The Indian state of West Bengal said goodbye Friday to three decades of uninterrupted rule by the world's longest-serving democratically-elected communist government. Results from state polls made it clear that the Left Front, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI-M, had been swept aside in a landslide that marks the end of an era in India's modern politics.
The victor was the Trinamool Congress Party of firebrand national railways minister Mamata Banerjee, the largest ally of the Congress Party in the federal ruling coalition. "West Bengal has been liberated," the diminutive Banerjee told a delirious crowd of cheering, dancing supporters outside her modest, one-storey residence in the state capital Kolkata.
"This is the victory of the people against years of oppression," she added. With the final votes still being counted, Trinamool and its allies looked set to take close to 220 of the state assembly's 294 seats, with the Marxists reduced to less than 70. The result effectively consigns the once-powerful CPI-M to the political wilderness.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called Banerjee from Afghanistan, where he is on a two-day trip, to congratulate the fiery, unmarried 56-year-old who now looks set to take a more prominent national role. "It's a profoundly important moment for the people of the state who had an intense desire for change," said political analyst Sabyasachi Basu Roychowdhury.
Banerjee, a populist who casts herself as a champion of the poor, has ridden a wave of popular discontent with the communist government's handling of the economy that has left industry in decline and the state neck-deep in debt. "After 30 years it is like a revolution, a new chapter in the history of West Bengal has begun today," said Nandita Deb, a history professor in Kolkata. Dhiren Chottopadhyay, a jute trader in Kolkata, compared Banerjee with Kali, the Hindu goddess of time and change.
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