The human development achievements and challenges in West Bengal in recent decades are charted out, focusing mainly on health and school education, using various government reports and secondary data available from different sources. For a long while, the state’s health outcome indicators have been significantly above the all-India average, whereas its educational attainment indicators have not only been below average but have also improved slowly. An attempt has been made to relate the observations to the literature that sees sub-national development issues in India through a political economy lens.