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Paper Abstract: Indian city's history & development, poverty & homelessness, caste system, overpopulation. Paper Introduction: Since the end of the Middle Ages, there is no place on the world map for Hell anymore. That is an error of the modern mind, for, to the poor of India, Hell exists: it is called Calcutta. One would like to begin a geographic discussion of squatter settlements in Calcutta from something of an objective point of view, but that is impossible. Every record of the situation, every photograph, journalistic report, anecdote and discussion of the "experience" leads to the same dead end. To be poor in Calcutta, to be a Dalit - "Untouchable" - in that city, is to be consigned to an existence of wretched being. It is such a place that Mother Teresa won her Nobel Peace in 1979 for organizing the simple, terrifying act of gathering the near-dead from the streets and giving them a place to die in their last hours of life - 54,000 in the single decade of the 1980s (Desmond 11). Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. It was an identification that did not matter much to the British raj- although, obviously, a learned "wog" was of more value than an illiterateone - and Calcutta was the city where a Dalit had the chance to breakcenturies-old barriers of caste-bound, "untouchable" occupation. Instead of returning to the villages, the men would have tobring their families with them - full time inhabitants of Calcutta now.There were certainly not jobs for so many newcomers year round. When drought or flood ruined the crops, this fragile system began tofall apart. They will sleep alongside the beggars atnight - on a sidewalk, under a projecting eave - then wash themselves ingutter water every morning before setting off for whatever work they havebeen lucky enough to find. Works CitedAshok, K. Once married, however, a poor couple usually seeks out some sort ofcommunal shelter in which to set up a "home." The communality is purelyunintentional - the reality of having several people crammed inside spacesmeant to house one or two (if they were meant to house anyone at all). This disingenuous expectation,part of the "white man's burden," failed to be realized for two reasons.First, the British did not pass on more than a few of their positiveinstitutions and examples to their Indian subjects; imperialism as aforeign policy has more of a taking reality than one of giving. "Quotas that are cast in stone." U.S. Relations of equaleconomic status do not meet because they know the burden that the moralobligation of hospitality can place upon one another's meager resources.Within the nuclear family, male-female-child relationships break away fromtraditional roles depending upon who is the wage-earner: for a male to betotally dependent upon his wife is socially demoralizing within the contextof the larger society, as is the situation wherein the parents aredependent upon a child. By generalconsensus, Howrah must be included in the Calcutta "megacity," bringing thetotal population as of 1993 to a conservatively-estimated 12 million people(Linden 29). In1955, the Indian Parliament passed the Untouchability Offenses Act, whichspelled out details of the prohibition of untouchability and establishedspecific penalties for various types of violations (Hazari ix-x). Beating, in fact, iscommonplace. "Megacities." Time (11 January 1993): 28-38.MacFarquhar, Emily. By contrast with traditional Indiancities during those two centuries, Calcutta was a venue of open opportunity- regardless of caste. One of the striking characteristics of the Calcutta slum life is howmuch the family relationships characteristic of the caste system havebroken down in this environment. They are totallydifferent from the chhentai, smalltime pickpockets and thieves - who oftengrow into goondas, bully-boys for hire very popular with politiciansstirring up anti-Muslim or anti-Sikh violence. That is an error of the modern mind, for, to the poor ofIndia, Hell exists: it is called Calcutta. India has long demonstrated a marked capacity to transform rather than supersede traditional institutions and practices. Since the end of the Middle Ages, there is no place on the world mapfor Hell anymore. The HooghlyRiver, running between central Calcutta and Howrah, is the principaldistributary of the Ganges in India. One cannot walk the streets of Calcutta without encountering thehomeless poor, boulevards and back alleys alike. The mundane reality, however, is that a majority of Calcutta's pooractually are employed - albeit at unskilled or semi-skilled labor so badlypaying that the choice is usually quite simple: use the meager wages forfood or shelter, but there is not enough for both. Dutt. One would like to begin ageographic discussion of squatter settlements in Calcutta from something ofan