What's behind Mamata's calm avatar amid barrage of protests at Oxford?

With Assembly elections a year away in West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee is not as feisty as she always has been. She is calmer, ready to hear the other side.

At least she showed her composure, holding onto her nerves at Oxford’s Kellogg College on Thursday, urging the protestors that she was willing to listen and answer. She said, “Please raise your voice, I will listen. This is a democracy.”

It's all fluff, say protestors

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee faced protests and sloganeering from a handful of SFI students in Oxford when she delivered her lecture about women empowerment at Kellogg College. She was even called a “liar” outrightly by the students, saying all her talk about investments into the state was mere fluff. They asked her to name the big companies which were ready to invest and not just rattle off figures and numbers. Some others asked her about politics of Muslim appeasement, and some asked her about the Hindutva agenda.

Mamata has been visiting the UK seeking more investments from the country and has talked about a possible restarting of a direct flight between Kolkata and London, as British Airways has shown interest.

Opposition gunning for Mamata

Given the impending Assembly elections, the Trinamool Congress has been laying the groundwork already. Getting investments into the state and employment for youths are high on their agenda. The Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS) held in February this year claims to have yielded 212 MoUs and Letter of intent, with investment proposals totalling Rs 4,40,595 crore, the CM had shared a post on X .

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But the Opposition is gunning for Mamata, questioning her about the 13 lakh crore investments in the state in the last 10 years that TMC claims to have brought to the state.

Despite Mamata’s earlier visits to the UK, Spain, and Dubai, no new investments have come to the state. Both BJP and CPM leaders have termed the recent BGBS event an illusion.

'Optical illusion event'

Leader of Opposition and BJP MLA Suvendu Adhikari had posted on X that the BGBS event was neither about business nor about anything global. “It’s a two-day optical illusion event, consciously wrapped up in glossy paper to hide the industrialisation drought of WB. With Mamata Banerjee at the helm of affairs, Bengal doesn’t and can’t mean business. BGBS is all about signing fake MOUs, showing vague Expression of Interests and issuing Letters of Intent that end up in the dustbin.”

The CPM had also come down heavily on Mamata saying that companies come and praise themselves at these summits but the business, investment figures and MoUs that they share have no realisation on ground.

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Further on, Mamata’s harping on self-entrepreneurship as recent as January at a public meeting in Malda, suggesting that tea shops could offer higher incomes than government jobs, has sparked criticism and evoked sharp reactions not only from the Opposition but common people as well with social media flooded with cryptic reactions to it.

'A liar'

This battle over investment spilled over into Thursday’s event at Oxford when the protesters raised slogans, displayed posters and called her “a liar,” while asking her about Tata’s investment and Tata’s withdrawal from Singur, which in fact catapulted Mamata to power in 2011, after 34 years of Left rule.

Mamata, however, maintained her composure and said she was willing to listen and answer all their queries. even saying, “Please raise your voice, I will listen. This is a democracy.” She, however, requested the protestors to not turn the event into a “political platform”.

In an apparent dig at CPM, she urged the protestors, who were from Student Federation of India (SFI-UK), to go home and make their party stronger in the state, rather than mar her event with political slogans. She was confronted with the mishandling of the RG Kar rape and murder case as well.

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High target

After her third term in power, Mamata has set a high target that of 215 out of 294 seats even as Opposition BJP and CPM both gear up to push her to a corner this time around, not only over investments, employment but also about the deepening discontent about law and order and safety and security women, following the gruesome rape and murder of the RG Kar junior doctor.

The protestors, from the Student Federation of India-UK, later tweeted their stand: “We opposed her blatant lies by asking her for evidence of the social development she claims to pioneer. We questioned her on her statements of victim-blaming and lethargy against the RG Kar incident. When Mamata Banerjee claimed to support the students and democratic rights in Bengal, we asked her why the students have not been able to hold university elections for the last 6 years. We asked why students at Jadavpur University are being tormented and attacked for demanding their rights to student democracy. When Banerjee claimed to have advanced women's empowerment in the state, we asked why female school dropout rate has increased by 19% in the last year.” Their posters questioned the 60 killed during local elections in 2023.

However, the protesters were not pushed out of the hall but escorted out of the hall by security personnel, who requested them to move out.

