Social burden of West Bengal’s regional exceptionalism | Number Theory

Whether the TMC is able to leverage this exceptionalism, as it did in 2019, 2021 and 2024, will be clear when the results are declared on May 4.

Updated on: Apr 27, 2026, 08:35:03 IST

By Roshan Kishore, Nishant Ranjan, Abhishek Jha

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The 2026 political contest in West Bengal, if the Trinamool Congress (TMC) narrative is to be believed, is also a contest between the state’s regional exceptionalism against a national--largely Hindi--hegemon, namely the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Whether the TMC is able to leverage this exceptionalism, as it did in 2019, 2021 and 2024, will be clear when the results are declared on May 4. What merits closer examination, however, is a less discussed aspect of this exceptionalism--one that appears more regressive than the progressivism often associated with the state: its social contract. This two-part series will examine that dimension in detail. The first part focuses on the social regression embedded in the state’s politics; the second will explore its underlying causes.

An aerial view of people at Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee's rally in Cooch Behar. (AITC)

Social burden of West Bengal’s regional exceptionalism

West Bengal has a very large share of both Dalits and Muslims in its population
That West Bengal has a large Muslim population is well known and widely analysed in its politics context. These pages have examined the issue in a three-part series in the run-up to the election. Less frequently acknowledged, however, is that the state also has a significant Dalit, or Scheduled Caste (SC), population-- the third largest among major states after Punjab and Tamil Nadu. At the same time, West Bengal has among the lowest shares of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and a relatively larger share of non-SC-ST-OBC or upper caste Hindus compared to most Indian states. In several districts, the combined population of just Muslims and SCs exceeds 50%.
West Bengal fares the worst in terms of having a non-upper caste chief minister among major states
When Mamata Banerjee ended the 34-year rule of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M)-led Left Front in West Bengal in 2011, it marked a political watershed. In on respect, however, things did not change: The chief minister-ship passed from one Brahmin (Buddhedeb Bhattacharya) to another. The transition reflects the entrenched upper caste Hindu dominance in the state’s political leadership. HT’s in-house database of chief ministers in India shows that 95% of West Bengal’s chief ministers have been from upper caste Hindu backgrounds. The only exception was Prafulla Chandra Gosh, an OBC leader who served as chief minister for 90 days. West Bengal is the most upper caste dominated large Indian state in terms of the chief ministers in India. Notably, Suvendu Adhikari, the current leader of the opposition from the BJP and also the most prominent Bengali face of the party in these elections. is also a Brahmin.
The only thing as entrenched in West Bengal politics as Hindu upper caste dominance is Kolkata dominance
Since independence, the state has had 20 chief ministers (across eight individuals). Seven of these eight leaders have been from Kolkata. The dominance of Kolkata in the state’s political leadership is disproportionate given the fact that it accounts for just 3.75% of the state’s assembly constituencies since 2011, and 7.14% between 1977 and 2011. No other state in India--historically or currently--shows such a concentration of political leadership drawn from its capital city (or one urban center). Among major Indian states, West Bengal is the only one where the chief minister comes from the capital city. Even if one were to compare the chief ministers who have completed at least one full term, West Bengal shows a disproportionate skew in the dominance of the state capital.
Conclusion
What explains this social regression in West Bengal’s politics? Is it just the proverbial cultural hold of the “bhadralok” – the socially sanitized moniker for the Bengali term for the educated, socially influential, and upper-caste Bengali middle class that emerged during the British period – or is there a material basis to it? This is a question the second part of this series will answer.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Roshan Kishore
Roshan Kishore is the Data and Political Economy Editor at Hindustan Times. He heads the newsroom's data journalism team, which produces Number Theory, a daily data-driven feature for the print edition and the HT app. Number Theory uses data analysis and story-telling based on it to add value to the newsroom’s daily coverage by putting stories in a larger context on a range of issues, including politics, macroeconomy, markets, global affairs and climate. Under his leadership HT’s data journalism work has established itself as a niche product in Indian journalism and pushed the boundaries of marrying academic rigour with news sense and speed. Along with writing and editing data stories, he has also been writing a weekly political economy column called Terms of Trade for HT Premium. A trained economist with an MPhil degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Kishore has also been a visiting fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies of India (CASI) at the University of Pennsylvania. Along with his journalistic work, his writings have also appeared in journals such as the Economic and Political Weekly and working papers for CASI and UNESCAP.Read More
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nishant Ranjan
Nishant Ranjan has been working as a data journalist with Hindustan Times since 2023. In this short period, he has established a niche for creating original datasets and utilising them to produce journalistic work that pushes the boundaries of journalism. The list of datasets and stories done by him include the following: a dataset of all 717 chief ministers India has had since 1952, a dataset of all 3,350 members of India’s council of ministers, a dataset of all 190 deputy chief ministers in India and a dataset of all 279 Supreme Court judges in India (1950-2025). He has also profiled each elected Muslim MLA/MP since 1952. He is a mining engineer by training who decided to pursue a Master's in Development Studies from TISS after working in a coal mine for 10 months. He also worked as a research associate at the Centre for Policy Research, researching local governance in India. He also has a keen interest in analyzing electoral politics and political executives in India.Read More
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Abhishek Jha
Abhishek Jha is Assistant Editor-Data at Hindustan Times. He uses statistical programming to generate newsworthy insights from large datasets. He is part of the team that produces Number Theory, a daily data story feature of the paper’s print edition. Since March 2024, he has been writing Weather Bee, a weekly column for the Hindustan Times website. He is a chemical engineer by training, who specialises in stories related to weather, climate, and the environment. Jha has been at HT since 2018, where he offers data-driven perspective and analysis on politics, environment, weather, climate, economy and society. His work includes data coverage of elections in India and abroad, including the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha elections; the disasters and extreme weather resulting from changing climate, such as floods, droughts, heat waves, cold waves, and dwindling snow cap in the Himalayas; the factors that drive poor air quality in northern India; the changing patterns of land use; the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on labour market conditions; the changing pattern of consumer spending seen in the new consumer spending surveys; and social norms seen in the surveys such as the National Family Health Survey.Read More