Bengal deadliest recorded cyclones. West Bengal became one of India's most populous states. Calcutta, the former capital of the British Raj, became the state capital of West Bengal and continued to be India's largest city until the late 20th century, when severe power shortages, strikes and a violent Marxist-Naxalite movement damaged much of the state's infrastructure in the 1960s and 70s, leading to a period of economic stagnation. West Bengal politics underwent a major change when the Left Front won the 1977 assembly election, defeating the incumbent Indian National Congress. The Left Front, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry partition of India and the partition of Bengal in 1947, with West Bengal becoming part of the new Union of India and East Bengal going to Pakistan. Despite this, changes in the Chamber were later described as "slow and incremental". New businesses joined the Chamber, and its first Indian President of the new era was elected in 1958. It developed from a gentlemen's club of able merchants whose chief concern was with trade into a modern organization with as much concern for industry as for trade. Whereas the officers and committee members had previously been the owners of capital, they