West Bengal politics amidst people&#39;s moral degradation and self-centeredness

West Bengal politics amidst people's moral degradation and self-centeredness

By Harasankar Adhikari
Politics is certainly an important and significant determinant of the socio-economic status of a nation as well as its population, particularly in a democratic nation. There has been a long-standing political history in Bengal since the colonial period. Its contributions to a nation’s development are to glorify the nation. Social, economic, educational, and political reforms in India were started in Bengal by a group of eminent thinkers and intellects. Bengal has taken the most glorified part in freeing India from colonial rule.
After the independence of India, Bengal's think tanks played a vital role in reforming and reconstructing the nation socially, educationally, and economically because every policy and program in India is formulated according to the expertise and opinion of the think tanks in Bengal. For example, the formation of the Planning Commission of India and its functions was initiated by the unforgotten leader, Nataji Subhash Chandra Bose.
Anyway, gradually, the people of Bengal were sensitized politically to true democracy through the implementation of local self-government under the Panchayat Raj Institution. Significantly, this Panchayat Raj expedites people's participation in democratic government through land reforms, the narrowing of casteism, and other socio-economic evils in society. People's democratic rights have been established.

Local-level development planning and societal structural reformation have become people's own choices. Political awareness and people's participation have also had some bad impacts, like deindustrialization and political groupism, which badly impact personal relations and interaction.

It breaks togetherness in family, community, and other aspects. It facilitates a political party supporter’s based division, even within a family. Unfortunately, it is not so much based on political party-based principles; it is based on political opportunity-based greed.
People's moral degradation and self-centeredness become political party-based traits. This opportunist promotes two categories of political beneficiaries: opportunists and non-opportunists. One may consider as the ruling party supporters and opposition. There is a huge gap between the two, and greed works to attract opposition supporters to the ruling party, from which one can enjoy different benefits of the government.
The TMC came into power after defeating the 34-year-old rule only using this weakness of the people of Bengal. Since 2011, TMC has been ruling the state as a populist government. Its policy and programs are only to purchase people as blind supporters of TMC. It uses all administrative techniques to keep people in favor of it for a long time. In addition to this, it abuses the administration against the opposition and critics of this government. But it is not confident about people's opinions, so it applies different techniques of vote looting.
Within a decade, this party has committed corruption in every sphere. But people are at large silent, realizing this party has harmed the glory of the state. But they are not collectively struggling against it because of fear of losing benefits or of losing a peaceful life.

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