West Bengal
Former British capital and Bengal Renaissance center still healing from 1947's seven million refugees
West Bengal exists as a geographic paradox: the wealthier half of a severed civilization that somehow became poorer than its eastern counterpart. A state that once bankrolled empires now struggles to retain corporations within its borders.
Bengal's wealth preceded British interest by centuries. The Bengal Sultanate, established in 1352 under Shamsuddin Ilyas Shah, unified the delta's productive lands into a trading powerhouse. When Mughals absorbed Bengal in 1576, the province became their golden goose: Bengal Subah alone contributed 40 percent of Dutch Asian imports. Murshidabad emerged as the Nawabi capital, where bankers like the Jagat Seths financed the imperial court in Delhi. The East India Company established a trading post at Calcutta in 1690 precisely because Bengal's cotton muslins, silk, and saltpeter were the subcontinent's most valuable exports. After Robert Clive's forces defeated Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah at Plassey in 1757, Warren Hastings transferred all administrative offices from Murshidabad to Calcutta in 1772, making the riverside settlement the capital of British India.
Calcutta's imperial status catalyzed the Bengal Renaissance, an intellectual awakening spanning Ram Mohan Roy's 1820s social reforms through Rabindranath Tagore's 1913 Nobel Prize. The city became the British Empire's second city after London. Then came sequential amputations. The capital moved to Delhi in 1911. The 1947 Partition sliced Bengal along religious lines, sending 3.5 million Hindu refugees into West Bengal; by 1951, refugees constituted 27 percent of Kolkata's population. The severed state lost its jute-growing hinterland to East Pakistan while retaining processing mills with no raw materials. In 1977, the Communist-led Left Front took power on a land reform mandate. Operation Barga distributed 1.1 million acres to sharecroppers. But three decades of union militancy and anti-business sentiment drove capital flight.
Recovery has been uneven. The state's GSDP grew 10.5 percent in 2024-25, outpacing national averages. Salt Lake Sector-V and New Town are emerging as East India's IT hub. Yet between 2019 and 2024, over 2,200 companies relocated their headquarters elsewhere. Durga Puja earned UNESCO heritage status, but Kolkata's infrastructure struggles to support its 15-million metropolitan population.
The 2026 state elections will test whether West Bengal can convert investment announcements into operational factories, or whether its reputation for political interference continues to redirect capital to neighboring states.