Post-modernism & transport planning

Oosterwolde, Netherlands

by Sameer Sharma
Economic Times

The emergence of postmodernism as an alternative to modernism has useful lessons for Indian policymakers. Modernism, in the words of David Harvey, “entails a ruthless break with any or all preceding historical traditions” and the west during the pursuit of the “High Modern” project completely disassembled existing historic structures because all historical social systems were perceived to be inherently backward, which held back progress; therefore, had to be abandoned. On the other hand, India never completely let go of its past and the “revalorisation of tradition” has once again made India a wonder for the western mind, in the way described by A L Basham.

A product of Enlightenment, the modernist project rests on the underlying notion that laws of reality objectively exist and by applying scientific principles these can be discovered and mastered to promote human welfare. Hence, modernism searches for general theories and universal laws, disregarding culture and context. On the other hand, a paradigm shift occurred with postmodernism, which tries to understand reality by looking for culture-specific characteristics and unique local conditions.

Similar trends are visible in urban planning, which has veered away from a “Fordist” approach to create technologically efficient urban forms, such as mass suburbia, “international-style” towers in inner cities, and auto-dependent neighbourhoods to recognition of urban diversity and complexity.

Accordingly, Corbusier’s concept of a house as a “machine for living” and claim that a “city made for speed is made for success” has been replaced by Lynch’s “good city form”, Boyer’s search for a “city of collective memory”, and Calthropian human, as opposed to machine-based, planning-scales. Postmodern urban sensibility, directed towards “pluralism, a search for character, urban identity, unique features, visual references, creation of landmarks”, provides a basis to design innovative and inclusive India-specific urban policies and one example is the application of post-modern principles to transport planning and traffic engineering.

Western transport planning is based on creating “traffic zones” to achieve consistency, conformity and predictability in auto and pedestrian movement. Roads are categorised into a hierarchy of road types, suitable for various functions, speeds, and traffic volumes (e.g., national highways, neighbourhood roads). Furthermore, there is segregation between traffic and pedestrian networks on roads.

The principles of categorisation and segregation were operationalised by the west during the last 75 years. Commonly, Eugene Henard is considered to be the progenitor of modern traffic engineering, and Holroyd Smith introduced these principles to the US, which were later codified by Arthur Tuttle and Edward Holmes. Segregation between traffic and pedestrian networks was first tried in Radburn, New Jersey, and the separation principle was further developed in the Buchanan report, Traffic in Towns.

Undoubtedly, such “traffic zones” are required for the exclusive use of vehicles on highways, but recent postmodern practices in Europe are also looking at roads as “social zones”. Unlike traffic zones, social zones integrate car and pedestrian movement. The combination of traffic with pedestrian movements, children’s play, and social activities is based on the “woonerf principles” developed by Niek de Boer and Joost Vahl in the Netherlands. Similar postmodern concepts were also experimented in the UK in the “Home Zones” programme.

Traditionally, transport planning is based on the 3Es — enforcement, education, and engineering. The common belief is that traffic will flow smoothly if traffic rules are enforced, public educated, and roads upgraded to universal standards. On the contrary, woonerf principles envisage streets to be social zones.

For instance, the city of Christiansfeld, Denmark used “ambiguity and urban legibility” in street design to reduce high death rates on the town’s central traffic intersection. Instead of erecting warning signs, road markings, and traffic signals, Bjarne Winterberg and the engineering firm Ramboll removed traffic signals and road markings. No mode of transport was given priority and pedestrians, buses, cars, and trucks used eye contact to negotiate the junction.

Surface treatment, lightning columns, and junction corners were squared up. The purpose was to make the intersection resemble the centre of the town or to create a public realm. Expectedly, the number of killed or seriously injured (KSI) during the last three years was reduced to zero, moreover, traffic backups were reduced. Compared to junctions having traffic signals, ambiguous junctions prevent accidents, reduce delays, and are cheaper to construct and maintain.

Shared space is another woonerf principle that is applied to transform busy traffic intersections. In Friesland market town of Oosterwolde, different types of traffic intermingle giving an impression of chaos and disorder, in fact, traffic negotiates the junction using eye contact and care for other types of transport. No state regulation or control is visible and traffic movement depends on informal convention and legibility.

Living in an urban environment in which kerbs are used to prevent interaction of pedestrian activity with carriageway and painted lines show places humans should walk and cross streets, people coming from the high-income countries are appalled by the absence of kerbs, road markings, bollards, traffic signals, barriers, and signs in India.

