In politics, defeat is never merely arithmetic. Some leaders accept it with grace, some rage against it, and some turn it into a permanent campaign. What matters is not only who wins but also how the losers behave after the verdict is announced. In India, that response often tells us more about a leader’s political character than victory ever does.

Take, for example, Mamata Banerjee’s reaction after the Trinamool Congress’s resounding defeat in West Bengal. The outcome may have taken many, especially those who failed to detect the undercurrent, by surprise. Mamata Banerjee could not have been one of them, unless she hadn't seen it coming. But what happened thereafter was unthinkable. She blamed everyone for her party’s defeat, from the Modi government to the Election Commission, from the BJP to the poll observers and central security forces, and termed it a conspiracy. She refused to resign from the chief minister’s post in a dramatic manner that only she could. She attempted to frame herself as wronged rather than defeated, calling the result “loot, loot, loot” and alleging large-scale rigging and misuse of central agencies. It was a classic case of blame shifting rather than quiet acceptance.

That it did not matter is not important. She could not have stuck to the post after the dissolution of the Assembly elected in 2021. What mattered most was that, in........

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