objective point of view, but that is impossible. It is such a place that Mother Teresa won herNobel Peace in 1979 for organizing the simple, terrifying act of gatheringthe near-dead from the streets and giving them a place to die in their lasthours of life - 54, in the single decade of the 198 s (Desmond 11). New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1966.Shinn, Rinn-Supp. News & World Report (27 March 1995):38-41.Desmond, Edward W. Novato, CA: Software Toolworks, Inc., 1993.Blank, Jonah. Until the past half century, "even themost wretched city slums have offered better access to paying jobs, morevaried diets, better education and better health care than what wasavailable in rural communities" (Linden 33). The effect thisexceptional growth had on public services has been disastrous. As morethan one report noted when India neared independence in 1947, "there was nocomprehensive planning to meet the growing requirement for housing" whenthe nation was under British rule (Shinn 198). Entire subcultures ofhomeless life have evolved among this strata of society. In an ironictwist of racist history, the British considered most Indians to be "wogs,"a derogatory term, regardless of their station in Indian society.Consequently, an Untouchable was treated much the same (shabbily, butequally) as a middle-level caste Indian; an ambitious, hardworking ortalented individual could find work in the British Army, colonial civilservice bureaucracy or in British households (Hazari vi-xii, 138-155). Calcutta. Ethnic and caste-based tensions have beenthe center of the nation's attention for the past decade; there has beenlittle political will to make the type of changes necessary to alleviatethe problems pandemic in Calcutta's slums. Life on those streets, meanwhile, has more than its share of ills.As noted earlier, Calcutta is seriously deficient in terms of sewagesystems. Still, it was an elevation that carried bothincreased financial security and some small level of prestige; theredeveloped a two centuries old pattern of male Dalits coming into Calcuttafor half-year periods of time to work hard, live extremely frugally, thenreturn to the village with meager savings that could support their familiesfor the remainder of the year (Shinn 1 7-1 8). A caste or, more correctly in the Indian context, a jati (sub-caste) is an exclusive, endogamous social group. It was the foreign consensus of the colonial era that, given exposureto Western rule, technology and learning, "primitive" institutions such asthe caste system would disappear in time. "Calcutta." Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia. Untouchable: The Autobiography of an Indian Outcaste, rev. ed. 63% of Calcutta's poor population is male,reflecting the fact that more men migrate to the cities than women. Consequently, a learned Brahman scholar is of higher caste than aRajput prince - though both are in the upper aristocracy - while among theUntouchables, a Doum (one who handles cremations) is considered lower thana homeless kangali, street urchins much in the mold of Dickens' ArtfulDodger. Except for industrial construction, the situation has not improvedsince, the result of non-planning and historic circumstances related toCalcutta's geographic location. Calcutta is also the most densely populated region of a tightly-packed country: 82, persons per square mile (Ashok n.p.). New York: Frederick A. Worse, asthe 2 th century British economy began to falter - and especially duringthe Great Depression - Indian factories closed by the hundred-fold.Calcutta became known as an angry city. As long asthe colonial economy was booming and the agricultural sector holding itsown, there were jobs to go around. This discussion of Calcutta's poor began with a description of Hell -and it must end that way as well. With or without the bottom-bottom rungof Calcutta's poor added-in to the total mass of humanity there, it is thelargest city on the Indian subcontinent. "Experts began predicting theviolent collapse of Third World megacities (such as Calcutta) more than adecade ago," explains one Time magazine article. Notinfrequently, couples will rent a wealthier person's animal shed: payingfor their rent by caring for the animals, using the animals' droppings forheating and cooking fuel. Second,and more important, Western observers have long been remiss in recognizingthe deeply intrinsic, originally positive nature that caste has played inIndian culture for over three millennia. Theirs is a deeply felt andfatalistic faith. Although India has held morefree elections than any other developing country (MacFarquhar 38), its holdon democracy is a fragile one. Ambedkar, rose to such position of respect that he was asked to draftthe Indian Constitution, the majority of colonial-era Dalits were relegatedto physical-labor industrial occupations only nominally better than