Lessons from West Bengal
Like many Bangladeshis, I was closely following the elections in two of the states of India that border our country, namely West Bengal and Assam. One was not surprised by the landslide election of the Left Front in West Bengal, but one thing really caught my attention. The primary opposition figure, Ms Mamata Banerjee, in her first public statement after the results were formally declared, congratulated the winning party and incumbent chief minister. Is such a thing imaginable in our country? If Ms Banerjee were a Bangladeshi leader, by now perhaps she would have been calling a press conference for foreign journalists to allege rigging and rejecting the results. Her positive stand means that the results are accepted, and the people can be assured of a smooth tenure of government until the natural passage of time and subsequent elections.
The above example displays the maturity that we can aim for, and shows that it is not just a luxury of Western democracies, but possible also in the South Asian countries.
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