Slums in Kolkata

Slum Report : Motijheel

Kolkata is a three hundred year old city. Over the years it has developed from a trio of villages into a sprawling metropolitan city. With a population density of about 10,000 people per kilometer square the city is bursting at the seams. Year after year hosts of migrants join the city’s burgeoning population in their quest for daily bread. A number of slum settlements have sprung up in and around the city to accommodate this surge of people.

The Slums in the city can be divided into three sections. Firstly the ones that goes back in time to almost a hundred and fifty years. These were the first slums in Kolkata. Then comes another set that sprung up around building sites and industrial centers. These were to cater to people who worked at these construction sites. With infrastructural developments on the rise these slums flourished and sprawled. The third set was the ones that had people settle into empty lots, near canals and generally unclaimed lands. Together these make up some 2,011 registered and 3,500 unregistered slum settlements housing about a third of the cities population.

One of these is the slum settlement in motijheel. It’s the same place that years ago had induced Mother Teresa to start  tending to the needs of the destitute and starving. This slum is located very near the centre of the city. With a canal flowing close by and a local railway track going right through it, it provides the typical setting for a slum. The area is at a lower level than the surrounding areas. It comes under the jurisdiction of Entally Police Station. The population comprises of mostly Muslims and a sprinkling of other communities.

The population density here is somewhere double the average population density in the city. The houses are nothing more than shacks though in recent years a number of small one room tenements have sprung up. They are so closely packed and most of them still have tiled roofs. Their close proximity and profusion of labyrinthine lanes snaking into the interior of the slum means that there are no fire safety measures that can be implemented. It is a disaster waiting to happen. Municipal Corporation does recognize this as a slum settlement and provides water and electricity.