Meet the feisty, 5-foot-tall thorn in the side of India's prime minister
KOLKATA, India — Strings of flags showing one woman's smiling face zigzag back and forth above the old colonial streets of this city formerly known as Calcutta.
The same face appears on the side of Kolkata's city buses and on posters along the banks of a Ganges River branch. It even shows up in graffiti, as the face of a 10-armed Hindu goddess — and as Mother India, banishing Prime Minister Narendra Modi into the Bay of Bengal.
It's the face of Mamata Banerjee, the popular chief minister of West Bengal — a state in eastern India that's more populous than most countries. Banerjee governs about 100 million people.
Famous for her fiery speeches, welfare programs geared toward women and the simple white cotton saris she wears, Banerjee, 66, is beloved in her home state, especially among the poor and women. She preaches inclusivity and accuses Modi's Hindu nationalists of trying to divide Indians along sectarian lines.
It's a message that's worked for her at the polls: In May, Banerjee's center-left party, the All India Trinamool Congress, Modi's Bharatiya
