With 54 women among the 144 councillors in the Calcutta Municipal Commission (CMC) elected on Tuesday, will the city be ruled differently?

"Forty four per cent of the councillors elected to the new Calcutta Municipal Corporation from Trinamul are women," Mamata Banerjee has exulted.

Will the puromatas (civic mothers), as opposed to the puropitas (civic fathers), rule with greater compassion, sympathy, transparency, honesty and efficiency - the last coming from their experience of running households - as a school of thought suggests?

Will the potholes be smoothened out of roads at last with tender loving care? Will the streets be patted dry of waterlogging with alacrity? Will the neighbourhood's trees be watched over with anxious eyes and not be felled because they are standing in the way of an upcoming multi-storeyed?

Will the city feel more loved?

The women bring in with them to the new body a lot of confidence, professional experience and in many cases, great fashion sense, but also old stereotypes: of women being nicer, cleaner (especially morally), greener and more committed individuals than men, even if some of them are proxy candidates for the men in their families. But the gender roles do not seem to be weighing down the women so much.

The city may end up feeling a little more loved, if the women have their way, but most of them look at themselves first as individuals invested with a lot of power, and since 38 among the 54 are Trinamul party members, as Didi's soldiers.

The CPM has 11 women councillors, the BJP has three while the Congress has two women in the newly elected CMC board.

Sudarshana Mukherjee of Trinamul of Ward 68 (Ballygunge), a young, sprightly former television journalist, and a first-timer with no political training, just says "Monsoons!", when asked about her role as a woman councillor.

Mukherjee, who met Mamata Banerjee at her residence and was told to work hard, is worried about the obstinate levels of water that collect in her ward during the rainy season, which is now almost always.

She is keen to reach out to every resident in her ward and is preparing a "Thank you" note that will be dropped at every household, something probably a woman would be more comfortable doing, but thinks that waterlogging, drainage, slum development and roads affect councillors of both genders equally.

Paramita Chatterjee of Trinamul was elected from Ward 84 for the second time. She is the wife of Trinamul leader Arup Chatterjee, who was councillor of the ward five times.

She wants to improve the duration of the supply of drinking water in her area and raise the height of roads in certain stretches.

Otherwise address the "normal wear and tear" that any area is subject to.

She does not think being a woman makes any difference. She had worked in the corporate world, which was a great help, as was working alongside her husband for 25 years.

Plus a woman brings the lessons of running the household with her: in public life, they are applied on a greater field.

But things are not so tough for women, she says, because "they have changed for the better".

Because, she says, "of the leadership of Mamata Banerjee". As an afterthought she says that women are also sincere.

Jui Biswas of Ward 81 in New Alipore, who won for the second time, is also confident that being a woman makes no difference.

A relative of Trinamul leader Aroop Biswas, she too is keen on increasing the duration of drinking water supply and on building a community hall in the area.

She feels that women work as hard as men. Biswas, again with a corporate background, says she worked as a councillor by day and for the party later till the eighth month of her pregnancy, as she was used to working for eight to 12 hours.

She later admits that being a woman brought advantages: women, cutting across classes, felt more comfortable talking to another woman and they bring in more transparency, sincerity and better administration.

Then why did the 55 women in the previous CMC not make any discernible difference to the city in the last five years? Biswas said she had not looked at the women as a body; but this time she will.

But then they are all sharply defined as Didi's soldiers.

Do you think the women councillors will make a difference? Tell ttmetro@abpmail.com