West Bengal is a state in eastern regions of India and is the nation's fourth most populous. It is also the seventh most populous sub-national entity in the world. West Bengal is the third largest contributor to India's GDP and has the second-largest number of voters in India. West Bengal, together with Bangladesh lying on its east, forms the historical and geographical region of Bengal. To its northeast lie the states of Assam and Sikkim and the country Bhutan, and to its southwest lies the state of Orissa. To the west it borders the states of Jharkhand and Bihar, and to the northwest, Nepal.

The Bengal region was part of several kingdoms and dynasties of the Indian history. The British East India Company cemented their hold on the region following the Battle of Plassey in 1757, and the city of Calcutta, now Kolkata, served for many years as the capital of British India. A hotbed of the Indian independence movement through the early 20th century, Bengal was divided in 1947 along religious lines into two separate entities, West Bengal—a state of India, and East Bengal, a part of the new nation of Pakistan which later became Bangladesh. Following India's independence in 1947, West Bengal's economic and political systems were dominated for many decades by Marxism, Naxalite movements and trade unionism.

An agriculture-dependent state, West Bengal occupies only 2.7% of the India's land area, though it supports over 7.8% of the Indian population, and is the most densely populated state in India. West Bengal has had Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front rule for three decades, making it the world's longest-running democratically elected communist government. Despite recent economic advancement, West Bengal remains one of the poor states in India, stricken by political instability and bad governance, political culture of strikes/bandhs,abysmal health care services, poor infrastructure and high corruption with lawlessness. According to leading Economists West Bengal is by far the least industrialized and underdeveloped state as compared to other metropolitan states, where industrialization and economic development is relatively very high.