IDENTITY STIRS THE MARGINS

Politics of belonging: Welfare & identity—the remaking of North Bengal’s electoral landscape

- VISMAY BASU @New Delhi

ON June 22, 2017, the Darjeeling hills fell silent under an indefinite shutdown called by the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha.

What began as a protest against the West Bengal government's decision to make Bengali compulsory in schools quickly escalated into a renewed, forceful demand for Gorkhaland. Roads were deserted, tea tourism collapsed, and the hills once again became the epicentre of a long-simmering identity conflict.

That moment captures, in miniature, the deeper churn that has defined North Bengal’s politics over the past two decades. Electoral data from 2006 to 2021 reveal not merely a shift in party fortunes, but a steady reconfiguration of political meaning itself. Class gave way to welfare. Welfare, in turn, yielded to identity.

In 2006, the region was firmly under the control of CPM. With 33 of 54 seats, the Left dominance was near-total. Its strength lay in organisation rather. Dense cadre networks, land reforms, and sustained rural penetration ensured stability, even in a region marked by economic backwardness. Yet that stability was brittle. Beneath it lay unresolved questions of ethnicity, language, and regional imbalance.