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Podcast: New Books in Political Science
Episode: Snigdhendu Bhattacharya, "Mission Bengal: A Saffron Experiment" (HarperCollins India, 2020)
Description: From being a fringe political party in 2013 to sweeping nearly half of the state s forty-two Lok Sabha seats in 2019, the BJP has gained ground in West Bengal, aided partly by the RSS s exponential growth during Mamata Banerjee's chief ministerial tenure (2011 onwards). With a consistent and concerted criticism of the TMC, the saffron camp managed to create a strong wave of anti-incumbency. So much so that the BJP s prospects of forming the next government in Bengal in 2021 seemed to have brightened considerably, while the Left, which had ruled Bengal for over three decades, appears to have been...