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Sharp contrast

This was in sharp contrast to the Victoria Memorial event in 2021 when people in the crowd had heckled Mamata and shouted “Jai Shri Ram" just as she had risen to give her speech on the occasion of the birth anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. She had refused to speak then.

The tragic rape and murder of junior doctor at RG Kar Medical College and the subsequent citizen protests had clearly rattled her, say political observers. The incident has definitely plunged the state in such a crisis, which Mamata may find hard to come out of. It poses as one of the toughest challenges to counter this poll season.

Political narrative

Romita Dutta, a political analyst based in Kolkata, told The Federal, “The SFI UK unit has come up with a press release debunking the tall claims Mamata made about inclusivity of social welfare programmes and women empowerment. Without mincing words, the press release has torn into some of the high points Mamata mentioned as achievements of her regime.

"The press release now has made it looks obvious as to who the protestors at the Kellogg College were and what had been their political motive. But all said and done, one cannot ignore the grain of truth embedded in the questions of the protestors. It's a fact and hard fact that the murder of a young doctor at R.G.Kar College had been an institutional crime.

"Again it is a fact that Tata Motors had to relocate their Nano small car factory from Singur to Sanand. Truth, however bitter it may be, is truth. There are many instances back home of Mamata reacting strongly to critical and unpleasant questions. A student was called Naxal, a farmer was branded as a Maoist sympathiser for asking her questions she didn't like to hear.

"Not habituated to taking critical questions, however, she did not seem to have lost her cool this time. Being an astute politician that she is, she brought the situation under control and soon her brigade got into action to label the incident as political and handiwork of Leftists and ultra Leftists. Not only that, a narrative has been set rolling that it was a political move to malign Bengal and its leader on the foreign soil. Maybe this narrative will pay off in days to come with the state Assembly election scheduled next year around this time.”

But this narrative of Leftists and ultra Leftists targeting her, may not hold much water as the outcry and organic protests over the rape was not just from the Opposition but from common people, making it one of the first and spontaneous anti-Mamata protest without any political backing.

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Core voters

And women, who are the core voters of Mamata, were helming the protests, as they felt let down by the administration’s response to such a heinous crime. The scale of protests last year had made Mamata realise that such an uprising could be catastrophic for her political future.

She has invested heavily amongst women voters, wooing them with welfare programmes like Laxmi Bhandar and Kanyashree schemes, thus projecting her as a leader working single-mindedly for the upliftment of women, especially rural women.

Mamata’s welfarism costs Rs 25,000 crore annually and she claims to have brought governance delivery to people’s doorstep. Critics also say her welfare schemes are a drain on the exchequer at a time when the state faces financial distress.

Growing discontent

But the scale of protests during the RG Kar case clearly unnerved her, underscoring the growing discontent with Mamata’s governance. Women who have been loyal supporters are now questioning her ability to ensure their safety and this perception of her government's inability to provide safety could lead to significant shift in votes, particularly amongst women.

Also Read: Bengal: Mamata lashes out at Suvendu in Assembly over ‘Muslim MLAs’ remark

Not just protests but internal factionalism in the party is also proving another headache for Mamata. There have been reports that her nephew and party general secretary Abhishek Banerjee has had differences with Mamata.The rift came out in the open as he mostly maintained silence during the protests, except for a few posts on X denouncing the heinous crime and expressing solidarity with the protestors.

But taking on challenges comes naturally to Mamata. That began with taking on CPI (M) heavyweight Somnath Chatterjee in 1984 during her political debut or stopping the mighty and powerful BJP’s juggernaut with a landslide victory in the most keenly contested elections in 2021. Till now the story has been one of triumph for this Banglar meye (Bengal’s daughter). She has the determination to go to great lengths, to fight till the end and make the most of any fight.

'Khela hobe'

In the last elections, "Didi," as she is fondly called, threw a challenge to the formidable BJP, coming up with a popular slogan “Khela Hobe,” in which she romped home with a remarkable majority.

Mamata is now 70, a little frail perhaps and little less temperamental now, but has become a lot grittier politically, evolving over the ages. Handling her detractors, Mamata waits to create history, eyeing a fourth straight term. But before that she needs to get her act together even as the next round of electoral “Khela” gets into motion.