Shuvendu Adhikari taking oath as West Bengal Chief Minister
By Jayanta Ghosal
As Shuvendu Adhikari takes an oath as West Bengal’s first BJP Chief Minister on Rabindra Jayanti, May 9, the symbolism of the date is impossible to ignore. After a long and intense election campaign built around Hindutva, border security, Bengali identity and development politics, the choice of Rabindranath Tagore’s birth anniversary for the swearing-in ceremony appears to be a carefully crafted political message. The question many are now asking is whether this marks a genuine ideological shift towards Bengal’s syncretic cultural ethos, or whether it is simply a softer cultural packaging of the same political agenda.
West Bengal had already witnessed one historic political transformation in 2011, when power shifted from the Left Front to the Trinamool Congress. The state changed from “red to green”. But even that “red” had changed over time. It was no longer the same ideological red of 1977, when the CPI(M)-led Left Front achieved a historic landslide victory with 231 seats in a 294-member Assembly, including 178 seats won by the CPI(M) alone. Over the decades, that red gradually faded. Many political observers often remarked that the Left’s ideological colour had slowly shifted from deep red to pale pink and eventually to something darker and more exhausted by the time the 2011 election arrived.
Now, Bengal has witnessed another historic shift. For the first time, saffron has entered power in the state, and Shuvendu Adhikari has become Chief Minister.
One of his first symbolic decisions has been to shift the administrative headquarters back to the Writers’ Building from Nabanna.
Writers’ Building, a 240-year-old colonial structure, remains deeply associated with Bengal’s administrative and political history under British rule. It carries the memory of colonial power, bureaucracy and the long evolution of governance in Bengal.
Yet the irony is striking. In 2026, in an age shaped by artificial intelligence, digital economies and global technological transitions, a new government is returning to one of India’s oldest centres of colonial administration while simultaneously speaking about building a “new Bengal”.
That contradiction itself defines the current political moment in Bengal.
Shuvendu Adhikari and the BJP leadership are now presenting this transition as the beginning of Bengal’s “second renaissance”. According to them, Bengal has gone through years of degeneration, economic decline, deindustrialisation, unemployment, financial stress and institutional decay. The argument being made is that while some welfare schemes and infrastructure may have improved over the last 15 years, Bengal as a whole lost its historic leadership position in India.
There was a time when Bengal represented intellectual, industrial and cultural leadership for the country. Gopal Krishna Gokhale’s famous observation, “What Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow”, symbolises that confidence and influence. Bengal was once the centre of the British capital, the nerve centre of trade, education, administration and the Bengal Renaissance.
But over time, that glory faded.
The BJP leadership now argues that Bengal’s lost stature must be rebuilt. They describe this political shift not merely as a change of government but as an attempt to resurrect Bengal’s historical confidence and economic strength.
Bengal’s history, however, has always been layered and complicated. It is a land shaped by repeated economic distress, famines, communal tensions, migration, ideological battles and political violence. At the same time, it remains one of the most culturally heterogeneous and socially plural regions in India. The current BJP leadership believes Bengal now wants to move beyond prolonged conflict and rediscover stability, prosperity and confidence.
Shuvendu Adhikari himself has repeatedly said that his top priority is to build “a new Bengal”. According to him, the roadmap is not impossible. If peace and law and order can be restored, if political violence can be reduced, and if infrastructure improves, then industrialisation and employment generation can follow naturally. He has argued that Bengal’s decline is reversible.
One major advantage for the new government, according to BJP leaders, is the so-called “double engine” factor: both the centre and the state are now ruled by the same party. After decades, Bengal once again has a chief minister and prime minister belonging to the same political formation.
Earlier, during the Congress era, under leaders like Bidhan Chandra Roy and Siddhartha Shankar Ray, the Centre and state shared the same party structure. But after the rise of the Left Front in 1977, that alignment disappeared. Even during Mamata Banerjee’s 15 years as Chief Minister, the Trinamool Congress never ruled at the Centre.
Now, Shuvendu Adhikari has become the first BJP Chief Minister of Bengal while Narendra Modi remains Prime Minister. BJP leaders argue that this federal alignment will help accelerate development and improve Centre-state coordination.
Interestingly, on the very same day that Shuvendu Adhikari was elected Chief Minister, economist Ashok Lahiri formally assumed charge as Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog in Delhi. Lahiri, who had earlier contested and won as a BJP MLA from West Bengal, is now expected to play a key role in coordinating financial and developmental policies between the Centre and the state.
Many within BJP circles believe Ashok Lahiri will become one of the principal architects of Bengal’s economic revival strategy.
The immediate priority of the new government, according to BJP leaders, is to resolve Bengal’s financial stress and unlock stalled central allocations. Discussions have already begun between the Union Jal Shakti Ministry and West Bengal officials over pending dues under the Jal Jeevan Mission. The Centre claims that nearly ₹2,700 crore remains pending, and both sides are expected to review documents and expenditure records left behind by the previous government.
Ayushman Bharat is also expected to be implemented fully in Bengal after being discussed at the first Cabinet meeting.