What they fail to understand is that the traffic, as it is in Indian cities, reflects the local values and cultural history of the place leading to lack of uniformity and ambiguity, requiring a different set of rules to reconcile competing and conflicting claims for safety, efficient movement, and the quality of the built environment. In this setting, real improvement in traffic congestion is only possible by using contextual designs, based on postmodern ideas, to influence traffic speeds and driver behaviour.

The author is an Indian Administrative Services officer. Views are personal.

The City Imagined

by Gautam Bhatia
LiveMint

Of the various disciplines that give scope and structure to the idea of a city— among them architecture, planning, demography and sociology—no one would argue that the central premise is aspirational. People come together to live better lives and find opportunities to improve their condition. Yet, in the absence of a public policy related to this ideal, how can the city create equitable conditions of opportunity related to its growth and development?

Campbell Towers, Malibu Gardens

So far, every aspect of growth has been related to consumerist ideals. The parcelling of land to private developers has naturally led to discriminatory patterns of development, related solely to middle-class aspirations. “Live a new life at Campbell Towers, just 12km from downtown Pune”, or “Come to Malibu Gardens, Ahmedabad’s new upmarket address”. Air-conditioned glass houses with seductive titles, copied from European models, spring up overnight in the suburbs: Belvedere Glades, Cameron Manor— business ventures for quick, profitable returns. Everyone knows it is more profitable to build for one man at an 18-hole golf course than for 18 men at one handpump. There is money to be made in exclusive locales—clubs, industrial parks, expensive upscale farmhouses and retail businesses. And the builder is the new city planner.

Singular need, paper attempts

Unfortunately, when foreign ideals and designer townships become realities in the Indian city, few would be interested in cross-examining the contents for ecology or equities in energy, transportation and lifestyle. Yet, if ever there was a need to comprehensively examine the forces of Indian city living, it is now. With growing populations and nagging displacements, a yawning gap between the old settled and the newly arrived, and indeed between liveable and available space, the search for an alternative way of urban living is the single most glaring need for the city. Yet nowhere has there been a serious attempt to define in clear physical terms the kind of setting that would suit the requirements of all sections of urban India.

Certainly there have been many attempts on paper. The Third World Metropolis. City in Search of a Future. New Town Design. The Alternative City. All grand ideals that examine statistics and planning patterns, but do little to create a physical structure that can be built, seen and felt as a future model for growth.Despite monumental problems and annual shortfalls, the incomplete approach to planning and design is part of the psychology of a government unable to take bold initiatives. Only when problems manifest themselves in health epidemics, housing shortages or food contamination does the government initiate action. A Rs 8,000 house designed by an engineer 20 years ago was seen as a great thrust towards a bold future. That the cement and bamboo structure would be hot and cold in the wrong seasons, had inadequate ventilation and was entirely unsuited to local ideas was overlooked owing to the seductively low cost. The house was a winner solely on the thrift of its construction.

Low-cost house or new city?

How then do societies with a far lesser need for change and experimentation promote bolder ideas, with more rigorous parameters? The Masdar Initiative, for instance, is a 64.5 million sq. ft sustainable development outside Abu Dhabi which advertises itself as a zero-carbon, zero-waste city. Planned by Norman Foster, its design integrates the traditional principles of a walled city with advanced ideas in harnessing energy and reusing waste. The ambitious project bills itself as the future desert metropolis. Whether it succeeds in its objective is less important than the will that drives people to such a monumental experiment.

In a place where an ill-conceived but cheap concrete roof is seen as futuristic, a scale of endeavour such as the Masdar Initiative would seem foolishly ambitious, a piece of science fiction. How many bureaucrats, politicians, government files and Planning Commission meetings would it take to bridge the divide between a cement house and a whole new city? It is a question that sinks quickly into parody.

Long road ahead

The need for a new direction in India can no longer be part of a government wish list or the old perception that views city problems merely as a matter of cleaning up—razing slums and replacing them with golf courses. Or whitewashing slum walls and asking people to remain indoors. The fear that a new idea may not work and that the responsibility will come to rest uncomfortably on the shoulders of a bureaucrat or a minister keeps the government from supporting any serious alternatives.

Is there anyone...?

