based on
detailed ethnographic field study in four districts of West Bengal, while Chatterjee and Basu mainly
provide a snapshot of the trajectory of left politics and of the current direction of post-left politics by
exploring existing literature.
Both books emphasize the hegemonic role of the ‘party’ to account for the longevity of the LF rule.
Drawing upon Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya’s framework of ‘party society’, which has become the dominant
conceptual category to understand left politics in West Bengal, Chatterjee and Basu highlight how the
CPI(M) acted as an effective conduit between the people and the government. Following Bhattacharyya
they argue that the mediating role of the ‘party’ opened up a space for dialogue between the state and the
society on everyday matters of governance. This ensured people’s participation in governance through
panchayats, leading to effective implementation of people-centric development initiatives like land
reform in the early years of the CPI(M) rule. However, Nath’s field work, carried out in the last years of
the CPI(M) rule, brings out a different reality. He finds out that by claiming a mediating role, the party
systematically manufactured the impression that it was meant to facilitate people’s access to the
inaccessible and unfriendly government institutions. As a result, people did not find it objectionable to
approach local political leaders for making use of government facilities. They failed to distinguish
between the ‘party’ and the government and ended up not recognizing the real role of the ‘party’.
Therefore, according to Nath what seems like consent in the Gramscian sense is actually misrecognition
manufactured by politicians. He calls it ‘systemic misrecognition’ because being perpetuated over a very
long period of time it became deeply entrenched in everyday practice.
Both the books attribute the decline of the CPI(M) to its abdication of its own tradition of building
consensus. Chatterjee and Basu show in the context of the Singur movement, how, instead of initiating
dialogue with the affected individuals, the local party organization used the threat of force to make them
surrender their land. They also demonstrate how in cases of identity-based social movements such as
Gorkhaland and Lalgarh agitations, the CPI(M) failed to appreciate people’s economic and cultural
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