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This is more than a work
of non-fiction. It is a tour de force of
Democracy as it gradually transforms from an empowering
tool to a millstone around the neck of India's
poorest millions. Nowhere is the phenomenon more
distinct than the eastern Indian state of West
Bengal. A political formation led by the Communist
Party of India (Marxist) has managed to stay in
power there since 1977 without losing an election,
whether to the national Parliament or the local
panchayati raj body. What is most amazing
is that the secret of their invincibility-an admixture
of terror and deception-has gone virtually uninvestigated
owing to a conspiracy of silence imposed on the
collective conscious by India's institutions of
free inquiry. To mark his twentieth year as a
journalist, the author returns to his home state,
Bengal, to find a province of 80 million rendered
the last outpost of Stalinism anywhere in the
world. He discovers people brutalised and their
culture laid waste by a pernicious system that
relies on violence, intimidation and election
manipu- lation for self preservation.
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