Given the power that builders and developers exercise in the allocation of land and buildings in a city, it is a shame that few among them have taken to experimentation. To be the richest in the world, recognized by Forbes, is enough for the gloating family of Indian business achievers. But with profits in luxury housing dwindling, is there anyone out there—a DLF, Unitech or Raheja— who can summon up enough courage to embark on a different road and direct even a minuscule part of its profits towards the design of a new community? An idea that rejects convention and provides a clear physical representation of a new form of urban living suited to Indian needs—the way people relate to their homes, places of recreation, proximity to markets, desire for leisure, need for security, new types of transportation, and new alternate forms of energy—to produce a real model of a few hundred units among the millions they place in the market every year? In their able and experienced hands, and with inputs on possible alternatives from architects, planners, transport engineers and energy experts, there may yet be hope for an Indian city.

Illustration: Jayachandran / Mint

Basti Redevelopment in Calcutta

The Statesman of 21 February 2008 reported that the West Bengal land and land reforms minister had agreed to a proposal from the urban development department permitting multi-storeyed buildings on thika tenancy land. The minister reportedly gave his approval provided the tenants agree to it.

Most of the slums or bastis in Kolkata and Howrah are on land under thika tenancy. They occupy huge tracts of land spread all over the city. The 2001 Census estimated that about 1.5 million people in Kolkata lived in slums. There would be over half a million in Howrah. Thus, as a result of the new policy, the habitation of about 2 million people of the conurbation spread across the two banks of the Hooghly is now threatened.

'Basti' (settlement) is the commonly used term to denote the neighbourhoods of the, the workers, low-income and poor of Kolkata, i.e. the underprivilged. These were typically located in the outer fringes of the central business district, and the people living here served in the building of the city. The term slum is also loosely applied to such neighbourhoods, indicating the sub-standard housing and civic amenities in such localities. These settlements came under the purview of the Slum Acts and the slum improvement programme. In western sociology, the term slum connotes an area of habitation of people who are socially disorganised. However, contrary to this perception, the bastis in Calcutta could actually be viewed as quite organised. They continue to remain in a state of backwardness largely on account of the obsolete land tenure arrangement governing them, a relic of the zamindari system, as well as institutionalised neglect and discrmination. 'Thika' (contract for temporary possession) is the name of the arrangement that came up in colonial Calcutta as the city population grew, whereby landlords rented out large plots of their land, hitherto in the form of garden estates, to people, usually members of their retinue, who in turn constructed huts on the plots and rented out rooms therein to workers.

Background

Basti land, formerly owned by landlords, is now largely owned by the state. On this land stand structures, typically tile-roofed, owned by the thika tenants. And in each such building live many tenant (or bharatiya or raiyat) households, each one typically occupying a small room. Following a High Court order, the thika tenants cannot be ousted by the state. The tenant dwellers are protected too, by the tenancy laws and the Slum Act. The thika tenants also have limited development rights on their property.

Basti’s are spread throughout the city. The city’s labouring population, and the bulk of the urban poor reside here. But bastis are also the site of a lot of economic activities. Workplace and residence are inter-woven. A good part of the production of basic items in the city economy, like garments, footwear and paper products takes place in the bastis. Various trades are concentrated in specific areas, making location a crucial factor. As many as three hundred thousand people may be directly and indirectly employed in basti-based manufacturing activity. Among the areas where large, old bastis are concentrated are Metiabruz, Rajabazar, Narkeldanga, Sealdah, Beckbagan and Tiljala-Topsia-Tangra.

The overwhelming majority of the Muslim population of Kolkata and Howrah lives in bastis, and these are among the oldest, largest and most degraded and poorly serviced slums of the city.

Slum improvement

Bastis had suffered long neglect, and by the early 1960s, were in a state of near collapse. Following the planning intervention of the Ford Foundation, through the 1970s and 80s, the Basti Improvement Programme financed by the World Bank was taken up in the slum localities. This involved conversion of service latrines, connection of water taps, surface drainage facilities, construction and widening of roads and pathways, and provision of street lighting and waste disposal facilities within the bastis. While living conditions in the bastis improved as a result, this also opened the way for new construction in bastis, principally of illegal buildings. Bastis improved under the programme today once again face acute deficiencies in services.

Illegal construction

With terrible overcrowding in the bastis, and given the thika tenants’ inability to extend their structures, over the last 15 years or so, illegal construction has been taking place on a large-scale in basti neighbourhoods. This happens through a nexus of builder-hoodlum-party cadres-police. The builder acts in the name of the thika tenant. He pockets the salami (deposit) amount paid by the occupants of the new apartments, and receives the rent from the new occupants for some years. The buildings thus constructed are generally of a poor quality. They discharge toilet waste into the open drains. Population pressure also thus increases on the already overstretched basti services. Little wonder then that the combination of highly inadequate supply of drinking water and inadequate and poor sanitation emerges as the principal environmental health problem in Kolkata, resulting in gastro-intestinal and waterborne diseases, and afflicting principally the city’s poor and low-income.

