1The sprawling metropolis of Calcutta has as many as 3.3 million residents within the city proper (104 km²⁾ and a staggering 9.2 million in the greater Calcutta urban agglomeration (1040 km²⁾ as enumerated in 1981 census. Once known as the City of Palaces during the heydey of the British Raj, Calcutta has since lost much of its splendour and pristine glory. In the meantime its suburbs have expanded far to the north and south along the Hooghly river. Today the City of Palaces is a city in veritable shambles. Though some of its modem high-rise edifices now proudly tower over the palatial buildings of the olden days, Calcutta largely is still a humble and low profile city for the poor.

The morphology of the city: some basic characters1

2Compared to many other cities in this sub-continent, Calcutta had a rather a late start as a major British outpost and commercial centre. Since its founding by Charnock around 1690, Calcutta has been a rapidly growing city till the end of the thirties of this Century. Thereafter, within a few decades it turned into a moribund city. While many other cities such as Delhi and Bombay had made great strides and rapidly risen in height and extern, especially after the Second World War and independence, Calcutta proper grew little despite great influxes of population from East Bengal who chose to settle in greater numbers on the periphery rather than within the city which had already attained its structural saturation point. It is only from the sixties onwards that the high-rise commercial houses started to come up on the west of the Chowringhee (Jawaharlal Nehru Road). Much later, in the seventies, multistoreyed apartments in certain high and middle income residential areas of the city such as the Southern Avenue, overlooking the Rabindra Sarobar, began to appear. But by and large, the greater part of the city has structures smaller than four storeys. In fact, a very large number of single-storey masonry buildings, and dwarfish tin or tile-roofed houses and slums still persist in the low income tracts of the city of Calcutta.

3Built on the Hooghly alluvium, it is not surprising that conforming to its physical environment, the city has a rather Battisti skyline with tiny flat roofs of thousands upon thousands of houses (5,56,478 in 1971) dominating the drab urban horizon of Calcutta. But for the numerous winding and narrow lanes and by-lanes often with overhanging structures encroaching upon the right of way, Calcutta would have been a most monotonous place. Nevertheless, seen from above, Calcutta offers a breathtaking view. Its deeply entrenched pattern of alleys criss-crossing the vast urban landscape hits the eye straightaway. Calcutta is a city where the streets throb with more life than the dwellings, for most of the time the greater part of the city populace is out of doors than in. The Street kerbs often provide a more comfortable sleeping platform at night time than the covered shelters of the dingy hovels. Awfully untidy mainly due to too many people-often more than 1,00,000 souls per km² in many parts of the city-Calcutta nevertheless is a vibrant place throbbing with life.

4Situated on a natural alluvial levee which offers a narrow strip of land just above the flood height along the strand, the city of Calcutta together with its huge conurbation (comprising 107 towns/cities) is basically an enormous linear metropolitan formation Stretching for more than 70 km from Bridge End in the south to Kalyani in the north on both Banks of the Hooghly river. The highest ground elevation (six metres above sea level) is along the Chowringhee-Chitpur (Rabindra Sarani) alignment, the land sloping towards the eastern marshes down to a level of four metres above sea. The city proper is situated at this very place of the Hooghly levee because here the levee is the broadest, even to the extent of accommodating a great Maidan (parade ground) in the very heart of the city. The distance between the Strand and the Salt Lake lowlands on the east is as wide as six km, while elsewhere the levee is hardly two or three km broad.

5Though situated on an overcrowded and narrow levee, it appears strange that the central focus of the city structure of Calcutta is neither on the thickly peopled business district of Burrabazar, nor on the solid administrative office block lying between the Raj Bhavan and the Writers Building Secretariat. But it is on a wide and empty Maidan around which the great city has grown over the years. Even on photographs taken from a satellite this maidan (5 km²⁾ cornes up far more sharply than any other feature of the city. In no other place in India (and may be elsewhere) has a metropolitan city of this dimension has grown around so large and open a ground, dominating the urban scene as its centrepiece. Even the star-shaped British-built fort which occupies the focal point within the Parade ground is so inconspicuous a structure, rather sunk into the thick alluvium, that one can see nothing of it except some shrubs and bushes camouflaged with the green of the Maidan. Of late, on account of the widespread plantation of trees on the Maidan, it looks more like a huge park rather than an open field from any of the tall buildings on the Chowringhee Road.

Table 5.1: Housing and population in million cities (1971)

6Among the Indian metropolitan cities having more than a million residents, Calcutta has the highest density of houses and population per unit area. In 1971 for example, Calcutta had a staggering number of nearly 5351 houses and as many as 30,276 persons per km². As regards house density the close seconds are Ahmedabad and Madras which have 3112 and 2644 houses per km² respectively as is evident from Table 5.1 in which the housing and population densities of several other cities are indicated for comparison. India's capital city Delhi has a density of 1343 houses and 8172 persons per km². The main point is that the congestion of houses and population in Calcutta is by far the highest in the country.

