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This article critically examines the post-2024 election trajectories in West Bengal, culminating in the recently concluded 2026 Assembly election results. Moving beyond the welfare pragmatism emphasised in contemporary scholarship, this study utilises Jean Baudrillard's theory of simulacra to reframe welfarism not as a material redistributive mechanism, but as a simulated framework of affective governance. This article argues that the Trinamool Congress (TMC) constructed a hyperreal welfare state within a regional framework. The artcile. however, shows that this did not block the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) but normalised the wider terrain within which cultural Hindutva was able to grow. The analysis traces how the 2024 results laid the ideological groundwork for the 2026 Assembly elections. Ultimately, the 2026 verdict, characterised by a BJP victory, reveals a total discursive shift where political Hindutva has successfully synthesised regional Asmita. The article identifies the BJP's pre-poll promise of Annapurna Bhandar as the definitive sublimation of the simulation. Rather than dismantling the hyperreal welfare state, the new regime has refined the regional ‘sign of care’ into a more state-sanctioned hegemony. This transition confirms that sub-nationalist counter-simulation was not a barrier but a necessary precursor for integrating affective welfarism into political Hindutva.
Debashish Mitra (Mon,) studied this question.