Mamata is on a safe wicket, never mind the unrest in the City of Joy

The phrase “stoop to conquer” could well have been coined to sum up West Bengal Chief Minister and prime ministerial-aspirant Mamata Banerjee’s smart handling of the civil disobedience movement which hasn’t lost steam since the horrific rape and death of a woman trainee doctor inside Kolkata’s government-run R. G. Kar Medical College and Hospital on August 9.

- S N M ABDI

Despite battling unprecedented street protests for 80 days and counting — arguably a national record for a mass agitation — Mamata is on top of the situation. She remains the boss, thank you!

There is no doubt biplob, or rebellion, in the Kolkata air these days. The widespread anger against the administration is evident from the sloganeering, long processions and even longer human chains, demonstrations by groups of women at night, defiant street theatre and poetry, and plunging entire localities into darkness by switching off lights to display people’s ire. A big chunk of mourners even refused to celebrate Durga Puja with the traditional gaiety and pomp associated with Bengal’s biggest annual religious festival, despite impassioned pleas by the powers that be to shelve their sorrow-cum-anger out of respect for the goddess.

The all too evident waning trust in the Trinamool Congress government is especially significant because Mamata’s party gave the principal opposition, the Bhararatiya Janata Party, a bloody nose in the Lok Sabha elections barely a few months ago. The BJP won only 12 seats compared to 18 in 2019. Moreover, the Trinamool Congress won all the four assembly by-elections soon after the parliamentary polls, underlining its dominance and the BJP’s declining fortunes despite all-out efforts by heavyweights like Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, not to speak of a bevy of BJP chief ministers, to somehow wrest West Bengal.