The structure of built up areas in Calcutta

7If we examine the structure of Calcutta's built-up areas in terms of occupied residential houses as recorded in 1971 census, we find that wardwise distribution varies widely from as few as 688 houses per km² in Paikpara (Ward 4) near the northern end of the city to more than 39,140 houses per km² in the densely populated Burrabazar Jorasanko area (Ward 23), which is the central business district of Calcutta. Obviously, the old native part of Calcutta crystallised and grew up around this commercial nucleus over the last 300 years. This tract, which may be called north Calcutta, is bounded by B.B. Ganguli (Bowbazar) Street, Acharya Prafulla Chandra (Upper Circular) Road and the Hooghly comprising 30 wards (7.8km²), with an overall density of no less than 17,700 houses per km². On the south of Bowbazar Starts the highly mixed locality of central Calcutta with concentrations of Anglo-Indians, upcountry Muslims, and native Christian communities. During the colonial days the British preferred to stay in the area further south of Park Street which even today has a density as low as 300 houses per km² in Ward 65 even if the built-up area alone is considered. In other parts of central Calcutta, north of Park Street, the density is fairly high. Especially in the residential block bounded by Lenin Sarani, R.A. Kidwai Street, Ripon Street and Free School Street inhabited by Muslims and Anglo-Indians, the density actually comes to 19,700 houses per km² Further down the South Calcutta, the block bounded by Lower Circular Road, Ashutosh Mukherjee Road, Hazra Road and Gariahat Road, inhabited by richer sections of Bengali and non-Bengali communities the density falls (3600 to 6900 per km²). But on the west of this block are the old native quarters of Bhowanipore and Kalighat where the density again shoots up considerably (9100 to 14,500 houses per km²). But again in the south of Rashbehari Avenue, which mainly developed in the twenties of this Century, there are still a lot of open grounds. A mixed population locality, with a large number of south Indians, it has a low density of 2600 to 3700 houses per km². On the west of Tolly's Nala the old semi-urban character is still visible with a density of hardly 2200 houses per km². Again further west of Diamond Harbour Road is Kidderpore, mainly inhabited by dock workers, having a higher density of 10,000 houses per km², though the docks proper have obviously more open space with only 1300 houses per km². Likewise, on the eastern periphery of Calcutta, in the belt beyond the Circular Canal to the easternmost limit of the municipal area is a vast lowlying tract, more of an industrial area, and comparatively a low density of houses (2000 to 6000 per km²). Likewise, the southern extremity of Calcutta, known as Tollygunge, is also low-lying and has a lot of open spaces with a density of 3300 houses per km². Consequently, the southern semi-urban fringes of Calcutta and Tollygunge still offer possibilities of further infilling in the future by residential and other structures.

8On the whole, the housing condition in Calcutta is extremely poor as revealed by surveys conducted from time to time. Once a City of Palaces, Calcutta shows up the signs of a dying city, despite the rise of many modem structures and apartment houses in recent years. The housing condition is particulary deplorable in the more densely populated residential tracts of north and central Calcutta, and in the older residential areas of Kalighat, Bhowanipore and Kidderpore. The most notable features of Calcutta, in respect of housing, are its numerous (some 1000) slums or bustees which are strewn all over the city, but are more frequent in the outer industrial bell lying beyond the Circular Road (Upper and Lower). The bustees are characterized by tight clustering of tiny huts normally made up of walls of bamboo frames with mud plastered on to them having roofs of corrugated tin or other cheap material like the tiles. The basic amenities of drainage, sewerage, water supply, electricity and water closet are lacking, making these slums highly unhygienic places to live in. Such bustees have been the breeding ground of anti-social elements and the foci of many endemic and epidemic diseases.

Plate 4: THE HEART OF CALCUTTA B.B.D. BAG

9Though piecemeal efforts have been made from time to time to remove the slums of Calcutta, such efforts involving large scale eviction of tenents could not be successful. The present trend in planning the city is to provide the basic amenities to the bustees as much as possible and thus make these areas livable instead of trying to forcibly remove the slum-dwellers by providing them with alternative accommodation elsewhere as has been done earlier in some cases. Obviously, the removal of bustees involves (massive construction of apartments to provide alternative accommodation, which entails enormous capital investment. Lately, by the effort of the CMDA, a large number of bustees have been provided with paved lanes, water taps, and sanitary privies, radically transforming these into habitable places, without having to evict the dwellers. Some 1000 Calcutta bustees house no less than a quarter of the city population. Nonetheless, the bustees being composed of single-storeyed dwellings, are in fact less crowded in terms of persons per unit land area than many of densely populated blocks of north Calcutta. Thus in many cases improved bustees can be transformed into fairly good residential area possibly cleaner than many other crowded and dilapidated localities of north Calcutta2.

