‘It Does Not Die’ – Urban Protest in Kolkata, 1987-2007

A political scientist and thinker talks about protest movements in his city, Kolkata, during the period from the late 1980s. The CPI(M)-led Left Front was elected to government in the state of West Bengal without interruption from 1977. It wielded enormous power over society. The turnaround finally came in 2007, with a wave of protest agitations that eventually allowed the opposition politician, Mamata Banerjee, to lead her party to electoral victory in 2011. At the time of the interview, in 2008, Samaddar talks about the ‘Mamata phenomenon’, locating the roots of her populist politics in the protest stream of the 1980s and 1990s. This period saw protest attempting to find its feet once again in the now blighted city. Samaddar points to the emergence of a new politics in the wake of the death of the old left politics. The conversation with Ranabir Samaddar helps one to better understand the political transformation in West Bengal, and also throws light on a way of thinking and a praxis whose roots lie in the robust civic and political life of that state.