Come election season, Bengal voters are asked to worry about a great many things — some local, some national, and, when imagination is running high, a few of international significance as well. The current election season, so it appears, has finally brought politics to its highest purpose in West Bengal. The voters have been asked to confront the most terrifying counterfactual of all: What will happen to the fish and mutton on their plates if power changes hands in the state?AdvertisementChief Minister Mamata Banerjee has issued what future historians will likely view as one of the most significant warnings on food security in political history. If the BJP wins in Bengal, she claims, people will not be able to eat fish, meat, or eggs.Also Read | I serve the country as a doctor, yet Bengal’s SIR calls me a ‘doubtful’ voterIt is difficult to decide what is more impressive here: The warning itself or the accuracy with which it identifies the Bengali nervous system. Let us be sensible and focus on what truly matters: The potential loss of the Bengali non-vegetarian meal. Rice and fish have long stood at the heart of the Bengali platter, along with mutton and a range of delicious sides. Bengalis might tolerate inflation, potholes, delayed trains, exodus of industries, ideological somersaults, and even nephews returning from Bengaluru craving spaghetti aglio e olio. But let fish and meat become uncertain, and Bengal could quickly remind everyone that there are limits to what voters will calmly absorb. At least that is what TMC hopes for.Let us, then, assume the warning comes true. Let us imagine a Bengal in which fish, meat and eggs must be discussed in hushed tones, like forbidden books or taboo marriages. In Shyambazar, a man who has never heard of Alfred Marshall will begin, quite instinctively, to calculate the shadow price of mutton. In Gariahat, an aunt who thinks economists are just over-educated idiots will suddenly understand supply elasticity while shopping for paneer. Para adda, the unofficial upper house of Bengal’s democracy, will have long discussions about whether India is entering an era of protein-based federalism and whether this is how societies end. If golda chingri and ilish can no longer be eaten in their rightful emotional geography, what purpose does federalism serve?AdvertisementOne would think that the fish and goats of Bengal will finally gain the national attention they have long been denied. Panels will meet. Experts will speak. Academics and think tanks will produce reports titled “Caprine and Piscine Futures in an Era of Dietary Uncertainty.” In evening debates across ABP to Republic, animated speakers will wonder if Bengal’s political shift has opened a historic supply-side opportunity for Jharkhand and Odisha.Basic economics, unfortunately, is unsentimental. If the “Maache-Bhaat e Bangali” is legislated away — a nearly impossible task, but let us indulge the idea — the fish and goats of Bengal must go somewhere. After all, Bengal is the highest and second-highest producer of goat meat and fish in India, respectively. Supply, freed from the tyranny of Bengali hunger and culinary romance, will flow to adjacent markets. In Ranchi and Bhubaneswar, the probashi Bengalis may be destined to reap windfall gains from more affordable fish and mutton.Golbari, the 104-year-old temple of dark, slow-cooked kosha mangsho, for instance, may transform from a restaurant into a heritage site. Meanwhile, at Arsalan and Aminia, the faithful Kolkata biryani lovers will mourn, left with just rice and potatoes! Bhojohori Manna will have to sell memories without protein. Tangra, which offers the most persuasive proof that Kolkata never believed in culinary borders anyway, will have to rebrand its identity from the sumptuous chilli chicken to contemplative cabbage and tragic tofu.Even the cherished Mohun Bagan-East Bengal derbies, long fuelled by fish rivalries (Ghotis cheering for golda chingri while Bangals swearing by ilish), would lose their pre-match sizzle, not to mention the post-match price surge of the victorious fish.you may likeAnd yet, a wiser forecast would be that Bengal will do what Bengal has always done when confronted with a moral conundrum: Argue passionately, adjust skillfully, and eat wholeheartedly. Family WhatsApp groups will acquire the tense seriousness of war rooms. “Come over on Sunday” will mean one thing in public and something else in private. Pressure cookers will whistle warily, as if part of a secret movement. Kosha mangsho will be traded like samizdat — talked about in whispers, with reverence, and with exact directions on where to find it. The “vegetarian Bengali” will continue to be what it has always been — language’s most notable oxymoron.Mamata Banerjee has set out to frighten the Bengal electorate with the spectre of a vegetarian plate. The BJP, for its part, seems to have sensed the terrain and, with admirable speed, has begun to signal the opposite. The party has suddenly discovered the electoral usefulness of fish, mutton, and the occasional well-timed statements about dietary choices, including the promise of a non-vegetarian Chief Minister. This, in the long and inventive history of Indian electoral promises, may mark the first manifesto promise that directly addresses the destiny of fish and goats, apart from the disillusioned electorate. The fish, the goat, and the Bengali voter now eagerly await the outcome — the first two with rather more personal anxiety than the third.Nandy is Associate Professor of Economics & Public Policy at IIM Ranchi, and Kundu is Assistant Professor of Finance at IMI, Kolkata. Views are personal