India, April 27 -- The 2026 political contest in West Bengal, if the Trinamool Congress (TMC) narrative is to be believed, is also a contest between the state's regional exceptionalism against a national--largely Hindi--hegemon, namely the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Whether the TMC is able to leverage this exceptionalism, as it did in 2019, 2021 and 2024, will be clear when the results are declared on May 4. What merits closer examination, however, is a less discussed aspect of this exceptionalism--one that appears more regressive than the progressivism often associated with the state: its social contract. This two-part series will examine that dimension in detail. The first part focuses on the social regression embedded in the state's...