Plate 5: THE HEART OF OLD TOWN: MAHATMA GANDHI ROAD, IN BARABAZAR

10According to 1951 census as many as 3.6 persons on an average lived in a room in Calcutta. The survey carried out by Sen (1954-58) revealed that multimember households had no less than three persons per living room and 57.6 per cent of such households had only one room to share and 20.6 per cent households had two rooms each only. It also revealed that 2 per cent households had no room of their own, that is, they had to live in a verandah or such shelter having no four walls. The same survey also revealed that in regular households comprising two or more members the living space available per capita was around 4 square only. According to this survey hardly 7.5 per cent households had a separate house or flat for their own use. As many as 72 per cent households had to share amenities such as water taps, bathrooms, latrines or sometimes cooking spaces with other households (44 per cent in pucca or semi-pucca houses and 28 per cent in katcha houses). Calcutta has a surprisingly large number (20.5 per cent) of households living in shops, messes, hotels or such other miscellaneous establishments. The picture is dismal. The living condition in Calcutta is possibly worse now.

11Looking at Calcutta one readily gets the impression that it has always been a highly congested metropolis. The high concentration of resident population apart, there is the influx of thousands upon thousands of commuters to the city from the densely populated suburbs raising the day-time Calcutta population by one million or so. Though the population growth of Calcutta proper has been slower during recent past (only 4.54 per cent in 1971-81), the population of the conurbation outside the city limit has grown by leaps and bounds and the flow of commuters thereby has increased over the years. During 1971-81 there has been 30.35 per cent increase of population in the Calcutta urban agglomeration taken as a whole. As a result, the city infrastructure Systems are now subject to so great stress and strain that there are failures all over. The day-time influx of commuters is obviously the highest in the main commercial district of Burrabazar and in the office block around BBD Bagh (Dalhousie Square). It is interesting to note that despite growing influx of commuters, the office block does not seem to be yet so congested, mainly because of the fact that the density of resident population (12,200 persons per km²⁾ and that of occupied houses (1700 per km²⁾ in the office area are on the low side compared to what is prevailing in the rest of the city. What is more important is that despite 300 years of urbanization a large water tank still provides a piece of open sky in the very heart of the office block of BBD Bag, unlike in many other metropolitan cities. A few such redeeming features make Calcutta still a livable place despite the continuous shrinkage of its urban amenities in recent years.

Plate 6: THE TRADITIONAL URBAN STRUCTURE

12On the whole, there is no doubt that Calcutta is a city of great congestion with an infrastructure totally inadequate to carry on the basic circulation Systems of the city. Poor maintenance and piecemeal urban renewal efforts over the years have failed to keep the city tidy enough. It should be remembered that the city is now 300 years old, and obviously many of the old structures and city blocks are in a dilapidated condition. Vigorous urban renewal programmes involving massive Investments can only put the city back to its feet. It is hoped that the efforts now being made towards improvement by agencies like Calcutta Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA), Metro Railways, and Metropolitan Water Supply and Sanitation Authority would bear fruit in the foreseeable future.

Calcutta land use

13It is difficult to answer straightaway why Calcutta is not functioning properly as a metropolitan city. One of the reasons seems to be the fact that the apportionment of city land under different uses is rather unbalanced. If we examine how land space in the city is being utilised (see Table 5.2) we find as per survey carried out by CMPO (1963) that a major share of land (42.7 per cent) is used as residential areas.

14The main reason why such a large chunk goes for living space only, is that Calcutta is still a low-rise city. In many areas some land could be saved for other purposes if more living space is made available in more valuable residential areas by building upward. This would leave some space, for example, for providing a better transport network. Some 11.8 per cent of land space in the city is used for carrying on transportation. Calcutta streets are getting so clogged up every day with heavy traffic that it is imperative to have more land for this purpose to keep on the circulation System functioning properly. Since Calcutta has a strong industrial foundation, quite a bit of valuable urban land (7.5 percent) has been used up by industry, adding industrial pollution to the city. A number of industrial units are located within residential areas and sometimes housed inside residential dwellings. Some of these could possibly. be better relocated elsewhere outside the municipal limits, thus releasing valuable urban land for some other more appropriate uses.

Plate 7: BHOWANIPORE

Plate 8: EASTERN CALCUTTA: BUSTEES AND INDUSTRIES

15Calcutta being basically a service-oriented city, it has as much as 7.12 per cent of land devoted to public and semi-public uses needed for administrative, educational buildings, hospitals and public utilities. Calcutta has open recreational areas to the extent of 4.43 per cent of the city land, which is inadequate. The city is regarded as the commercial metropolis of eastern India, but only 3.77 per cent of land is devoted to carry out the volume of commerce. As a result, much of commercial activities in Calcutta have to be carried on from residential houses to the detriment of good urban living. In fact, much of Calcutta today has turned into a veritable bazaar.

