I volunteered for the ‘No Poor’ project (titled ‘Exploring the dimensions and dynamics of Indian urban poverty’, Kolkata chapter) initiated by the Centre for Development Economics (CDE), Delhi School of Economics.

The project sought to identify key mechanisms that explain the persistence and exacerbation of poverty altered by the insertion of developing countries into the globalisation process, including trade aid, FDI and migration, and by the growing inter-dependence of economies.

In this Kolkata slum survey we interviewed people from Dumdum Road to Metiabruz and from Beliaghata to Sovabazar asking them about their socio-economic life and their demographic structures, and informing them about the rights they were entitled to but were not aware of.

There was obviously a marked distinction between us and them, and our self-consciousness acted as a deterrent. As days went by, we slowly became sensitive to the environment.

Earlier I believed that it was not very useful to help the poor financially; rather they should be helped to elevate themselves by working. But after meeting a person who had liver tumour and was denied a bed in the government hospital, I was forced to change my views.But we also stumbled upon some queer contradictions. We interviewed people who denied taking tobacco even as they kept having it in front of us.

There were people who had good jobs, owned land, but still stayed in the slum so that they could reap economic benefits from the land. On the other hand, we also met people who had been starving for days.

I met a girl who spent days making earrings and selling them in the neighbourhood. She gifted me a pair. Living across her ramshackle settlement was a person who owned a Ninja bike. According to him, people live to fulfil their passions. However, neither he nor any other person living in the slum thought it was a strange contradiction.

The sultry days of June went by as we were busy filling the questionnaire and consulting our mentors. However, the implications of poverty are sinking in every day.

(Sukanya is an Economics Honours student at Presidency University, Kolkata.)

Published on July 24, 2013