Left Front Government, Rural Development andGovernance in India’s West Bengal: Lessons from a NewExperiment

Prabhat Datta
Institute of Development Studies Kolkata

Borne out of the prevailing socio-economic context in 20th century India
and the growing disenchantment in electoral politics by the middle class,
the Left Front Government (LFG) in West Bengal emerged to become one
of the longest-surviving leftist regimes in the world, spanning over three
decades in existence. The landless and marginalized, which became the
focus of LFG for its rural development policies, initially constituted a
strong electoral base. However, support for the LFG waned in recent
years, following crises in leadership at the local level and internal
weaknesses in the democratic processes and institutions that LFG
established in the villages. Using the liberalist pluralist framework of
democratic decentralization as its analytic lens, this article discusses the
challenges faced by the LFG, and how social, political, and institutional
factors eventually led to its decline in the recent years.