KOLKATA SLUMS

KOLKATA SLUMS
Hubs of Hope & Dignity
DIMITRA STASINOPOULOU

Nothing can be more heartbreaking than the
definition of slum, which according to the
census is ‘A residential area where dwellings
are unfit for human habitation by reasons of
dilapidation, overcrowding … lack of ventilation,
light or sanitation facility’. Slums are the
entry points of the poor into cities. Migration
of millions proves that villagers see slums as
being hubs of opportunity and dignity- sometimes
slums are better off than villages and
have generated thousands of small but thriving
businesses. Once they migrate to towns,
they escape the caste discrimination and
landowner-dependency of rural India. They
earn far more in towns than in villages,
and the money they send home frees their
relatives from historical dependence on village
feudatories. The poor can enter cities only
through existing or new shanty-towns. This
is illegal, yet fully accepted by politicians as a
legitimate form of entry. So, shanty-towns are
frequently regularized before election time.
Slums are classified in three categories:
notified, recognized and identified, of which
identified slums (have the largest population)
are legally not given the status of a slum.
So, basically a third of the slum population
remains unrecognized. Sharing a small house
with not one but six to seven members is a
common scene of the slums. Most of these
households have one room or are being shared
with another family. Water supply comes once
a day and only lasts for few hours. Others are
built next to train tracks, with children playing
while their parents cook and clean in makeshift
bamboo huts constructed beside the rail lines.
Despite the negativities, the slums happen
to be the hub for recycling and production
of goods.
India is a rising economic power, even as
huge portions of its economy operate in the
shadows. Its “formal” economy consists of businesses
that pay taxes, adhere to labor regulations
and burnish the country’s global image.
India’s “informal” economy is everything else:
the hundreds of millions of shopkeepers,
farmers, construction workers, taxi drivers,
street vendors, rag pickers, tailors, repairmen,
middlemen and more. Experts estimate that
the informal sector is responsible for the overwhelming
majority of India’s annual economic
growth and as much as 90 percent of all
employment. The informal economy exists
largely outside government oversight and, in
the case of slums, without government help
or encouragement.
A major characteristic of the slums is that they
resemble rural centers in an urban milieu. They
began as ‘entry points’ for immigrants to the
city, and tended to duplicate the closeness
and structuring of social life in the village, even
reflecting the earlier occupational background
of the dwellers.
Despite the insanitary conditions and
crowding, life here is generally well-organized,
relatively free of serious crime, and co-operative.
This is partly because of the essentially
rural organization of the slum’s social life, but
also because, as the urban problems of scarcity
and lack of opportunity and mobility have
developed around them, slum dwellers have
been desperate not to lose this last foothold
they have left.
There is a slum area located in Kolkata
where despite of the adverse conditions and
wretched circumstances, the slum dwellers are
facing hunger, deplorable living conditions,
illness, bone breaking work, or no work at all,
but still hold on to the belief that life is precious
and worth living. So much, that they named
their slum “Anand Nagar”, which translated into
English means “City of Joy”. They have learnt
how to live happily, supporting each other, and
seeing the bright side. Kolkata is rightly called
the “City of Joy” for the exuberance and vitality
it exudes.
With an estimated third of Kolkata’s population
living in slums, traveling around the city was
a real assault on the senses, an eye-opening,
provocative experience. The poverty in the
slums was hugely evident, but I was greeted
with smiles. It is among the poor that you often
find the greatest generosity of spirit. It is those
who have next to nothing who seem most

