India, April 29 -- Visitors to India may be forgiven for thinking there's only one election, perhaps two, in the current election cycle. Tamil Nadu is as electorally relevant (from the perspective of the Lok Sabha) as West Bengal and saw a keen three-way contest whose outcome could go any way, but it is the latter that has captured mind- and column-space and air-time. That shouldn't surprise anyone; along with Tamil Nadu and Kerala, West Bengal presents the last frontier for the national political hegemon, the Bharatiya Janata Party. On a high from having its nominee named chief minister of Bihar (which has never had a BJP CM thus far), the party believes it now has an opportunity to break through in the home ground of Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the founder of Bharatiya Jana Sangh, a precursor to the BJP. In the second and last phase of the assembly elections in the state, 142 constituencies will vote Wednesday. For the BJP, the conquest of Bengal is important in multiple ways. The state has almost been an ideological no-go zone for the party since independence: The Congress, the CPI/CPM-led Left Front, and the incumbent Trinamool Congress (TMC) have dominated politics by claiming to be custodians of an inclusive, secular Bengal - an idea that all of them claim is the antithesis of the BJP's Hindutva - although the truth is that they have done so by controlling what Dwaipayan Bhattacharya referred to as "party society", decentralised networks of local strongmen who control all aspects of life and work in the state. Winning West Bengal would be an ideological triumph for the party, cementing its electoral dominance across a contiguous region stretching from West to East. The BJP has pitched its aggressive restatement of identity politics and hard borders in contrast to the TMC's patronage politics, though an all-party consensus prevails on welfare schemes. Ironically, such a framing has enabled the TMC, seeking to return to power for the fourth time, to brand itself as an insider championing Bengali identity and adopt the posture of an opposition party rather than speak in the language of a party of government. A win for the TMC would energise the ranks of the Opposition, although it may also strengthen the chorus for a non-Congress leadership. The outcome, which will be clear on May 4 when the votes are counted, will, however, depend on who controls the party society now....