BBC World reports: The state, once India's intellectual and commercial capital, had drifted through decades of industrial decline and political fatigue.At the time, The New York Times memorably called her "the blunt instrument knocking down their own Berlin Wall". And Time magazine named her among the world's 100 most influential people.Banerjee's rise was forged in Bengal's combative political culture, where elections often resemble prolonged street wars - her supporters called her the "fire goddess".Born to a lower middle class family in Kolkata, Banerjee entered politics through the student wing of the Congress party.
By the 1980s she had become one of the state's most visible anti-communist faces, eventually breaking away from Congress to form the TMC.AFP via Getty ImagesBanerjee addresses her supporters after sweeping to power in 2011 The violence of Bengal politics shaped her too. In 1990, during a protest march, she was allegedly assaulted by Communist cadres and hospitalised with a fractured skull. The episode helped forge the persona she would cultivate for decades: part street fighter, part martyr - a perpetual insurgent even in power.Banerjee's ascent accelerated dramatically after her opposition to the proposed Tata Motors car factory in Singur and land acquisition in Nandigram by the Communist government in 2007.Casting herself as a defender of farmers against forced industrialisation, she won fierce loyalty among rural and poorer voters.
Background
But the protests also alienated much of the urban middle class and business elite, who accused her of driving investment out of West Bengal."Mamata, like [Prime Minister and BJP leader] Narendra Modi, has been a politician all her life," says Mukulika Banerjee, an anthropologist at the London School of Economics. But charisma rarely sustains political systems forever.Political scientist Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya once described Bengal under the Communists as a "party society", where the party became embedded in everyday rural life and livelihoods. Banerjee's party inherited this structure but transformed it.
Key facts
- In 1990, during a protest march, she was allegedly assaulted by Communist cadres and hospitalised with a fractured skull.
- Banerjee's party inherited this structure but transformed it.
- The state's debt deepened, while the central bank estimated that just four of her welfare schemes for women consumed nearly a quarter of its own-source revenue.
What this means
Unlike the disciplined cadre organisation of the Communists, Banerjee's party revolved around her own charisma and authority.Bhattacharyya described the TMC as a kind of political "franchisee model": local strongmen, and grassroots leaders were allowed to expand their influence - and often their business interests - in exchange for loyalty to Banerjee. "The franchise model has made the TMC vulnerable," Bhattacharyya presciently wrote in 2023."Its leaders' voracious appetite for material gains has made transactional interests undermine even a pretence of ethical politics, straining the party's bonding with the people."Under Banerjee, Bengal was also grappling with a mounting financial crisis.
The state's debt deepened, while the central bank estimated that just four of her welfare schemes for women consumed nearly a quarter of its own-source revenue. "Since first winning in the late 1980s, Mamata without office or authority is something Bengal politics has rarely seen."Sondeep Shankar/Getty ImagesBanerjee at an election campaign for the Congress party in Kolkata in 1991Writing the political obituary of the 71-year-old leader may still be premature. Even so, this defeat could mark a more fundamental rupture than the crises she has survived before.Mukulika Banerjee argues that politicians like Mamata thrived in what was once a "reasonably level playing field".
Originally reported by BBC World. This story has been edited and re-presented by BRIC Team.
