Rethinking regional politics: Beyond the 2021 West Bengal elections
| Author | Vipin Kumar Chirakkara |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/20578911221099076 |
| Published date | 01 September 2022 |
| Date | 01 September 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Research Articles on South Asian Politics |
Rethinking regional politics:
Beyond the 2021 West Bengal
elections
Vipin Kumar Chirakkara
The English and Foreign Languages University, India
Abstract
The question of region dominated the 2021 West Bengal elections in a way it did not in states
where elections were held alongside. Subsequently, the victory of the Trinamool Congress has
been hailed by commentators and scholars as a successful instance both in regional politics and
in the defence of federal polity. However, this article contends, the implications of this mandate
for the politics of region and federalism cannot be grasped with reference to its own details,
but only in a comparative reading of a series of assembly elections held in the recent past and
the general elections of 2019. Considering how regional politics gets constituted and elections
produce results today, this paper makes an argument that the emergent pattern of mandates indi-
cates rather a problem –that of neutralization of regional politics and federal structure into a
devolution of power instead of their elaboration as domains of contestation of an expansionist
regime.
Keywords
2021 elections, BJP, devolution, federalism, Mamata Banerjee, regional politics, Trinamool
Congress, West Bengal
The results of the 2021 assembly elections in West Bengal stand in considerable contrast with the
trends set by the results of the general elections in the state in 2019. In the general elections, the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made notable forays into the state by winning more than 42 per
cent of its parliamentary constituencies. This was a significant achievement for a party which
had won only two constituencies from there in the union elections of 2014.
1
Broadly, the 2019
mandate had produced a sense that the Trinamool Congress (TMC) faced anti-incumbency and
Corresponding author:
Vipin Kumar Chirakkara, Associate Professor, The English and Foreign Languages University, Regional Campus, Moti Mahal,
Lucknow –226001, Uttar Pradesh, India.
Email: vipinkumar@efluniversity.ac.in
Research Articles on South Asian Politics
Asian Journal of Comparative Politics
2022, Vol. 7(3) 507–520
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/20578911221099076
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