Calcutta Poor: Inquiry Into the Intractability of Poverty: Inquiry Into the Intractability of Poverty by Frederic C Thomas

Author:Frederic C Thomas [Thomas, Frederic C]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Public Policy, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781315479231
Google: 4rIYDQAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 32206802
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-09-16T00:00:00+00:00

Working with leather, which has always been considered an inferior occupation in the Indian context, remains a niche reserved to certain minorities and castes. The oldest of the tanners are the Chinese. They settled in the Tangra area in east Calcutta, where there are about one hundred big and three hundred small tanneries. All but a few are owned by the Chinese. These tanneries usually have three floors, the ground floor being used as work space, the first floor as living quarters, and the top floor for drying leather. The raw material is supplied mostly by Muslims, while the purchaser and exporters of the finished products are mainly Punjabis. Other Chinese are bootmakers, in addition to being carpenters and cabinetmakers. Their establishments, which are located around Lower Chitpur Road in the center of the city, also combine workshops with residences.

Another group of tanners and shoemakers are Harijans, who occupy the lowest status in the Hindu social hierarchy. Mainly from Bihar, they settled in slum settlements in the Tangra-Tiljala area, where the first slaughterhouse was located. Some of them work in the Chinese tanneries as wage labor. Others own small tanning units and use mostly skin from the heads of cattle or buffaloes, rarely whole hides. They live in tiny huts and use open pits, which they lease, for processing the hides. Another small group manufactures toy drums out of the intestines of slaughtered cattle.

The Harijan bustee in Tiljala developed in the early 1920s when a wealthy person of the Chamar caste acquired the land in order to construct a number of rows of huts to rent out to his fellow caste members. Their huts are small, dark, and window-less, with an average of six persons, mainly males, sharing a single hut, even sleeping in shifts in order to accommodate as many persons as possible. Every year from May to August, they go back to their villages for the planting season, which is also a lean season for the shoe making business. They come back to Calcutta in time for the autumn festive season when new shoes are in demand. When they grow old they retire to their villages, giving way to the younger generation, which takes possession of their huts. To take fresh possession would entail paying some two thousand rupees in key money.

A common dialect binds them together in an alien urban situation and stifles potential conflicts between thika tenants and hut occupants and between owners and workers in the workshops. “The common experience of caste oppression at their place of origin, the stigma attached to their caste occupation, the continued feeling of difference from other castes in the city always remind them of their Harijan identity.” As an expression of their caste solidarity, they formed a committee which solicits funds from the municipality and voluntary organizations for various welfare activities. In 1984 the committee planted a banyan tree at the entrance of the bustee.

The tree grew fast and earned a religious connotation. The Muslims in the surrounding bustees

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