ABSTRACT
Following from the two contrasting perspectives presented in the previous chapter, this chapter develops the theoretical platform that the rest of book is based upon. It focuses on two key elements of CPIM: first, the party’s ideological position of a people’s democratic revolution as the only way to a socialist transformation of India; and second, a series of ground-level operational manoeuvres devised by the party, targeted at building structures of political hegemony across the state. These manoeuvres and the ideological doctrines went hand in hand while the party was in power, with the latter endorsing and providing legitimacy to the former. The chapter presents these two elements together as a sophisticated political rationale that the CPIM had put to successful use since 1977, and examines the resultant subjugation of all forms of governance channels to political control. It is based on a growing body of literature that throws a more critical light on the Left regime than the institutionalist accounts, and shifts the analytical focus to a new rising ruling class in West Bengal, which came to exercise complete authority over the affairs of the state by virtue of a collective political control.