Key question

For several years now, private builders and their consortium have been eyeing basti land, because their location makes them prime real estate. The key question is: What happens to the dwellers? Would they get alternative shelter? Where? What kind of shelter? And under what terms? Would they, for instance, get title to the shelter units, like the refugee colony dwellers were granted title to land they had occupied? How exactly would the rights and interests of the dwellers be ensured? Can this be assumed to happen on its own? What would be the arrangement for temporary accommodation of the dwellers while construction takes place?

Governance

There is also the larger question of transparency in urban governance. What happens to the land? Under what terms would the land be handed over to the large private builders? What happens to the thousands of illegal buildings that have already come up in bastis? Would the appropriate resettlement of the erstwhile dwellers be part of the builders’ project? Or would that be handled by the state, utilising subsidies from the centre, so that a promoter-friendly government and ruling party gifts the builders the opportunity to make lucrative profits?

Dweller security

Given the very attractive commercial potential from multi-storeyed constructions in the bastis, these areas would only becomes centres of frenzied activity by a range of vested interests, each seeking to grab a chunk of the golden pie. Hundreds of thousands of basti dwellers in Kolkata and Howrah eke out a marginal existence through manual labour. Their daily life circumstances mean that they are least empowered to stand up, be organised and secure their rights. On the face of it, it does appear that they will simply be swept away by the tidal wave of greed and deceit.

Alternative proposal

In the late 1990s, a proposal was prepared by Unnayan and Asian Coalition for Housing Rights for comprehensive renewal of the blighted canal-side area in Beliaghata-Manicktala. The late MS Maitra, a former chief engineer of the state PWD who retired as director general of the Calcutta Metropolitan Development Authority, was one of the authors of the proposal. This too was about basti redevelopment, but here it was visualised as being done for the good of the city at large and of basti dwellers in particular. Squatters earlier living along the canal were also to be rehabilitated within the proposed development. The indicative estimates made in the plan suggested that notwithstanding the social and public goals, the project could still yield attractive returns to builders. But such a project calls for a new generation of agencies and organisations, within state and local govt, and at the grassroots level. These are all presently lacking.

City renewal

Since the basti is a unit in itself, both in legal terms and in regard to civic services infrastructure, it is pertinent to ask whether individual basti plots would be available for redevelopment or the basti as a whole. Redevelopment is not just a matter of construction on land. The requisite infrastructure for water, sewerage and drainage have all to be put in place. How far would the private developers’ responsibility go? And what would the municipal corporation do? Would not basti redevelopment across the city require major city-wide infrastructure upgrading?

A blighted basti is typically at the core of a blighted locality. Upgrading the infrastructure of civic services in the basti site has to be part of a larger programme of upgrading the infrastructure of the whole blighted locality. Thus, with blighted bastis spread all over the city, one has nodes of renewal across the city. Integrating all these nodes within a single, long-term, city renewal blueprint would effectively mean a vision for transforming the physical landscape of the city.

Social landscape

There is a huge human development gap between basti dwellers and the city’s middle and affluent classes. The value of the land on which basti dwellers live is the only means of bridging that gap. Hence basti land should be auctioned by the state to the private developers and the money raised should be used to construct good quality apartment blocks for the dwellers on part of the land, with adequate open and community spaces. Alternatively, the construction for the basti dwellers could be part of the private developer’s project. Squatter resettlement should also be undertaken in the redeveloped sites.

Given the huge volume of economic activity in bastis, spaces for production and marketing also need to be created. This would give a much-needed fillip to these trades, whose future is otherwise quite bleak.

A concerted effort needs to be made to ensure basti households are aware and fully informed of all matters, and participate in planning and design of the new housing. After having lived and worked for many decades in the basti - and in some places for over a century – and having suffered harsh living conditions, the households have a natural right to get title to their new apartments. A corpus should also be created for maintenance purposes. And a management mechanism has to be set up, with the participation of the resident households.

This would ensure that the transformation of the physical landscape of the city is also accompanied by a transformation of its social landscape. Such a measure would significantly democratise property ownership in the city, while also strengthening the municipal corporation by enhancing its revenue base.

This is the challenge that the govt should strive to realise.


This article was published in the Economic & Political Weekly, September 20-26, 2008. It is available for download here.

