Shadows of the city: The daily struggle of Kolkata’s pavement dwellers (1971–2011)
Kolkata’s pavements have never been empty spaces. For decades, they have been homes to migrants, workers and families who remained invisible even though their labour sustained the city. Today’s eviction drives bring an old question back into focus: whose city is Kolkata?
Just as Kolkata’s pavements are centres of transit and commerce during the day, when night falls, a different, helpless population comes to sleep there. Those who have no place to call their own address, whose lives are spent under the open sky, in the shadow of flyovers, beside railway tracks—it is these people who, in formal terminology, are 'pavement dwellers'. In the eyes of the city, these almost invisible people are also, in reality, an indispensable part of Kolkata's economy.
It is difficult to determine the precise total number of pavement dwellers in Kolkata. This is because they continuously relocate and often conceal their true identity out of fear of the administration. Even so, various surveys have provided an approximate picture of this population. According to the 1971 Census, the number of pavement dwellers in the city of Kolkata was nearly 50,000.
Pavement shelter near Metro project work, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Road, 1975
In a detailed survey conducted by the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) in 1976, this figure was slightly less than 48,800. In the survey titled 'Socio-Economic Survey of Pavement Dwellers in Calcutta' conducted by the Calcutta Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA) in 1987, the number obtained was 55,571. In the first phase of this survey, a complete enumeration was conducted at night across the 185-square-kilometre Kolkata Municipal Corporation area. According to the 2011 Census, this number stood at nearly 69,798, which is about 1.55 percent of the total population of Kolkata city. It can be understood from these statistics that the number of pavement dwellers is consistently increasing, particularly as the trend of city population growth and rural-to-urban migration persists. A pavement dweller does not mean an inhabitant of pavements alone. According to the definition in the KMDA's 1987 survey, they reside on footpaths, open verandas, under flyovers, on railway station platforms, inside abandoned large pipes, in the courtyards of religious places, and many among them even spend the night atop the handcarts or rickshaws they pull during the day. According to data from 1987, nearly half (49.87%) of the pavement dwellers lived in the Central Business District (CBD) area. Their presence was highest particularly in the Esplanade, B.B.D. Bagh (8.66%), Sealdah (4.16%), and Posta (3.63%) areas.
According to the 1976 ISI survey, the nature of the pavement dwellers' shelter becomes clearer. Residence on open pavements was about 46.8%. Living under covered verandas or sheds accounted for 23.7%. 21.4% of people lived in temporary tin and bamboo shanties. Residence in kutcha houses or abandoned places was 8.1%. An analysis of their family structures revealed that 54.2% of pavement dwellers live alone, 6.5% live in groups in 'messes', and 39.3% live on the pavement with their families. The working life of pavement dwellers is primarily linked to the city's 'informal sector'. In the 1987 KMDA survey, it was seen that they were engaged in more than 30 types of occupations. Mainly, besides jobs in the transport sector, working as porters, handcart pullers and rickshaw pullers, service-related work, street hawkers, tea shop workers, daily wage labourers, and shop assistants, they also worked as beggars, waste pickers, and domestic workers. From these statistics, it was learnt that the variation in income among waste pickers (ragpickers) or beggars in Kolkata city is very high. If a ragpicker finds work in the waste piles of busy commercial areas or affluent residential complexes, their income can equal that of mainstream occupations, whereas working in remote areas can yield a much lower income. Among pavement dweller children aged 3–7 years, 96.9% were illiterate at that time. The health condition of people living on the pavements was also extremely deplorable. The survey showed that gastric problems were the most common, and the majority of people suffered from addiction. Among them, 54 percent defecated in open spaces or beside drains. In a survey conducted by Sudhendu Mukherjee in 1975 on 10,000 pavement dwellers, it was seen that 98 percent of the pavement dwellers had come from various other places, and only 0.7 percent of them were born in Kolkata.
Pavement dwellers of Kolkata,
Ward-wise distribution, 1971
According to the KMDA's 1987 survey, nearly 36% of pavement dwellers regularly sent money to their villages (an average of about £1,124 per year). Particularly those who worked in the transport sector chose this pavement life because costs are low and they can send more money to the village. The rate of occupational mobility among pavement dwellers is extremely low. That is to say, if someone is in a relatively well-paying occupation (such as a porter), they rarely resort to begging. However, among daily wage labourers, a tendency to resort to begging is seen after the age of 40. The people on Kolkata's pavements are not responsible for the city's 'unclean' appearance. They are an integral part of the city's economy—who keep the city running through their labour, by hawking, and by collecting recyclable items from waste. Yet, they themselves remain 'invisible' forever. Proper identity cards, ration cards, health camps, and affordable housing—these can improve their standard of living. But even more importantly, there is a need to change the overall perspective of our society, the city, and the administration towards these people. They should be identified as 'fellow travellers' rather than a 'burden' on the city; only then can Kolkata truly become a 'city for all'.
Sources:
Jagannathan, N. Vijay, and Animesh Haldar. “A Case Study of Pavement Dwellers in Calcutta: Occupation, Mobility and Rural-Urban Linkages.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 23, no. 49, 1988, pp. 2602–2605. JSTOR.
Sumit Kar, “Pavement Dwellers of Kolkata: A Geographical Description.” IASSI Quarterly: Contributions to Indian Social Science, vol. 40, no. 4, 2021, pp. 743–758.
Jagannathan, N. Vijay, and Animesh Haldar. “Income-Housing Linkages: A Case Study of Pavement Dwellers in Calcutta.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 23, no. 23, 1988, pp. 1175–1178. JSTOR.
Sudhendu Mukherjee and Jean Racine. “An Outlook of Calcutta’s Pavement-Dwellers.” OpenEdition Books, Institut Français de Pondichéry, pp. 229–235.