theirvillage positions had been. Calcutta has always had aspecial attraction in this sense, since it was not an organic outgrowth ofIndian culture, but founded specifically as a trading and shipping centerby the British East India Company in 1698. Frustration at these developments has led to apathological trend of wife abuse and, oddly (given the American example tocontrast), children physically abusing their parents. News & World Report (27 March 1995): 36-38.Moorhouse, Geoffrey. Calcutta is a port city on the Bay of Bengal in the northeasternstate of India designated as West Bengal. One is born into a caste - and carries that identification throughoutlife. As a consequence, waves of smallpox and cholera at levels thatwould be considered "epidemic" elsewhere regularly sweep through Calcutta'sstreet population (Moorhouse 88-89, 111). Washington: Library of Congress, 197 .----------------------- 13 If the reality holds little promise ofadvancement, the intrinsic beliefs of the people themselves do not inspirethem to challenge their fate. More often as not, they simply tolerated theimpromptu creation of roofless shantytowns alongside their modern brickVictorian Age factories, letting their workers shift along as best theycould. There have been several attempts in modern India to raise the statusof the Untouchables - or at least give them opportunities for advancementthat both traditional society and modern economics seem to conspiretogether to keep them from having. Howrah had the dubious honor in a 1971 census ofaccounting for a population of nearly three-quarters of a million people -without a single sewer among them (Moorhouse Plate 9). Urban buildingprojects generally revolve around plans to clear what slum housing existsand replace it with middle class apartment complexes that do nothing forthe city's poor other than throw more onto the streets (Shinn 98, 198-199). - the basic-unit support group - among the Dalit of the Calcutta slums the extremes ofpoverty have severed those ties to a large extent. The social consequences ofCalcutta's poverty are even more devastating. Still, modern Indian politics also reflects the reality of theingrained tradition: the Scheduled Castes remain the primary membership ofthe disenfranchised poor and, as such, the poor of Calcutta receive littleconsideration when it comes to doling out public funds. However, because of the idiosyncraciesof the often-conflicting indigenous traditions comprising the Hindureligion, occupations themselves came to be ranked in terms of spiritualvalue. Praeger, 1969.Linden, Eugene. Calcutta lies near India's eastern border;it was hit hard by the partition with Pakistan in 1948 and the Bangladeshwar for independence two decades later, which twice flooded the city withrefugees. No one is even making aPollyanna effort to inspire such changes. In 1773 Calcutta became anadministrative center for the subcontinent as well, used by the British asthe colonial capital until 1911. This has not always been so. Membership is achieved by birth, and marriages occur only between members of the same subcaste, except in the special and relatively rare case of marriage between a woman of one caste and a man of a higher-ranked caste (Shinn 147). That "estimated" is a necessary qualifier: Calcutta'shomeless population has never been successfully counted - because no onehas really cared to try very hard. Candidly, this researcher found nosource offering any hope for the situation. It is a familiar sociologicalphenomenon that extreme poverty tends to make social groups competitive.Several riots punctuate the history of 2 th century Calcutta - poverty wasonly one of the factors, but it was a major one. The Ganges represents severalimportant beliefs and traditions in the Hindu religion, its spiritual andphysical cleansing powers like a magnet drawing Hindus throughout thecountry to its banks (Newby 15-18). Mahatma Gandhi took the spiritual road,insisting during his strive for Indian independence that there were no"untouchables" - only harijan, or those "touched by God" (Shinn 147). A formof affirmative action was devised, whereby a certain percentage of publicsector jobs, scholarships and schools are set aside to promote theadvancement of the "Scheduled Castes," aka Harijan/Dalit/Untouchables(Blank 39). That fatalism, like the river, runs through the heart ofCalcutta's community of the poor. Area Handbook for India. the pace of change...is generally slower for women than men, slower in rural than in urban districts, and slower for the lower castes (Shinn 146). Caste will be discussed in more detail shortly, butthe keynote of Calcutta's attraction at this point is how the British cityof Calcutta was founded on an essentially caste-less basis. Pollution long ago made theGanges/Hooghly "clean" in only the metaphorical sense, but on a daily basismillions of Hindus bath