Women, Fear and a Demand for Normalcy
By Manu Shrivastava
And Kolkata, this time, felt tired before it felt triumphant. Not defeated, not broken, just exhausted in the way cities become after carrying political tension in their bloodstream for too long.
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| Image is for representational purpose only |
Over three days, I spoke to women everywhere because women, more than political analysts or television studios, usually tell you what a state is really feeling. They speak not in ideology but in lived consequence. At bus stops, tea stalls, metro stations, outside colleges, inside crowded yellow taxis, beneath the fading colonial balconies of North Kolkata, there was one phrase that kept returning in different forms: 'Something had to change'.
At Jadavpur University, a political science student named Riya stirred her tea with visible impatience while talking about the last decade and a half. She was not speaking like a partisan supporter intoxicated by victory. She sounded like someone relieved after a long period of uncertainty. “We grew up with fear becoming normal,” she told me. “Every campus election felt dangerous and every protest felt like it could become violent. People stopped believing disagreement was safe.” Around her, students nodded without interrupting. That silence of agreement said more than slogans ever could.
Later that evening near College Street, a woman selling second-hand books laughed when I asked her if politics affects ordinary business. “Didi,” she said, pointing at the near-empty pavement, “politics affects whether we eat.” She spoke about extortion, local intimidation, fear of offending party workers, the invisible pressure that small traders carry every day but rarely articulate publicly. “People here stopped dreaming bigger,” she said. “Everyone just learnt how to survive.”
That sentence stayed with me longer than any campaign speech I heard in Bengal. Because beneath the noise of victory margins and television graphics lies the more important story. Bengal’s people do not merely want a new government, they want a new mood.
And moods matter in politics far more than experts admit.
For years, Mamata Banerjee occupied Bengal’s emotional centre with extraordinary force. She arrived as rebellion incarnate, as the woman who ended the seemingly eternal Left rule and restored energy to a politically-fatigued state. Many women I met still spoke about her first years with genuine affection. A garment factory employee in Howrah told me she had once cried listening to Mamata’s speeches because she represented “courage for women who never saw women in power.”
But admiration and fatigue can coexist. That is the complexity outsiders often miss about Bengal. The anger I encountered was not theatrical hatred, it was disappointment, which is always politically more dangerous because it comes from broken expectation, not opposition.
At a roadside momo stall near Park Street, two young women working night shifts at a private company spoke about leaving the state if opportunities did not improve. One of them asked me a question that sounded almost painfully simple. “Why can’t Kolkata feel ambitious again?” Not aggressive. Not ideological. Ambitious.
There it was again. Not merely anti-incumbency but a hunger for movement.
Everywhere we travelled, the conversation circled back to law and order. Hawkers spoke about syndicates in lowered voices. College students spoke about political intimidation as though it had become weather. Women commuters discussed safety with the practical resignation of people who have learnt not to expect institutional efficiency. The political change many celebrated was not described to me as revenge but as the possibility of normalcy. Perhaps, that is the most devastating verdict any electorate can deliver against a long-serving regime. Not fury. Fatigue.
On our final evening, as rain began collecting on tram tracks near Esplanade, I asked a flower seller whether she believed things would truly improve now. She adjusted the loose end of her saree, thought for a moment and replied with startling clarity. “Maybe not immediately. But at least now they know people can remove them.”
That sentence, more than anything else I heard in Kolkata, explained this election. Democracy survives not because governments win. Democracy survives because governments know they can lose.
As our cab crossed the illuminated Howrah Bridge on the way back to the airport, the city looked strangely lighter to me. Not because all its problems had vanished overnight. They had not. Bengal’s economic wounds are deep. Its political scars deeper but something intangible had shifted. The heaviness that settles over societies when power begins to feel permanent had cracked, even if only slightly.
