During election campaigns, it becomes clear which issues matter most to voters and which do not. Marxist intellectuals writing in learned journals have long railed against entrenched inequality in India. CPM veterans like Biman Bose say that Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata and Narendra Modi in New Delhi throw a few crumbs to the masses through freebies at election time, but have no interest in fundamental change in inequality. This narrative of capitalist exploitation finds few takers in the current election campaign in West Bengal.