in its waters. ... In original practice, the division of a village or town society intocastes served a practical function by distinguishing individuals accordingto traditional family occupations. Processes of socio-political change have tended to be adaptive and gradual rather than systematic and abrupt. The British industrialists of the era built somehousing - barracks, called bustees, meant for 6 that would often house16 (Moorhouse 85-87). By the time the Britishcolonial era ended, a huge population of homeless and near-homelesspopulated Calcutta, with few of the 19th century opportunities foradvancement still available, real or illusory. These, unfortunately, arethe recognizable "entrepreneurs" of the Calcutta streets. Thus, while onpaper Calcutta is a thriving port city - one that even boasts an open fieldof opportunity for skilled workers - there has been literally no room forall of the unskilled refugees pouring in. Periodic famines in Bengal have left the rural population withonly one option for survival as well: flee to the city. It has been argued by Indian sociologists that the caste systemenabled India to do something for centuries that other cultures could not:it allowed peoples of vastly different ethnic, religious and sub-racialgroupings to live alongside one another in relative peace (Blank 38). If Calcutta is a city created by the West, it is also one whose heartis cut in half by the religious tradition of the Ganges River. "Chance"is the key word here, because, while it is true that an Untouchable, Dr.B.R. The growthof Calcutta in the past three decades has been phenomenal, almost doublingits 1967 population of 6.7 million inhabitants (Shinn 99). Among thecolorful are the urchins of street legend mentioned earlier, the kangali.These pre-teenagers are not beggars, but small societies of loosely-organized freelance go-fers and garbage pilferers. Beggars come inall forms as well, but there is a particular Calcutta variation that hasadults "adopting" young children, then mutilating them, so that theappalling result will play for better alms. Whilemost Westerners think in terms of four castes - from the lowest Dalits tothe highest Brahmans - in terms of real social units there are well over3, in India today; in a single village there are often 2 to 3 castes;2 to 3 castes populate the typical state (Hazari xi). Perhaps the only responseto that dire verdict is the small consolation that a "violent collapse"implies rapid change - and nothing in Indian history ever happens fast. Thepopulation of the Indian subcontinent has four major ethnic divisions,Caucasoid (including a subdivision of darker-skinned Dravidjans and fairer-skinned Indo-Aryans), Proto-Australoids similar to the aborigines ofAustralia, Mongloids from the Himalayan mountain regions and Mogulinvasions, and Negritos of an aboriginal pygmy stock (Shinn ix). The fastest urban growth is inthose areas that are poorest and least prepared, notes Ashok Khosia,president of India's Society for Development Alternatives, who pinpointsthe fatal conundrum: Each city contains the seeds of its own destruction because the more attractive it becomes, the more it will attract overwhelming numbers of immigrants (Linden 33). Every record of thesituation, every photograph, journalistic report, anecdote and discussionof the "experience" leads to the same dead end. Single men generallyopt for a shelterless existence. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1971.Newby, Eric. They would work incredibly long days, thencollapse together in the "community" they had artificially created out ofan urban wilderness. Surprisingly, though, the rate of spouses deserting theirmates is under five percent (Moorhouse 92-94). "A volatile democracy." U.S. In a country where relations aregenerally the connection to career, marriage, advancement, etc. As such, the majority of itspopulation (66%) is comprised of Bengali-speaking natives of the region;although, in the true polyglot fashion of the country, Hindi- and Urdu-speaking Indians comprise sizeable minorities (2 % and 9%, respectively).Technically, Calcutta proper is only one of 75 local governing bodies thatmake up the Calcutta Metropolitan District, or "CMD," which includes theinfamous sister city of Howrah lying opposite Calcutta along the banks ofthe Hooghly River. Village men from the same Dalit sub-caste would come in groups, staking out a corner of a building, a plot ofland, the shelter of a bridge. As can be imagined, this was a tenuous existence at best. To be poor in Calcutta, tobe a Dalit - "Untouchable" - in that city, is to be consigned to anexistence of wretched being. "A Pencil in the Hand of God: Interview with Mother Teresa." Time (4 December 1989): 11.Hazari. Slowly Down the Ganges. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.

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