This book makes a critical analysis of West Bengal's Left Front regime (1977-2011) and explores the causes of its collapse under three sgments; inquiry into issues of political management; evaluation of various policy initiatives; and examination of development in civil society. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in South Asia.

'When the house of history is on fire, journalists are often the first-responders, pulling victims away from the flames. Deep Halder is one of them.' - Amitava KumarIn 1978, around 1.5 lakh Hindu refugees, mostly belonging to the lower castes, settled in Marichjhapi an island in the Sundarbans, in West Bengal. By May 1979, the island was cleared of all refugees by Jyoti Basu's Left Front government. Most of the refugees were sent back to the central India camps they came from, but there were many deaths: of diseases, malnutrition resulting from an economic blockade, as well as from violence unleashed by the police on the orders of the government. Some of the refugees who survived Marichjhapi say the number of those who lost their lives could be as high as 10,000, while the-then government officials maintain that there were less than ten victims.How does an entire island population disappear? How does one unearth the truth and the details of one of the worst atrocities of post-Independent India? Journalist Deep Halder reconstructs the buried history of the 1979 massacres through his interviews with survivors, erstwhile reporters, government officials and activists with a rare combination of courage, conscientiousness and empathy.

This book closely analyzes the shift in the nature of political processes as well as the current political dynamics in West Bengal.

This book presents a reappraisal of the political economic history of the CPIM/Left Front regime against the backdrop of the Indian reform experience. It examines two distinct areas: the conditions that necessitated the regime to engineer a transition from an erstwhile agricultural-based growth model to a more pro-market economic agenda post-199