Minorities have been underrepresented in Bengal Assembly

Despite its reputation as a progressive State, women and Muslims have sparsely held power in West Bengal

Sabir Ahamed 

 

Ashin Chakraborty

The election in West Bengal is approaching fast, amid an ocean of uncertainty over who will ultimately be able to cast their votes. In its final list, the Election Commission (EC) has placed nearly 60 lakh citizens under adjudication. While a supplementary list has been published, the fate of 27 lakh voters remains uncertain. The entire SIR exercise has created mayhem both in the administration and among citizens, and has pushed the issue of human development and social justice to the margins.

As most political parties have announced their candidates, it is worthwhile to assess their social group and gender composition. These candidate lists offer an important lens to assess the extent of commitment towards India’s pluralistic social fabric. However, what about the present composition of the State’s legislature? By conducting a critical assessment of the composition of the 17th West Bengal Legislative Assembly, one aims to evaluate the representation of various social groups in the State’s highest policymaking body. As State governments bear the bulk of the responsibility for designing, adjusting and implementing welfare policies effectively, the composition of the Assembly is crucial. Having representatives from various social groups ensures that policy priorities address the needs of everyone in society.

The politics of presence

Anne Phillips’ theory of the politics of presence makes the case for inclusive institutions in order to fight against unfair exclusion. Representation is more than a symbol; it decides whose voices are heard in decision-making. It has been largely known that the representation of MLAs have been skewed towards the upper castes and males for a few years now. But the Sabar Institute’s report, “Diversity and Representation in the Seventeenth West Bengal Legislative Assembly: An Analysis of Gender and Social Group Presence” shows that the gaps are even more significant inside the committees of the State’s Legislative Assembly. These committees are spaces where policies are discussed and consequential decisions are made. It is only fair that all voices find an equal footing to ensure that such decisions are fair and equitable.

The 2011 Census (despite being 15 years too dated) shows that Muslims make up almost 27% of West Bengal’s population. However, their voices are mostly missing from places where policies are made. The study empirically documents this “conspicuous absence” in critical decision-making areas, despite their considerable electoral importance under successive regimes of both the Left Front and the Trinamool Congress. Muslims are still not well represented, both as MLAs and as heads of important committees (Chart 1).

The 17th West Bengal Legislative Assembly reveals significant gaps in representation with respect to the State’s demographic composition. Muslims hold only 14.8% of unique committee positions. This share drops even more to 14.4% when you take out the Standing Committee on Minority Affairs, which has most of its members from minority communities for obvious reasons.

In West Bengal politics, this pattern of not having enough representation has been going on for decades. In 2011, 20.4% of MLAs were Muslim, but by 2021, that number had dropped to 14.7%, a difference of more than 12 percentage points with their population share.

Equitable representation

The West Bengal legislature better represents Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs). Their representation in the State Assembly is now about the same as or even greater than their share of the population. In 2021, SC and ST MLAs accounted for 34.2% of the Assembly, which is more than the 29.3% of the population they represent (Chart 2).

However, the representation of social groups among the Chairpersons of the committees has been skewed. While Muslims hold 18.4% of committee chairperson roles, there are currently no ST chairpersons. The Standing Committee on School Education has zero Muslim representation (Chart 3).

Although the importance of women in West Bengal politics has significantly increased in recent years, this has not translated into meaningful participation in heavyweight committees where critical policy decisions are discussed. There are a lot of committees in the government, such as the ones on Finance and Planning, Higher Education, and School Education, which do not have any women. In 2021, the difference between women’s population share and number of women in the Assembly was 36 percentage points (Chart 4).

People think that the State of West Bengal is more progressive and hence more fair and inclusive than other States. But the truth is that a small group of people still have all the power to make decisions. To make a society abide by the idea of justice, we need to make sure that everyone’s voice is being heard, especially people who have been left out for a long time.

The Assembly elections that are coming up in 2026 could have been a chance to fix these problems but when one looks at the lists of candidates from all the major parties, one can see that, in all likelihood, this will remain a distant dream.

Sabir Ahamed is Programme Director at Amartya Sen Research Centre, Pratichi, and also at the affiliated Sabar Institute. Ashin Chakraborty is with the Sabar Institute.

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