ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the socio-economic and political antecedents of the emerging shift in the power balance in West Bengal by using empirical data primarily from the National Election Study (NES) 2014 conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS). The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP's) share of urban votes has further declined in the 2016 West Bengal assembly election. Where it has secured almost half (12.7%) of urban votes compared to what it secured (25%) in the 2014 Lok Sabha election in West Bengal, as reported in the CSDS survey data on NES 2014 and West Bengal Assembly Election Study, 2016. The challenge before the Left, the primary opposition to the All India Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, is stiff. How far it can counter the neo-liberal hegemony centring on the discourse of depoliticized development and bring politics back to the level of democratic institutions, both at the national and state levels.
