Is West Bengal Sliding Toward Democratic Collapse? Lessons from Bangladesh
West Bengal today bears an unsettling resemblance to Bangladesh in the years before its democratic collapse—when elections were still held, courts still functioned, and newspapers still printed headlines, but power had already slipped beyond constitutional restraint. What follows is not alarmism. It is pattern recognition. Democracies do not usually fall with a bang; they are hollowed out patiently, through intimidation, selective violence, and the slow normalisation of fear.
This is where Bengal now stands.
To call Bengal’s condition a “law and order problem” is to misread it entirely. Law and order fails when the state loses control. Bengal’s crisis is that control has been captured, concentrated, and weaponised. Violence here is no longer a breakdown of governance; it is a method of governance.
The turning point was not one incident, but repetition. In 2018, West Bengal’s panchayat elections were among the most violent since Independence. Opposition candidates were beaten, nomination centres were captured, and entire districts witnessed electoral processes that resembled territorial seizures. Five years later, in 2023, the script was replayed with grim precision. More than 40 people were killed in political violence in the run-up to the polls. In district after district—Murshidabad, Birbhum, South and North 24 Parganas, Cooch Behar—opposition candidates were physically prevented from filing nominations. Hundreds of seats were won uncontested by the Trinamool Congress.
Uncontested victories are not proof of popularity. They are evidence of coercion.
This is the same early-stage pathology that Bangladesh displayed before its democratic unravelling. In the 2014 Bangladeshi general election, the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party boycotted the polls after systematic intimidation and arrests of its leadership. The result was a farce disguised as franchise: 153 out of 300 parliamentary seats were won uncontested by the ruling Awami League. Violence in the months leading up to the election killed hundreds. Ballot boxes existed; choice did not.
Four years later, the 2018 Bangladesh elections confirmed the collapse. International observers, including Human Rights Watch and local watchdogs like Odhikar, documented widespread voter intimidation, ballot stuffing, and arrests of opposition workers. More than 500 people were reported killed in political violence between 2013 and 2018, creating an atmosphere in which elections became rituals of ratification, not instruments of consent. Democracy did not die in 2018; it had already been evacuated.
Bengal’s rural elections now mirror that moment—not at the parliamentary level yet, but at the grassroots, where democratic habits are formed or destroyed.
The coercion is not limited to elections. It is embedded in everyday governance through what locals call “syndicates” and “cut money”—phrases that disguise an extortion economy run through party intermediaries. From housing schemes and ration cards to construction material supply and municipal permissions, access to the state is priced. National newspapers have repeatedly reported unofficial “rates” running into Rs 20,000–Rs 25,000 for benefits citizens are legally entitled to receive.
This is not corruption in the conventional sense. This is parallel administration—a shadow state that taxes without accountability and punishes without due process.
Such systems require enforcement. And enforcement demands exemplary punishment.
That is why witnesses in Bengal are not merely intimidated; they are neutralised.
In December 2024, a key witness connected to the Sandeshkhali cases was travelling when his vehicle was rammed by a lorry. The witness survived. His son was killed. The lorry driver was allegedly linked to the same political network the witness was preparing to testify against—the network of Trinamool strongman Shahjahan Sheikh. The witness publicly alleged a deliberate attempt to silence him.
In a functioning democracy, this would have triggered institutional panic. In Bengal, it triggered procedural noise—while the message spread instantly: testimony carries a price.
Sandeshkhali itself is not an exception; it is a diagnosis. For years, women there complained of sexual violence, land grabs, and intimidation by Trinamool-linked operatives. Their voices were ignored until the scale of abuse made silence impossible. Even then, the instinct of the state was denial, delay, and attack on those amplifying the complaints—not immediate, uncompromising protection of victims and witnesses.
This is how democracies decay: not when courts shut down, but when citizens stop believing the truth is survivable.
Pakistan’s experience offers the next stage of the same disease. Long before Pakistan became synonymous with instability, its democracy was corroded by enforced disappearances, targeted intimidation of journalists, and selective prosecution of dissenters. Between 2015 and 2022, human rights organisations documented hundreds of cases of missing political activists, journalists, and lawyers, particularly in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Journalists learned that some stories invited not rebuttals, but abductions. Elections continued. Parliaments met. Legitimacy evaporated.
When fear replaces free speech, democracy does not need to be overthrown. It simply empties itself.
West Bengal has not reached Pakistan’s endpoint—but the direction of travel is visible. Journalists face police cases. Citizens are arrested for social media posts critical of the government. Dissent is not banned outright; it is made dangerous enough to discourage imitation. This is not censorship by decree. It is censorship by example.
And then came the Messi chaos in Kolkata—the accidental metaphor.
A global football icon’s visit collapsed into disorder: overcrowding, broken gates, blocked views, ?200 water bottles, and ministers crowding for selfies while paying spectators were left stranded. The fiasco dominated headlines because cameras were present. It revealed entitlement, incompetence, and the absence of accountability.
But that was the amateur version of Bengal’s governance—visible, embarrassing, televised.
The professional version unfolds away from stadium lights: on highways where witnesses travel, in villages where nominations are blocked, in police stations where complaints quietly die.
Mamata Banerjee’s political strategy has been to cloak domination in the language of victimhood. She presents herself as perpetually besieged—by Delhi, by institutions, by conspiracies—while presiding over one of the most centralised and coercive political machines in India. Resistance rhetoric becomes camouflage for control.
This is precisely how Bangladesh justified its descent. This is how Pakistan normalised its dysfunction.
West Bengal is not yet there. But history suggests that once elections become performative, welfare becomes leverage, and fear becomes routine, reversals are rare and collapses are sudden.
The 2026 Assembly elections will not merely determine who governs Bengal. They will test whether elections still mean choice, or whether they have been reduced to confirmation ceremonies.
Democracy does not die when armies march in.
It dies when citizens stop filing nominations.
It dies when witnesses stop speaking.
It dies when violence stops shocking.
What is unfolding in West Bengal is not chaos.
It is pre-collapse behaviour.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the views of Northeast Now.