What people want

Zafar Sobhan, a writer in Bangladesh, has spelt out the basic issues that he as a Bangladeshi citizen sees as pertinent to the people of his country. This is not so different from the issues confronting the people of India too.

Wherever you go, people are all the same. They all want more or less the same thing. They want good schools and opportunities for their kids. They want to be able to live in safety and security. They want a decent job that pays the bills and allows them to put food on the table. Most people's desires are very modest. It doesn't take a great deal to make them happy. ...

... Safe drinking water, not coke. Electricity for light and maybe a fan, not air conditioners. The means and ability to move around cheaply and without undue hassle, not their own personal chauffer-driven car...

Read Zafar Sobhan's article here.

The Nano and our cities

...all of us should be asking questions about what needs to be done to make our cities better places to live in, as far as mobility and access are concerend. Most of our travel trips in cities are for the purposes of work and education. What about a policy of common neighbourhood schools for all children and the provision of safe space, for walking and cycling? As far as travel to work is concerned, most large Indian cities have multiple business districts and are expanding at the periphery, so that the vast majority of travel is of distances less than 10 km.

At a broader level, we think that our cities can be made into better places to live in if the link between the location of economic activity and the anticipated profit rates is severed. Further, land needs to be publicly owned and democratically managed; the investment process needs to be guided not by profit expectations but by the objective of satisfying the needs of the people. This is of course a different kind of dream, not the kind that is dreamt of by those who want to preserve the easy personal mobility and access that they have secured exclusively for themselves and do not want the Nano to extend this privilege a wee bit further down the line.

Extracted from the editorial "Of Nanos and Cities" in the Economic & Political Weekly, 19 January 2008. The full article is available here. If its inaccessible, email (see profile) your request to receive a pdf copy.

Some articles

Here are some articles on city renewal in Calcutta, written over the years. (Open the links given below in new windows.)

The city from here, a photo essay (1996)

Falahak, Inshallah (Flowering - God's Will): the struggle of the labouring poor, and a vision, strategy and programme for tenant-led basti and city renewal (1997)

Renewing the City: Efforts to Improve Life in Calcutta’s Urban Slums (2002)

The city from here: urban development and slum communities in Calcutta (2004)

"In Search of Ramrajya", essay written on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of India's independence, 15 August 2007.

Photo: Achinto

Basti redevelopment in metropolitan Calcutta

Priya Manna Basti, Shibpur, Howrah.

All my dawns cross the horizon
And rise from underfoot.
What I stand for
Is what I stand on.

Wendell Berry


Context

Metropolitan Calcutta’s basti dwellers have lived as tenants in their hutments for several generations. They form the bulk of the poor and low-income population of the metropolitan area.

Through the Basti Improvement Programme undertaken from the early-1970s, some basic, long-due attention to bastis was begun. The living environment was significantly improved through in-situ improvements.

With growth in basti population, living densities have increased. Civic amenities, such as water and sanitation are deficient. Environmental health risk in basti localities is quite serious; incidence of gastro-intestinal and waterborne diseases, infant mortality testify to this. In some areas of Howrah, dry latrines in bastis pose severe health risks.

The population in most – though not all – basti localities continues to remain at a low socio-economic level. Unemployment, insecure livelihood, lack of education and skills, school drop-out, low wage employment prevail in such localities. In the context of economic globalisation, the basti dwellers are not at all well-placed currently to realise secure livelihood and positive stakes in the rapidly changing world. The reach of NGOs is very limited, and their activities are predominantly of a philanthropic nature, rather than for long-term positive change and structural transformation.

The degraded conditions in bastis and the poor quality of life of basti dwellers is most acute in the large Muslim bastis spread across Calcutta, Howrah and the municipal areas on the two sides of the Hooghly.

The time has come for bold, visionary, committed and purposeful action to positively transform the physical and social landscape of Calcutta’s bastis.

Shelter, livelihood and education must form the three basic pillars of any positive intervention in favour of basti dwellers in metropolitan Calcutta.

Shelter, Housing

Just as land to the tiller was the basic slogan inspiring transformative action in rural West Bengal, today one has to call for ‘shelter to the dweller’ in the urban context. Ultimately, the present bharatiyas or tenant dwellers in bastis have to get title to their dwelling. But the dwelling would be something like a 250 sq ft apartment in a redeveloped complex.

