National Forum | NYT on Mamata Banerjee: The Eye of an Indian Hurricane, Eager to Topple a Political Establishment

The Eye of an Indian Hurricane, Eager to Topple a Political Establishment

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/world/asia/15india.html?
pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

By JIM YARDLEY
Published: January 14, 2011

Sanjit Das for The New York Times

Mamata Banerjee, the leader of the All-India Trinamool Congress, in Calcutta.
THE door opened, and out came Didi, as everyone knows her. Didi means
Big Sister, but Mamata Banerjee is hardly big, at least in size. She
is barely five feet, dressed plainly in a simple cotton sari and
plastic sandals. Yet, as she stepped out of her tiny house, Didi began
barking orders that sent her covey of male aides into a solicitous
tizzy. It was time to wage her political insurgency.

"Go! Go! Go!" she shouted as she slid into a small black car and the
driver lurched into the tumult of a city of 15 million people. "First,
we are going to the hospital!"

It was last Sunday, and like almost every other day during the last
two decades, Ms. Banerjee, 56, continued her unswerving pursuit of
toppling one of the most entrenched political machines in the world.
The Communist-led Left Front government has won seven consecutive
elections and dominated the state of West Bengal for more than 30
years even as the state, once an intellectual and economic capital of
India, has suffered a gradual decline.

Now, with new elections expected to be called no later than May, the
Left Front appears on the verge of being beaten by a woman who, quite
against convention and expectation, is emerging as one of the most
powerful and unpredictable politicians in India. If Ms. Banerjee wins,
she will join a group of regional leaders whose successes are
reshaping the Indian political map.

"We have been fighting this battle for a long time, since my student
days," she said as the small black car sped through the streets of
Calcutta. "We have been the only and lonely people who have opposed
them."

There are 90 million people in West Bengal, more than in Germany, and
for many of them Ms. Banerjee is the blunt instrument knocking down
their own Berlin Wall. Her admirers regard her as an elemental force
as much as a politician. She is unmarried, and when asked what she
does for entertainment, or whether she likes to travel, she seemed
incredulous. "Entertainment?" she said, repeating the word. "In my
life?"

HER ideology is simple, if rigid: getting rid of the Left Front and
the Communist Party of India-Marxist, or C.P.M., the majority party in
the front. Yet, despite the tingly anticipation of change and the
palpable excitement among many voters, even some of Didi's most ardent
supporters admit to a slightly nervous question:

Is West Bengal's blunt instrument also capable of governing the state?

"What are Mamata's politics?" asked Mahasweta Devi, one of Calcutta's
most famous intellectuals. "It is very difficult to say. We've seen
that she is against the C.P.M. Nothing more than that."

And for now, that is what matters.

Now to the hospital. In West Bengal, politics is often waged like war,
and a bloody battle has just occurred. Two days earlier near the
village of Netai, at least seven villagers were killed and others were
wounded outside an armed camp controlled by the C.P.M. These camps,
scattered across the state, are deeply controversial: the party says
the camps are for combating the Maoist rebels steadily encroaching
into the countryside, but critics, including Ms. Banerjee, say the
camps serve the political purposes of the C.P.M. by intimidating
villagers during the lead-up to the state elections.

She had already driven overnight to the scene of the shooting and then
returned to Calcutta for a rally the previous night with almost
100,000 people. At the rally, as smoke floated over the dais and
balloon-tied banners bearing her face floated into the air, she blamed
the Left Front for the killings and reminded the crowd, if indirectly,
that she, too, had felt the blows of political violence. It is the
crucible of her political story.

The daughter of a teacher, Ms. Banerjee joined the student wing of the
Indian National Congress Party while attending a women's college in
Calcutta. By the late 1970s, the C.P.M. had taken control of West
Bengal and Ms. Banerjee was a rising star of the opposition, having
won a seat in Parliament and later serving in ministerial positions in
New Delhi. But as the Congress Party began to reach out to the Left
Front as a potential coalition partner, Ms. Banerjee bolted to form
her own party, the All-India Trinamool Congress. Barely a year later,
while leading a march near her home, her skull was fractured by a
C.P.M. cadre, leaving her hospitalized for months.

"They have attacked me many times," she said, explaining why her
politics are so personal. As her car moved through traffic, she rolled
back her sari to show long scars on both elbows. She touched a spot on
her jaw where the skin was repaired by plastic surgery. "From my belly
to my back to my eyes," she said. "I'm covered in these things."

AT the hospital, television cameras surrounded her. Victims from the
Netai attack had been transferred here for medical care, and she was
making an inspection. Inside the hospital, overflow patients draped in
dirty red blankets were lying in the hallways as she swept by. Men
were almost running to keep pace. When she reached the victims, she
did not smile or offer the usual politician gestures of empathy but
instead delivered a stern message for the medical staff.

"Are you taking care of them?" she asked in Bengali.

Then she was gone, back through the hallways, back outside for a few
words for the cameras and then back into the small black car.

"Go! Go! Go!" she shouted as faces and cameras pressed against the
window, and the car slowly moved forward.

Now she is smiling, giggling even. The small black car has delivered
her to the W. B. National University of Juridical Sciences at the edge
of the city. More television cameras are waiting as Ms. Banerjee
sweeps inside to join a panel discussion of election reform. The panel
is filled with New Delhi heavyweights: the head of the national
election commission, the finance minister, the law minister, a few
others. She has slipped on a pair of gold-rimmed glasses and whispers
something into the finance minister's ear, giggling. He seems to
grimace.

From New Delhi, the view of Didi is different, as if altered by a
different prism. For two decades, she has floated in and out of power
in India's capital, aligning her Trinamool Congress with different
coalition national governments while waging her real fight in West
Bengal. Her tenacity and almost Gandhian simplicity, if central to her
identity in West Bengal, are sometimes framed in a less flattering
light in India's capital, where many in the political class regard her
as erratic, immature or unpolished. Didi stories are fodder in the
Delhi newspapers; recently came a report that she had consulted a
numerologist, who had advised her to add an additional "a" to the end
of her name for good luck.

More pertinent are questions about her temperament for governance. In
the past, she has resigned from various ministerial positions and
staged acerbic protests on the floor of Parliament. Since 2009, the
Trinamool has been part of the governing national coalition and as a
dispensation, Ms. Banerjee was given leadership of the Railway
Ministry, allowing her to sprinkle patronage and projects on West
Bengal. Yet her critics point out that the railway budget is now in
disarray and blame her for focusing more on politics in West Bengal
than on the railways.

And yet in West Bengal, that suffices for the moment. At the
university, the election panel is a dull, dutiful affair until Ms.
Banerjee rises for her turn to speak. She is barely taller than the
lectern as she talks about democracy, the need for fair elections and
how the Left Front has dominated the state for so long.

"For 35 years, there has been no change," she says, as the audience
stirs. "This time, I think there will be."
--
Palash Biswas
Pl Read:
http://nandigramunited-banga.blogspot.com/