Mahmood, Zaad., and Bhattacharya, Soham (2025), ‘The Roots of a Populist Regime: Examining the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal’, Studies in Indian Politics, 1- 18, Lokniti, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.
The 2011 Assembly Election was a watershed moment in West Bengal politics. It saw the end of the Left front era and the rise of the Trinamool Congress, which has since emerged as the dominant party in the State, with victories in the 2016 and 2021 polls.
Political scientists have deployed multiple registers to explain the political transformation under the Trinamool’s rule. Some have invoked “subalternisation of politics”, clientelism, rent-seeking, welfarism and identitarianism, while others have given credit to party chief Mamata Banerjee, “whose popularity divested to local leaders, centralised authority, cultural outreach and governmental populism” was a sharp departure from the “organisation-centric politics of the CPI (M)”. While all these were factors, also present were features of classic populism, such as “charismatic, personalist leadership”, and a “division between people and the elite with Banerjee as the champion of the marginalised, directly communicating with the people in an affective style”.
The authors of this study argue that these perspectives, though illuminating, do not explain the changes in the Trinamool’s organisational structure and leadership since 2011. This paper contributes to the debate on the changing nature of Bengal politics at two levels: first, it unpacks the class-caste composition of Trinamool’s support base; second, hypothesising that “government policies are shaped by the interests of the dominant support bases”, it analyses the Trinamool government’s budget allocations to “explore the material interests served by the regime beyond welfarism”.
Politics beyond welfarism
The dominant understanding of Trinamool’s governance approach is that, in the absence of economic growth, it seeks “desirable reelectable outcomes” through welfare delivery. Their model of welfare delivery is “dependant on a local patron” in contrast to the “party-based delivery system promoted by the Left Front.” In practical terms, this has meant that the intended beneficiaries of a welfare scheme had to pay some percentage of their entitlements “to the local Trinamool leaders as a condition for accessing benefits”. This has led to an increasing acceptance of corruption as “the ‘necessary evil’ of transaction fees”. However, in the absence of a strong political organisation, such an incentive structure of ‘rent-sharing” has been pivotal for Trinamool to retain party workers.
At the same time, there have also been other changes following the collapse of the “party society” that characterised the Left Front era, marked by the hegemony of the Bhadralok over the social and cultural milieu. For instance, one question that comes up is whether a “post-Bhadralok leadership” has ascended to the helm of Bengal politics in the Trinamool era. If yes, is this leadership subaltern? Or is it made up of other sections that have sought to appropriate Bhadralok values?
To answer these questions, the authors analyse the socio-economic profile of the candidates nominated (not just elected) to contest elections in the State.
Relying on data from the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) database, they look at four features of each candidate: caste, self-reported occupation, level of education, and declared assets. They have created a dataset of all the candidates from the four leading political formations in the State — Left Front (CPI-CPIM-RSP-AIFB), Trinamool Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress — who contested the polls in 2011, 2016, and 2021. They follow this up with an exploratory analysis of the State budgets for the years 2016-21.
Caste profile from 2011 to 2021
To map the changing nature of political leadership in the State, the authors start by summing up the political terrain under the Left Front regime — a leadership “largely composed of the middle-class socio-economic strata imbued with certain cultural and social capital”. Although the Left Front emerged on the back of support from the poor and marginal sections of society, leadership remained in the hands of the urban and rural middle class.
Of course, this began to change post-liberalisation, in the later years of the Left Front regime, when “the stagnation in the agricultural economy sector and the ascendance of the private sector led to the proliferation of commercial activities and trade” among sections of the middle class — eventually changing its character. Some scholars have attributed the Left Front’s uncharacteristic policy shifts to the changes in the character of the middle class, a change that has continued to play out post-2011, under the Trinamool regime as well.
This paper seeks an empirical grounding for these shifts in the changing profile of Trinamool candidates over time. For starters, it documents a steady increase in the representation of non-forward castes and SC/ST among Trinamool MLAs. Candidates who were “Hindu-lower caste-dalit-adivasi increased for the [Trinamool] from 19.4% in 2011 to 22.8% in 2016,” and to more than 25% in the 2021 Assembly elections. As the paper notes, “this is distinct from the political trajectory of West Bengal, overwhelmingly dominated by Hindu forward castes.”
