4 SOCIAL SCIENTIST cast in Tripura in the December elections there. But those who had analysed the results of the West Bengal Vidhan Sabha earlier see in the Tripura triumph merely a linear extension of a trend already established. If one leaves out certain urban pockets, in the West Bengal elections too, the Left Front, on its own, had obtained as much as 55 percent of the votes cast. Political prisoners of all hues have been let out, those hounded out of their homes and jobs during ihe grim days of 1971-77 have had their rights restored, in the countryside the landless worker and the share-cropper have begun to feel a new assurance, in the factory belt —the continuous shadow ot stagnation notwithstanding — the demand for bonus has been conceded in nearly 85 percent of the cases. West Bengal is thus once more a foothold for the struggling sections to launch their future battles from a constituency the poor and the dispossessed can recognise as their own. True given the claustrophobic ambits of the Indian Constitution, the mere capture of administration in a State means little in terms of a realignment of power relations as between classes. The Centre looms large in all spheres—political, economic, financial, administrative. The existing Articles of the Constitution allow it to snuff out the life of whichever State government it does not feel disposed to like. The command over resources, fiscal as well as monetary, on the part of the State Governments is nearly zero. In the organised industrial sector, the tentacles of the private monopoly houses and the multinational corporations stretch deep and wide, and perhaps much more than in any other State. Without the benign {approval of the Centre, you cannot even cope with these monopoly houses and multinational corporations. The State government can merely watch from the sidelines, helplessly, if the Centre is not willing to curb the depredations of these exploiters. And it remains true that the pervasive economic crisis, which has slowed down the economy as a whole and resulted in a huge accumulation of unemployment and under-employment, cannot be resolved through the narrow instrumentalities available to a State government. The structural overhaul in assets and incomes, in the absence of which it would be altogether impossible for this nation to generate the momentum for rapid economic growth, does not quite belong to the genteel agenda permitted by the existing constitutional provisions. The Challenge of West Bengal What then is the challenge of West Bengal ? It h not that West Bengal could by itself usher in a dazzling social revolution. There is no quesuon of a people's republic of any kind being installed there in splendid isolation of the rest of the Indian reality. This much is well understood. Still, the opportunities that are there need not be-scoffed at either. Consider the facts. For the first tim^ in thirty years, barring that magnificent aberration of Ker ala way back in 1957-59, a Left Front