Contradictions, Negotiations and Reform

Ritanjan Das and Zaad Mahmood

Journal of South Asian Development, 2015, vol. 10, issue 2, 199-229

Abstract: This article provides a historical perspective on a rather unique chapter in the era of economic reforms in India—the case of the state of West Bengal. In 1991, the Government of India began to pursue a policy of economic liberalization, causing serious political challenges for the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPIM)-led Left Front coalition in West Bengal. Historically, the CPIM had strongly opposed economic reforms, but was compelled to undertake a policy ‘transition’ owing to the stagnating economy of the state. The transition, and the motivations behind it, was a topic debated often—especially once the party started courting private investment, pushed for large-scale industrialization, and eventually suffered a historic defeat in 2011 after 33 years in power—but rarely has a coherent historical narrative of what caused the transition been brought to the forefront. This article attempts to address that gap by examining the following question: what were the local political conditions that compelled the CPIM/Left Front take upon itself the task of engineering such a transition? While acknowledging the larger forces of globalization and Indian federalism, the analysis focuses on the rarely discussed local socio-economic priorities in West Bengal, and constructs a dual narrative of instrumental and political–ideological arguments.

Keywords: India; West Bengal; Left Front; CPIM; industrial policy; Jyoti Basu (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0972150915591392 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:soudev:v:10:y:2015:i:2:p:199-229

DOI: 10.1177/0972150915591392

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of South Asian Development
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().