One of the most fascinating contests in this electoral season will be in West Bengal. For the first time in three decades the Left looks seriously vulnerable. If recent trends in panchayat elections are any indication, a Congress-Trinamool alliance will give the Left a run for their money.

Even the BJP has been making marginal inroads into this one impregnable bastion.

The leadership of the Left is acknowledging that this will be the toughest election the party has faced in years. The state Government is itself responsible for things coming to this pass. Buddhadeb Babu may be well intentioned in his recognition that the state needs a new development model. But his own party is now seriously responsible for the unconscionable governance failures in West Bengal. The Singur agitation was not so much a sign of anti-capitalism in the state, as it was a sign of the breakdown of elementary governance capacities.

The governance failures of West Bengal, on virtually every indicator that matters -- roads, health, education, nutrition, poverty, infant mortality -- have recently been well documented in searing report by my colleague Bibek Debroy and his co-author Laveesh Bhandari. Even the much touted success in growth in agricultural productivity and decline in rural poverty has been tapering off for years. There is no question that West Bengal is ripe for a paradigm shift in its development model.

 Source: Indian Express