Opinion: Political Violence Dents Bengal's Image

Last week, Bengal's largest vernacular daily Anandabazar Patrika said in a front-page report that some of its reporters were huddled under a table to avoid splinters of crude bombs while covering the Panchayat elections in the state.

"We were shivering with fear, wondering if hoodlums using those bombs would throw a few through the windows and the bombs would explode inside the room where we were hiding. It was nightmarish," wrote one reporter.

Electoral violence, claim studies, has always been consistently high in Bengal. This time, at the centre of this violence, was an all-time high use of country-made firearms and crude bombs.