This calls for state action to take over all Thika land in the metropolitan area. This requires an appropriate strategy in order to pre-empt any judicial action. It is not simple, but it is not at all impossible. It has to be established that the public interest is being served, and that an offer is made to the Thika tenants which is at least as good as their present status.

Thika land has to be taken over, land consolidation needs to be done, and with the involvement of private developers a new salubrious complex constructed, in phases. All present dwellers would more and better quality built-up and common space, with civic amenities. They would have to pay a modest sum for title to such a unit. Credit financing would support this. And substantial additional residential and commercial built-up area would also be created, for sale at market rates to higher-income sections. This would give a good return to the developer, while also achieving important social ends. The economics of basti redevelopment would also allow for taking care of the interests of the Thika tenants, besides enabling the creation of a fund for ongoing social and community development activities in favour of the basti dwellers.

The Calcutta Corporation has shown remarkable success in undertaking various water supply and sewerage augmentation programmes to meet the emerging needs of newly developing areas. This augurs well for the future, keeping basti redevelopment in focus. To support the newly developed complexes in erstwhile basti localities, augmentation of water supply is needed, and also installation of sewerage lines etc. These would be undertaken by the Corporation or municipal authority. But when the present basti area is being considered for improvement in civic infrastructure, this also becomes an opportunity to assess the infrastructure deficit in the entire locality, and the augmentation plan prepared accordingly. Given the huge spread of basti localities across Calcutta and the metropolitan region, basti redevelopment thus becomes part of a large urban renewal programme, beginning with the city- and metropolis-wide basic infrastructure upgradation.

Large-scale illegal construction in basti localities across metropolitan Calcutta – poses severe threats to the future of basti dwellers. Bastis are becoming even more congested, sanitary conditions are significantly worsened. Most of all, the possibility of wholesome redevelopment of the entire basti, with the requisite civic infrastructure in place to support a completely redeveloped complex, is doomed.

Basti redevelopment rests most crucially on the awareness, active and organised involvement of the basti dwellers. That entails a major programme of grassroots action, education, capacity building, leadership development, organisational building and development. This is also a kind of ‘infrastructure’ development, that must parallel the physical infrastructure programme.

The KUSP project was recently begun (supported by the UK govt). This project’s goals are poverty reduction and habitat improvement in bastis. It has to be ensured that the project does actually improve the lot of poor. Equally, KUSP has to be strategically utilised in furtherance of this vision of basti, city and metropolitan renewal.

Livelihood

Bastis are also the site for extensive tiny-scale manufacturing activity. Several essential products in the city are produced from bastis – e.g. garments, footwear (leather and rubber), paper products. Traditionally bastis have been the sites of a large number of small industries and crafts. But the plight of the workers and owner-workers in all these trades is vulnerable. Given the unorganized nature of these trades, workers and small traders are at the mercy of middlemen and large traders. Lack of access to capital and hence reliance on high interest charging money-lenders; lack of proper marketing opportunities; lack of skill and technology upgradation - are some of the principal problems affecting the trades. Given that all these trades together employ a few hundred thousand workers, their vulnerable situation poses a severe threat to their livelihood and hence also to the future of the city.

In such a context, there is a need for an action-research effort on basti-based manufacture, towards comprehensive structural upgradation of these economic activities. The resulting benefit from such structural upgradation, to the large numbers of workers and small entrepreneurs tied to these trades – is much more than anything the state or NGOs can achieve through their livelihood and employment generation activities. Following upon the research study, a pilot project could be taken up to implement the recommendations in a specific area. Thus, a local skill development and marketing centre could be started in an area where a trade is concentrated.

Such an effort also requires the awareness and active participation of the workers and small entrepreneurs in basti-based manufacture. An action-research project could also be the means for identifying and mobilising all the stakeholders.

Such action is already being initiated by the state govt, e.g. in flower market, zari-making, in Howrah. This has now to be given a larger vision and thrust.

There are several capable and experienced scholars, professionals and researchers in Calcutta who could make a valuable contribution to such an endeavour. The Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, a renowned academic institute, could also conceivably be involved in this. Financial support can be obtained for such an action-research programme – e.g. under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission.

Education

In the sphere of education, special mention must be made of Urdu medium primary education. The number of schools is highly inadequate to meet the demand for primary education, existing schools are highly overcrowded, and the quality of the existing schools has to be drastically improved.

An enlightened initiative aimed at Urdu medium primary education is seriously needed. This can begin with a rapid assessment study on the existing schools in Calcutta and Howrah. This could be based on a pilot initiative, taken up in 1 ward in Calcutta and / or Howrah.