willing to share. I attempted to capture with
my lens, the humble breath hidden below all
that wretchedness: the human dignity of these
people, their sweetness and their optimism.
In India I saw something I would have never
thought was possible — I saw unity in poverty.
The people in the slums seem to have few
problems with each other — they face enough
problems as it is. Citizens living in the slums
demonstrated no hatred or violence towards
each other or me, a visitor within their country.
The streets were filled with people walking as
if they did not have any fear of anyone
harassing or harming them. They always keep
hope alive, no matter what problems they
face. Hope. Hope is essential in poverty, just as
much as unity.
My time in Kolkata was hugely fulfilling and
enlightening. The city streets have many tales
to tell, all of which redefine the power to live.
Kolkata breathes the genesis of strength,
courage, fortitude. A power that stirs the inner
resonances of the humble, homely and creative
legacy of a beautiful old city.
THE CITY OF KOLKATA
Former Capital of British India until 1911, the
River Port City of Kolkata in eastern India is the
State Capital of West Bengal, 175 klm upstream
from the Bay of Bengal. Some 300 years back,
Job Charnok of the British East India Trading
Company took lease of three villages on
the eastern bank of River Hoogly, namely,
Kalikotha, Govindapur and Sutanuti from the
Roychowdhuries of Sabarna and the City of
Calcutta, now Kolkata came into existence,
deriving the name from the village Kalikotha
(the abode of Goddess Kali).
One of India’s largest metropolises with around
15 million people, it is the epicenter of rich
Bengali culture and tradition and is now aptly
projected as the Gateway to the Eastern Hemisphere.
Kolkata was instrumental in India’s struggle
for independence. Visionaries like Swami Vivekanada,
Raja Rammohan Roy, Nobel Laureate
World Poet Rabindranath Tagore, a great charismatic
leader like Netaji Subhas Shandra
Bose, Scientists Jagadish Chandra Bose and
Prof. Satyen Bose and the maestro filmmaker
Satyajit Ray, all belong to the City, along with
other distinguished and eminent personalities
from different spheres of life like dancer Udayshankar
and his brother sitar maestro Ravishankar,
Nobel Laureate economist Amartya
Sen and the creator of Indrajaal, the magician
per excellence P.C. Sorcar Sr. They all
made Kolkata proud and famous. To the outer
world, Kolkata is also famous as the City where
Mother Teresa lived and died serving the poor
and the destitute.
PLACES VISITED
Flower Market: It can also be termed as
Heritage Market. Beneath the east end of
Howrah Bridge, Mullick Ghat Kolkata Flower
Market is eastern India’s largest flower market
with hundreds of stalls. Around 2,000 flower
growers from the surrounding areas come
to sell their flowers and garlands. During the
wedding and festive season this number
is doubled.
Hooghly River, the last arm of the Ganges
and Howrah Bridge: Cruising up the Hooghly
River to discover the unseen side of Kolkata
with a ring-side view of the myriad happenings
on the river’s ghats. Howrah Bridge in Kolkata
spans over river Hooghly and is considered
to be a marvelous engineering work by the
British. It was completed in 1943 and it took
nearly seven long years to construct it.
Kumartuli: This unique artisan village dates
back 400 years, one of the oldest of its kind
in the world. Around 250 artists work to
produce 40,000 idols a year, including 3500
images of Durga. With more than a thousand
workers assisting the artisans, Kumartuli is a
mini industry.
Book Market & College Street: Kolkatans are
well-known for their passion for books and
this area is a treasure for the city’s book lovers.
You can find them every day spending hours
browsing through the loads of new books
or bargaining for buying a second hand one.
Some of the Kolkata’s most renowned academic
institutions like Kolkata University, Presidency
College, Kolkata Medical College and Sanskrit
College are also located in College Street.
Indian Coffee House: Also known as “Albert
Hall”, this is the most favorite gathering place
for writers, intellectuals, artists and students
for many decades. Casual chatting for hours
about any issue is the favorite social activity of
any Bengali and here in this large historical and
legendary café.
Mother Teresa’s House and the Missionaries
of Hope: Known in the Catholic Church as Saint
Teresa of Calcutta. In 1950, Teresa founded the
Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic religious
congregation, which in 2012 consisted of
over 4,500 sisters and was active in 133 countries.
The Mother House of the Missionaries
of Charity, located at 54A, A.J.C. Bose Road,
Kolkata, has been home to Mother Teresa and
her sisters from February 1953 to the present
day. It is here that Mother lived, prayed,
worked, and guided her religious family of
sisters spread across the world. It is here that
her body was laid to rest.

