India, May 4 -- The streetfighter has been beaten. For the first time in many years, some people on the ground in West Bengal saw weakness in Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress (TMC). Voters complained of cut money, the violence of local workers, a lack of jobs, a desire for poriborton (change) - ironically the same tagline on which Banerjee swept to power in 2011.

The TMC had pinned its hopes of holding on to power to the "Bengal model" it used five years ago, a combination of winning Muslim voters and counteracting Hindu-Muslim polarisation by appealing to female voters across the spectrum. Back then, Banerjee's welfare policies such as Lakshmir Bhandar grants of Rs.1,500 to women between 25 and 60 had done the trick, but this time v...