The Central Jal Shakti Ministry, the Water Resources Ministry, and the Union Water Shakti Secretary are now holding meetings with the state PWD secretary. Discussions between the Centre and the state government have begun so that the pending dues can finally be cleared. And it is not only the Jal Shakti Ministry. Similar conversations are also taking place with several other ministries so that the stalled funds can be released and the projects can move forward again.
Rural development, Panchayati Raj, health, and education are among the key sectors where multiple projects have either slowed down or remained stuck because adequate funding has not been reaching the state. Now, efforts are being made to restart those projects. According to the discussion around the new administrative approach, Suvendu Adhikari is focusing not only on schemes like Ayushman Bharat and the hundred-day work programme but also on ensuring that several pending rural development funds from the past few years are released properly.
The allegation from the BJP side has been that the previous state government was unwilling to cooperate fully with the Centre regarding the implementation and financial structure of several central schemes. After the 2021–22 financial year, projects such as PM-Kisan and Ayushman Bharat became major political and administrative talking points between the Centre and the state. Now, under the proposed “double-engine” arrangement, the attempt is to ensure that these schemes are implemented in coordination rather than conflict.
There is also renewed emphasis on strengthening Panchayati Raj institutions and ensuring that funds from the Finance Commission are utilised more effectively at the grassroots level. The broader political message being projected is that development funds meant for villages, healthcare, education, and welfare should reach people without prolonged administrative disputes between the centre and the state government.
Now Ashok Lahiri would be the nodal officer between the central and the state. He was also suggested to be nominated as the finance minister of West Bengal, but he wanted to remove himself from politics and wished to be a part of NITI Aayog. Being a part of NITI Aayog, he has already made a project report on West Bengal. Beyond immediate fiscal coordination, the BJP leadership is now speaking about a broader economic revival model for Bengal.
One important sector under discussion is fisheries. Narendra Modi himself had remarked during the campaign that although Bengalis are culturally deeply connected to fish consumption, fish production in Bengal has declined over the years. The proposal now is to expand financial support for fisheries and strengthen the fish industry as a major economic sector.
The revival of the coal and steel industries is another priority area. Bengal once played a major role in both sectors, and the BJP leadership believes fresh investment and central support can help restore industrial activity in these traditional economic zones.
Heavy industry remains another major focus. Since the Tata Nano project left Singur for Gujarat, Bengal has struggled to attract large-scale industrial investment. One of the biggest barriers, according to the new government, remains land acquisition.
Unlike Gujarat, where large stretches of non-fertile land are available for Special Economic Zones (SEZs), Bengal’s land structure became fragmented after land reforms. Much of the land is fertile agricultural land divided into small holdings under the bargadar system. As a result, acquiring large contiguous plots for industrial projects has become politically and administratively difficult.
The BJP government is now expected to review and possibly relax certain land acquisition policies to encourage industrialisation. These were reforms Mamata Banerjee had strongly resisted earlier, particularly after Singur and Nandigram transformed Bengal’s political landscape.
Infrastructure is another major pillar of the proposed roadmap. The new administration wants stronger coordination between national highways and state highways, improved road connectivity with the Northeast, and the development of satellite townships in regions such as Siliguri and Darjeeling.
Several of these ideas were already part of internal economic project reports prepared by Ashok Lahiri and were also reflected in the BJP’s election manifesto.
At the same time, BJP thinkers are also trying to frame Bengal’s economic decline in a longer historical context.
References are now being made to historical disasters such as the Bengal Cyclone of 1876, once described as an “imperial disaster”. That cyclone created devastating tidal waves from the Bay of Bengal, with water levels reportedly reaching 40 feet in some areas. More than 215,000 people drowned, while another lakh reportedly died later from cholera and famine.
Scholars like Benjamin Kingsbury have argued that the 1876 disaster was not merely a natural tragedy but also the result of colonial exploitation, inequality and social divisions within Bengal society.
The BJP leadership now uses such historical examples to argue that Bengal’s repeated crises, famines, economic decline, political violence and industrial collapse gradually weakened the state’s financial and institutional foundations. According to this narrative, Bengal now requires not only economic recovery but also a cultural and psychological reset.
Inside BJP circles, there is also growing discussion about rejecting what they describe as the continuation of “bad CPM culture” within later political structures. The argument is that just as certain violent and lumpen political elements once shifted from Congress into the CPM, and later from CPM culture into sections of the Trinamool Congress, Bengal’s politics became trapped in cycles of patronage, intimidation and organisational decay.
The BJP now claims it wants to break from that pattern.
Their stated vision is to build a Bengal based on peace, law and order, industrial growth, employment generation and administrative efficiency. They describe it as a politics of “hope against hope”, the belief that Bengal can still reinvent itself despite decades of decline and disappointment.
Whether this vision becomes reality or remains political rhetoric will depend on what happens in the coming years. But for now, the BJP leadership is presenting the beginning of the Shuvendu Adhikari era not merely as a change in government but as the opening chapter of what they call Bengal’s “second renaissance”.
