India, May 16 -- West Bengal's verdict is more than an electoral transition; it is a correction. The people have not merely voted out a government, but rejected a political culture that romanticised disorder, normalised impunity, and mistook excessive empathy for moral virtue

voted with determination, courage, clarity and finality. In that unmistakable vote lies not merely a political verdict, but a psychological one. The people of Bengal did not simply change a government; they actually repudiated a culture - a culture of decades-long accommodation of lawlessness dressed in the language of compassion, a governance model that protected the predator while rendering the victim invisible.

The new administration inherits both an opportunity...