Fifteen years ago, Mamata Banerjee stormed Writers' Buildings on a promise. She would end the Left's industrial despotism, liberate the peasant, and give dignity to the dispossessed. The landslide of 2011 was not merely electoral - it was a civilisational verdict against thirty-four years of CPI(M) rule. The question today, as Bengal's electorate prepares to render another verdict in 2026, is a starker one: what did the three-time Chief Minister of Bengal build in place of what she dismantled?
Falling Behind Neighbours
West Bengal's net state domestic product (NSDP), as per the latest Economic Survey, grew to Rs 16.32 lakh crore in FY25, up from about 9 per cent growth registered in the previous fiscal.
In contrast, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra all registered double-digit growth, ranging from 15.7 per cent to 11.8 per cent. But here's the most sobering fact: Bengal's growth was outpaced by Bihar and Odisha - states long viewed as economic laggards.
Numbers That Flatter
The data Banerjee's party, the Trinamool Congress (TMC), has been showcasing - and which finds a prominent place in its manifesto - tells a story of Bengal's nominal GDP having grown almost six times in fifteen years, per capita income tripling, and 1.72 crore people being lifted out of poverty.
Bengal's productive capital expenditure increased by 18 times, while physical sector expenditure grew by seven times in the last 15 years. The BPL population, which stood at roughly 25 per cent in 2010, has dropped to just under 12 per cent as per the 2023 Multidimensional Poverty Index - a remarkable feat, as per state government data.
Banerjee's social architecture has attempted to rewire the social contract between the Bengali state and its citizens, particularly women. The Lakshmir Bhandar scheme, which makes a caste-based distinction in allocation of cash benefits to women, has now become the structural spine of TMC's electoral dominance in rural Bengal.
But here is where the dichotomy stands: what looks like development may, in large part, be redistribution financed by borrowing. And borrowed time has a maturity date.
The Numbers That Haunt
Once a powerhouse contributing 10.5 per cent to India's GDP in 1960, Bengal's share has fallen to just 5.6 per cent by 2023-24. As per a 2024 report by the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, Bengal's per capita income, which stood at 127.5 per cent of the national average in 1960-61, has declined to 83.7 per cent. Put simply, Bengalis earn less than the national average and are now behind their fellow Indians residing in Rajasthan and Odisha.
Not all of this is Mamata Banerjee's inheritance, but it remains her biggest unresolved crisis.
The industrial story is bleaker still. At Independence, Bengal's share in India's industrial output was 30 per cent. Today, some reports indicate, it is estimated at less than 4 per cent.
The structural deindustrialisation that began under the Left deepened under the TMC - largely through ideology. Banerjee came to power on the back of Singur. Having spearheaded the 2008 agitation against the Left Front government's acquisition of farmland for a Tata factory, she cemented her political identity - and alienated industrialists.
The TMC made an ideological choice early on in its tenure and has stuck to it. The government opposed land acquisition for private industrial projects, declined to set up Special Economic Zones, and focused instead on MSMEs and the rural economy. This was a political choice with significant economic ramifications - and the costs have since then accumulated.
The Fiscal Trap
Here lies the most consequential structural problem of the Mamata era. In the last 15 years, Bengal's debt has skyrocketed from Rs 1.9 lakh crore under the final year of the Left government to now about Rs 7 lakh crore. But that's just half the story - how debt is used tells the real picture of the state's finances.
Bengal spends less than the national average on physical infrastructure and capital expenditure and relies heavily on excise revenues. As per a NITI Aayog report, interest payments now account for a fifth of total revenue receipts, severely limiting the government's ability to allocate funds for developmental projects. And the fiscal stress is worsening. The state's current debt-to-GSDP ratio of 38.93 per cent is the highest in the country after Punjab, with outstanding debt in 2025-26 expected at Rs 7,71,670 crore - requiring a whopping Rs 81,000 crore for loan repayments.
So, what has this massive borrowing financed? Largely current expenditure - salaries, pensions, welfare transfers. NITI Aayog's Fiscal Health Index 2025 ranked West Bengal 16th out of 18 states. A state that borrows to consume rather than to invest is not building capacity. It is mortgaging the future.
The retrospective scrapping of West Bengal's industrial policy schemes in 2025 was justified in official language as redirecting state finances away from industrial incentives toward "broader social and economic benefits" - euphemism for Bengal's goodbye to industrialisation. Can the state become the primary employer, distributor, and patron? When the Centre and Bengal fight over withheld MGNREGA and PM Awas Yojana funds, the real casualty is not just governance. It is the foregone investment in economic capacity that would have made those welfare transfers unnecessary over time.
The Missing Engine
Bengal's economic story under Mamata Banerjee is ultimately a story about what did not happen. West Bengal's credit-deposit ratio has fallen over the last decade, with a 25 percentage point difference with the all-India estimate as of 2021, and the credit-to-GSDP ratio has also fallen, deviating further from the national estimate.
It is a damning signal: even Bengal's own financial system has quietly voted against the state's investment climate. Banks in Bengal collect deposits but lend elsewhere. Capital formation remains weak. Private investment has consistently preferred Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and now Uttar Pradesh.
The 2026 Verdict
Mamata Banerjee is going into the 2026 elections, arguing that she stabilised a broken state, gave dignity to the poor, and ran a better fiscal ship than the Left left behind. All of that is partially true, but they crowd out the larger reckoning.
Fifteen years is long enough to plant trees whose shade you will never sit under. Bengal's next government will inherit not just debt, but a structural dependency - millions of citizens habituated to state transfers, an industrial base that never recovered, and a credit market that has quietly turned its back on the state.
She did not create Bengal's decline. But she had fifteen years, three mandates and an unassailable majority to reverse it - and chose, repeatedly, to evade the structural fix. Bengal has a welfare state. What it lacks is a productive state to pay for it.
That is the central contradiction of Mamatanomics - and the bill, when it comes due, will be paid not by the Governments who ran it up but by the Bengali people.
