Mamata among Time's 100 most influential people

Kolkata, April 18 (IANS) Time magazine has listed West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in its list for 2012, sharing space with the likes of US President Barack Obama and billionaire investor Warren Buffet.

The magazine has described the people in the list as "who inspire us, entertain us, challenge us and change our world".

The list is topped by American basketball player Jeremy Shu-How Lin who plays for the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association (NBA).

"Mamata Banerjee rose to the fore last year when she and a movement she built from the grassroots wrested control of her home state of West Bengal, ending three and a half decades of sclerotic communist rule.

"Banerjee, 57, spent years struggling on the margins, her Trinamool Congress Party a feisty rabble compared with the leviathan of West Bengal's communists," said the magazine about the leader.

Describing her achievements, the magazine goes on say: "On the streets, she out-Marxed the Marxists. And as chief minister of her home state, she has emerged as a populist woman of action - strident and divisive but poised to play an even greater role in the world's largest democracy."

The other Indian to feature in the list is Anjali Gopalan - the founder and executive director of The Naz Foundation (India) Trust, an NGO dedicated to the fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic in India.