India, April 28 -- The first part of this series underlined the historically entrenched social inequality in West Bengal's political leadership. Is this social inequality in politics a result of cultural factors such as the precocious emergence of a largely upper caste middle class in the state or material factors rooted in the state's larger political economy. Here are four charts which examine the feasibility of the latter proposition.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Hindustan Times....