HOWRAH BRIDGE ON HOOGHLY RIVER

MULLIK GHAT FLOWER MARKET SLUM

FLOWER MARKET

PAIKARA BASTI SLUM

KAKURQACHI SLUM

PARK CIRCUS TRAIN STATION SLUM

TOPSIA SLUM

KAMARTULI POTTERY AREA

BOOK MARKET, COLLEGE STREET

INDIAN COFFEE HOUSE

HOWRAH TRAIN STATION

MOTIJHEED SLUM

DUM DUM AREA

HOOGHLY RIVER & HOWRAH BRIDGE

NIGHT FLOWER MARKET

DHAPA AREA

RURAL KOLKATA- BAWALI VILLAGE

NODOKALI VILLAGE

Gregory David Roberts, in his book, Shantaram, in a gorgeous,
humane description of India, describes what he felt seeing
the slums where millions of economically-ravaged people try
to make a life for themselves:
“ … For the first sight of the slums, clutched at my heart with
talons of shame. The miserable shelters were patched together
from rugs, scraps of plastic and paper, reed mats, and bamboo
sticks. They slumped together, attached one to another and
with narrow lanes winding between them. Nothing in the
enormous sprawl of it rose much above the height of a man.
My first impression was that some catastrophe had taken place,
and that the slums were refugee camps for the shambling
survivors. I learned, months later, that they were survivors, of
course, those slum-dwellers: the catastrophes that had driven
them to the slums from their villages were poverty, famine and
bloodshed. And five thousand new survivors arrived in the city
every week, week after week, year after year. As the kilometers
wound past, as the hundreds of people in those slums became
thousands and tens of thousands, my spirit writhed. I felt it
at all; it is a lacerating guilt, that first confrontation with the
wretched of the earth. Then the smolders of shame and guilt
flamed into anger, became fist-tightening rage at the unfairness
of it: What kind of a government, I thought, what kind of
a system allows suffering like this? But the slums went on kilometer
after kilometer, relieved only by the awful contrast of
the thriving businesses and crumbling, moss covered apartment
buildings. A kind of wonder possessed me. I began to
look beyond the immensity of the slum societies and to see
the people who lived within them. A woman stopped to brush
forward the black stain psalm of her hair. Another bathed her
children with water from a copper dish. A man led three goats
with red ribbons tied to the collars at their throats. Another
man shaved himself at a cracked mirror. Children played
everywhere. Men carried water in bucks. Men made repairs to
one of the huts. And everywhere that I looked, people smiled
and laughed. I looked at the people then, and I saw how busy
they were-how much industry and energy described their
lives. Occasional sudden glimpses inside the huts revealed
the astonishing cleanliness of that poverty. The spotless floors
and glistening metal pots in neat, tapering towels. And then,
last, what should’ve been first, I saw how beautiful they were:
the women wrapped in crimson, blue and gold; the women
walking barefoot through the tangled shabbiness of the slum
with patient, ethereal grace, the white toothed, almond eyed
handsomeness of the men; and the affectionate camaraderie
of the fine limbed children, older ones playing with younger
ones, many of them supporting baby brothers and sisters on
their slender hips. And half an hour after the bus ride began, I
smiled for the first time...” To my eyes, the city was beautiful. It
was wild and exciting. Buildings that were British Raj-romantic
stood side to side with modern, mirrored business towers. I
heard music from every ship and passing taxi. The colors were
vibrant. The fragrances were dizzyingly delicious. And there
were more smiles in the eyes on those crowded streets than in
any other place I’d ever known. Above all else, Bombay is freeexhilaratingly
free. I saw that liberated unconstrained spirit
wherever I looked and I found myself responding to it with the
whole of my heart. Even the flare of shame I’d felt when I first
saw the slums and the street beggars dissolved in the understanding
that they were free, those men and women. No one
banished the slum-dwellers. Painful as their lives were, they
were free to live them in the same gardens and avenues as the
rich and powerful. The city was free. I loved it.”