A left front election
Banerjee, M.
(2010).
A left front election.
In
Heath, A. & Jeffery, R.
(Eds.),
Diversity and Change in Modern India: Economic, Social and Political Approaches
(pp. 243-266).
OUP/ British Academy.
(2010).
A left front election.
In
Heath, A. & Jeffery, R.
(Eds.),
Diversity and Change in Modern India: Economic, Social and Political Approaches
(pp. 243-266).
OUP/ British Academy.
This chapter provides an electoral ethnography of a campaign in the state of West Bengal. The uniquely continuous electoral victories of the Left Front since 1977 in this eastern state of India throws up the puzzle of how a coalition of parties has achieved this feat in a country where incumbent governments repeatedly suffer electoral defeats. A thick ethnographic description of the campaigning process, tracing the numerous techniques, organisational hierarchies and political messages at every level of the state’s population, provides some answers to this conundrum.