By Aloke Kumar
There are moments in history when a society does not merely change governments — it changes eyesight.
The recent political upheaval in West Bengal feels uncannily reminiscent of the world imagined by Blindness by José Saramago. In that haunting allegorical novel, an unnamed city is struck by a sudden epidemic of blindness. Civilization does not collapse because buildings fall or armies invade, but because people stop seeing — morally, socially, emotionally. Institutions decay. Corruption festers. Human beings learn to survive amid dirt, fear, silence, and compromise. Worst of all, the blindness gradually becomes normal.
And then comes the more terrifying question: what happens when sight returns?
That is perhaps the more relevant metaphor for Bengal today.
For years, the State appeared trapped in a peculiar social numbness. Corruption was no longer shocking; it became conversational. Violence was not denied; it was rationalized. Administrative decay was explained away as inevitability. Public institutions slowly lost moral authority while citizens adjusted themselves to the dysfunction like prisoners learning the dimensions of their cell.
The tragedy of prolonged political dominance is not merely authoritarianism. It is habituation.
People stop reacting.
They learn to look away.
A road remains broken for years; a school deteriorates; extortion becomes routine; recruitment scandals emerge; party loyalty supersedes merit; syndicates become embedded in everyday life — and gradually the public psyche adapts itself to abnormality. The extraordinary becomes ordinary. Society enters into what Saramago described metaphorically: blindness not of the eyes, but of conscience.
Then suddenly, something changes.
An election result, especially one carrying the force of a historic reversal, often acts like a psychological earthquake. Bengal today appears to be experiencing precisely that moment — a violent return of sight.
Across the State there is now a visible and almost feverish public insistence on accountability. Allegations once whispered privately are now discussed openly. Administrative officers who once operated with untouchable confidence appear cautious. Files are being reopened. Financial irregularities are being examined. The language of governance has shifted from entitlement to scrutiny.
Most significantly, ordinary citizens seem to have rediscovered the forgotten power of public judgment.
That is the true transformation.
Not the fall of one political formation or the rise of another.
Power changes hands routinely in democracies. But societies change far less frequently.
What Bengal is undergoing may be described as a moral awakening after prolonged fatigue.
The atmosphere resembles the morning after a storm when people emerge from their homes stunned by the debris that had accumulated unnoticed over the years. They begin to ask uncomfortable questions:
How did this become acceptable?
How did fear become culture?
How did corruption become administrative procedure?
How did public life become so degraded while intellectual society remained selectively silent?
For Bengal, these questions carry particular weight because this is not an ordinary province without historical memory. This is the land of reformers, educators, revolutionaries, poets, scientists, and political thinkers. A civilization that once shaped the intellectual conscience of India cannot indefinitely survive on nostalgia while tolerating institutional decay.
The current anti-corruption drive, therefore, is not merely legal or administrative. It has psychological symbolism. Raids, investigations, dismissals, and exposure of entrenched networks create a theatrical rupture in public consciousness. They signal to society that impunity may no longer be permanent.
But this moment also carries danger.
The restoration of sight can itself become intoxicating.
In Saramago’s universe, blindness revealed the brutality hidden beneath civilization. But restored vision did not automatically guarantee wisdom. A society emerging from prolonged political darkness often swings toward vengeance, spectacle, and moral absolutism. Every previous silence transforms into loud accusation. Every institution becomes suspect. Public anger seeks purification through exposure.
Yet democracies cannot survive on outrage alone.
If Bengal’s awakening is to become meaningful, it must move beyond revenge into reconstruction.
The challenge before the new dispensation is therefore immense. It is not enough to expose corruption; systems must be rebuilt. It is not enough to replace faces; institutional culture must change. It is not enough to repaint walls, rename projects, or flood the city with new colours and slogans. Cosmetic transformation cannot substitute moral transformation.
A State does not renew itself through rhetoric.
It renews itself through trust.
The true test of this political shift will lie not in triumphant rhetoric but in whether the ordinary citizen gradually begins to feel dignity returning to public life: whether jobs become merit-based, whether police function without partisan pressure, whether education regains seriousness, whether businesses operate without coercive intermediaries, whether intellectuals recover independence from political patronage.
Otherwise Bengal will merely exchange one blindness for another.
History repeatedly teaches that societies are capable of astonishing self-deception. Every regime believes itself permanent. Every political culture eventually mistakes fear for loyalty and propaganda for legitimacy. But beneath the surface, citizens continue watching, remembering, accumulating quiet resentment until suddenly, one day, they awaken.
That awakening is what Bengal seems to be experiencing now.
Not merely a transfer of power.
But the unsettling shock of regained sight.
Blindness (Ensaio sobre a cegueira) is a 1995 novel by Portuguese Nobel laureate José Saramago. The allegorical work centers on an unexplained mass epidemic of blindness afflicting nearly everyone in a nonspecific city, and follows multiple unnamed characters as they navigate the social breakdown that swiftly follows.
(Aloke Kumar is a Professor at the Kolkata University)