16Contrary to the usual impression of Calcutta, a lot of land in the city is still derelict, vacant, or put to agricultural uses. Such undeveloped areas cover as much as 16.9 per cent of the city, spread over some 1600 hectares of valuable metropolitan land. Any improvement plan of Calcutta must give attention to this category of underused land which should be properly developed for more fruitful uses. Most of these derelict lands are located in the eastern and southern fringes of Calcutta which still await more careful identification, demarcation and mapping.

17Lately, the Calcutta Metropolitan Development Authority (1980) and the National Atlas and Thematic Mapping Organization (1982) brought out land use maps of Calcutta which throw some light on the manner in which the urban space in this city is organized. On the National Atlas map (1:25,000) eleven categories of land have been shown. Besides, the residential areas have been divided five classes according to density of population (less than 250, 251-500, 501-750, 751-1000, and more than 1000 persons per hectare) in each ward3.

18Rational land planning for better use of land is a sine qua non precondition for making the city worth living. So long the civic authorities in Calcutta had little power to control the use of land. But now under a new act of the legislature, civic authorities would have sufficient power vested in them to control and plan the use of land; and it is hoped that work in this direction would be initiated soon, ushering in a more rational layout for the use of land in Calcutta in the near future. Many things in Calcutta are in utter chaos today. Its transport System is at breaking point. Its water supply, drainage and power supply are grossly inadequate. There are terrible admixture of functions and uses of land within the city. Intense commercial activities entailing Wholesale business and warehousing are being carried out in many densely populated localities, especially in north Calcutta. Thus former good residential areas have now been rendered uninhabitable.

Plate 9: AN URBAN FRINGE: GARIA.

19Innumerable small industries like hosiery, tailoring, printing, confectionery, bakery, repairing shops and engineering establishments have made inroads into the highly congested residential localities. Besides, in many areas there are even large factories and processing establishments (like tanneries in Tangra) in the city which are continuously delivering their effluents, dust and smoke on to the residential neighbourhoods. Narrow streets, inadequate public Utility Systems and overcrowding have made the congestion worse confounded. There is filth, garbage, noise and confusion everywhere and everytime.

Calcutta past and present: a failure in management

20Even as late as the thirties Calcutta was regarded as one of the finest cities in the country and was structurally well organized. The economic base of its commercial core, its industrial conurbation and its wide agricultural hinterland was sound enough to sustain such a large and vibrant metropolis as Calcutta. One would notice that the streets of Calcutta have some semblance of a sound gridiron pattern, as can be found in many other modern cities. Its water supply and sewage Systems were some of the very best in the country when laid out in the last Century. The Calcutta transport System was equally efficient enough till the end of the last World War. Structurally, Calcutta is a well laid out low-rise city, having a fairly balanced distribution of residential localities, parks, open spaces, working places, business houses, and public institutions throughout the central city, its industrial establishments being located mainly in the outer peripheral zone and industrial suburbs. By and large, despite high pressure of resident population, the city was absolutely clean and shipshape, with streets regularly swept and washed twice a day with hose pipes till recently. Its idyllic gas-lit alleys and bright shop-lined streets were real attractions in the evenings, not so long ago. The city's circulation System would be awake as early as 4.30 a.m. with the tram-cars twanging their way and operating smoothly till withdrawn quite late at night into their night sheds for a thorough wash.

21If Calcutta is structurally so well set a city, the question now arises as to why there is utter failure of the urban System, making it an unlivable metropolis today. The fact is that the breakdown which is seen all around in the city is more due to a failure of the management rather than due to any defect in its basic infrastructure which is surprisingly still functioning despite mounting pressures on it. The city has come to this pass as a result of the continued neglect and sheer non-maintenance of the available infrastructure. Calcutta's civic administration was in a chaotic state for a long time past and is literally in a shambles now. The potholed streets are not swept, the dark alleys left unlighted at nightfall, the mounting heaps of garbage left for days together, and the sewage piled up. Almost the whole of the city has now been turned into a huge open-air oriental bazaar with people shouting and jostling often right in the middle of the Innumerable small industries like hosiery ploughing its way through this unbelievable chaos. The city is nevertheless quite lively and it often wears a festive look; but frankly, there is no sign of the existence of an orderly city government anywhere. In the circumstances, no wonder, all the improvement plans and urban renewal programmes costing crores of rupees would prove to be absolutely useless as a result of the poor maintenance and the utter lack of management by the civic authorities and the residents. What is now needed is not merely a new flyover, a new masonry structure or widening of streets here and there, but a total managerial revolution in the very style of functioning of the city government.