The representation of lower castes, including SC/ST, rose from 20% in 2011 to 25% in 2021, prompting some to construe it as a “subalternisation” of politics. But that argument falls flat given that Hindu Non-Brahmin Forward castes also sharply increased their representation (from 18% in 2011 to 24% in 2021).
Occupation, education and wealth
Noting that caste is not the sole register of backwardness, the paper proceeds to consider other metrics: the occupation and education of the Trinamool candidates. The number of candidates who self-identified their occupation as “business” rose substantially over time — from 25% (56 out of 227 candidates) in 2011 to 32.7% in 2021 (95 out of 290). Another category that witnessed a sharp spike was “social and political workers” (a proxy for full-time politicians), which rose from 16% in 2011 to nearly 30% in 2021.
The rise in these two categories is accompanied by a decline of candidates from the ‘professionals/services’ category employed in formal public or private sectors. Interestingly, the rise in the percentage of candidates from business or political/social work was seen across all caste categories. The authors offer three possible explanations for this: one, greater political assertion among an emergent upper and middle class within backward castes through the Trinamool Congress; two, parties preferring candidates with deeper pockets; and three, political parties “become avenues for wealth-creation and rent-seeking that are represented through business”.
The next level of analysis looks at the declared educational level and wealth of the candidates. The share of ‘graduates and above” among Trinamool candidates has increased from 48% in 2011 to 63% in 2021, while the average annual assets of Trinamool candidates grew at a rate of 8.8% in nominal terms from 2011 to 2016. Their average asset value rose from ₹74.87 lakh in 2011 to ₹2.85 crore in 2021.
While Left Front candidates had the least assets on average, the Trinamool and the BJP had the greatest increase in wealthy candidates. The authors gloss these findings thus — the Trinamool and the BJP may be nominating wealthier candidates due to rising cost of elections, or wealthier individuals may be gravitating to these two dominant parties. Secondly, “political parties appear to have evolved into platforms for wealth-accumulation and rent-seeking.” This explanation also dovetails with the expanding body of literature that highlights the “interconnectedness of criminal networks, politicians, bureaucrats and businesses, revealing how political funding, clientelism, the black economy and patronage intersect with kinship and community ties to sustain criminal-political formations.”
After comparing the changes in candidate profiles across parties and over time (2011 to 2021), the authors observe that what was “distinct for the Trinamool, as opposed to other parties, is the declining share of the professional middle class along with an expanding share of business and full-time party workers.” From this, they infer that the Trinamool Congress has become “the venue for a class, that is educated and rich, spread over non-Brahmin forward castes and backward classes and involved in business and politics.” This grouping is distinct from the traditional middle class, which was employed in professions and services. It owes its origin not to cultural capital but to economic capital of a “noncorporate nature”.
What the State budgets reveal
To find out whether this new commercial class is “dominant and able to influence policy”, the authors incorporate another dimension in their study: an analysis of State budget documents between 2016 and 2021.
Expectedly, they find that the largest share of revenue expenditure goes to the social sector (43%), given the Trinamool’s thrust toward direct beneficiary transfers and a “scheme-led” model of development. But importantly, an analysis of the capital expenditure revealed that 31% went into the economic sector, while only 22% went to the social sector. A breakdown of this 31% showed manufacturing received only 6%, agriculture and allied got 11%, while 26% went to transport, followed by irrigation and flood control (22.7%), and rural development and special areas programme (21.7%).
The channelling of capital expenditure toward sectors like transport and rural development, the paper observes, “is a mechanism to create indirect social overhead capital”, and this is skewed “towards sectors where Trinamool elites have an interest.” Although these investments benefit society, “they also function as indirect support for sectors like real estate, wholesale and retail trade, tourism and transport — industries dominated by the non-corporate commercial elites”.
The paper concludes that the Trinamool, by combining marginal benefits to the poor with indirect patronage of the “non-hegemonic commercial class” has found an effective means to consolidate political and economic power.
Published – April 17, 2025 08:30 am IST