Shackled to the vote-bank

The challenge for Mamata Banerjee after she wrested power from the hands of the Left in West Bengal was formidable. She had to inherit all the pathogens of the changeover, at the top of which was a huge debt burden of the state that — like most other debt-ridden brethren, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Punjab — was mired in the politics of populism, freebies and irrational subsidies. For an impulsively populist leader like Banerjee, it was a situation akin to her wings being lopped off before she could fly.

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