Burrabazar (also spelt Bara Bazar) is a neighbourhood in central Kolkata, earlier known as Calcutta, in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is an assembly constituency. Burrabazar expanded from a yarn and textile market into the commercial nucleus of Kolkata and one of the largest wholesale markets in India.

Burrabazar (Hindi: बडा बजार) is a Hindi word meaning big market. In Bengali, it is called Barobazar, (Bengali: বড় বাজার), the meaning remaining same. However, there is another theory. The neighbourhood was earlier named after ‘Buro’, the popular name of Shiva. The Hindi-speaking merchants who ousted the earlier local merchants, made it ‘Bara’.

Before the British came the most powerful families in the region were Sett and Bysacks, the merchants of yarn and cloth market at Sutanuti. With the arrival of the British these families flourished with renewed vigour. Janardan Sett was a trading agent of the British. Shobharam Bysack (1690-1773) became a millionaire by supplying textiles to British East India Company.One of the earliest names floating around is that of Mukundaram Sett, who lived in the earlier part of sixteenth century and moved from Satgaon to Gobindapur.Sutanuti haat has been traced back to 1738 by Orme. In the siege of 1756, troops of Siraj ud-Daulah set fire to the market and took possession of Jorabagan and Kumortuli, neighbourhoods further north where the merchants lived.

Mamata Banerjee (Bengali: মমতা বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায়, pronounced [mɔːmoːt̪ʰaː bɛːnaːrjiː]; born 5 January 1955) is the 11th and current Chief Minister of West Bengal. She is the first woman to hold the office. Banerjee founded All India Trinamool Congress in 1997 and became chairperson, after separating from the Indian National Congress. She is usually called "Didi" (meaning elder sister). She is often cited by the media and critics to be as "megalomaniac, eccentric and populist politician".

Banerjee pulled off a landslide victory for the All India Trinamul Congress (AITMC ) or (TMC) in West Bengal by defeating the world's longest-serving democratically-elected communist government, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front government, bringing to an end 34 years of Left Front rule in the state. Banerjee previously served as a Minister of Railways twice, Minister of Coal, and Minister of State for Human Resource Development, Department of Youth Affairs and Sports and Women and Child Development in the cabinet of the Indian government. She opposed forceful land acquisition for industrialisation by the then communist government in West Bengal for Special Economic Zones at the cost of agriculturalists and farmers.