Abstract
This chapter consists of an empirical illustration of when, why, and how ecological infrastructures on the (eastern) periphery of Kolkata made way for concrete estates with major short-term and long-term socio-ecological implications for the city and its (transformed) surroundings. It traces the development of new townships and urban development projects from the 1950s to the present, analyzing the context behind the formulation and implementation of these projects through nuanced readings of development project reports. The chapter demonstrates how EKW conversion is directly and rapidly causing diminishing returns of (provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural) services affecting both wetland dwellers and urban ecology, setting the context for why collective consolidation towards its protection has to be crafted and concretized. It argues that apart from the loss of environmental services and social livelihoods, the transformative processes are far more complex and non-linear, and have to be understood by recognizing and mapping a wide spectrum of challenges and potentials involving coercion, consent, negotiations, perforations, and bargains among old (existing) and new (emerging) stakeholders within the story.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
“These seemingly solid structures are standing on liquid land. Even thirty years ago much of this terrain was wetlands and served as the home to fishermen and farmers. Nineteenth-century colonial officials, but also today’s commuters, travelers and inhabitants of the city, are never far from the smell of the salty bogs that flank the deltaic city of Calcutta. Yet the citizens and city’s planners too often forget the delta and its salt marshes” (Bhattacharyya 2018, p. 2).
- 3.
There is no detailed cartography of land use change in the EKW for public dissemination yet. This is considered by local and Ramsar experts as the most urgent requirement for its protection.
- 4.
The township is also known as Bidhannagar to commemorate Bidhan Chandra Roy.
- 5.
In 1943, during the World War II period, Bengal suffered from one of the worst famines where three million people (approx.) lost their lives. War, natural disasters, and exploitative British policies led to the outbreak of this famine.
- 6.
A certain percentage of plots was earmarked for the high-income group for which a few plots accounting for 7–10 cottahs of land was allotted (Report of the Estimates Committee, 1965–66, 6th Report, Salt Lake Reclamation, City Extension Project, cited in Chattopadhyay 1990).
- 7.
“Polder” implies an area surrounded by an embankment to protect it from higher levels of water outside.
- 8.
The International Development Association (IDA) is a soft loan associate of the World Bank that provides financial assistance (or credit) to developing countries.
- 9.
Banerjee (2012), Bose (2015), Mukherjee (2015a), and other works focusing on Kolkata’s east-centric urban sprawl mention that townships like East Calcutta and Baishnabghata Patuli have been built on wetlands. Yet, there is no systematic and robust research generating quantitative data and qualitative analysis on the small satellite townships, unlike Salt Lake Township (Chattopadhyay 1990) and New Town Rajarhat (Dey et al. 2013; Kundu 2016b; Karmakar 2013).
- 10.
WBHIDCO is the public sector undertaking that executes planning and development for the project site. It has prepared the Land Use Development Control Plan for the area.
- 11.
The project area estimate is available from a report of a technical committee constituted by the state housing department in May 1994 (Basu 2011a).
- 12.
The clearance occurred in phases: in 1999, 622 ha were granted for project implementation (Action Area I), followed by 740 ha (Action Area II), finally followed by 1,715 ha for part of the remaining land conceived as part of the township in 2003 (Dey et al. 2013).
- 13.
“A Guide to Water Body,” Telegraph, July 4, 2013, cited in Sangameswaran (2018, p. 15).
- 14.
Dhrubajyoti Ghosh asserts, “Preserving natural resources and ecosystem services can never be a function of economic valuation. The way a mother saves her child, Kolkata residents should save the east Kolkata wetlands” (quoted in Sarkar 2017).
The “environmentalism of the poor” concept was developed by Guha and Martinez-Alier (1997) to show how livelihoods needs are interconnected with ecological protection in the global South as against the “ecology of affluence” paradigm that explains the attitude of the global North towards environmental preservation where nature is perceived as “pristine.”
- 15.
Dey et al.’s (2013, p. 24) argument about Rajarhat, that it is “a surface that is made of miles of wasteland, destroyed topsoil of earth … filled-in ponds, other water bodies, pilfered and acquired land that was previously tilled, vegetable gardens and farms, wetlands, and small village hamlets,” holds for the entire stretch of the eastern periphery of the city dotted with township and urban development projects.
- 16.
Memo no. 774 (August 26, 1999) in response to Memo no. 122 (August 26, 1999), cited in Dey et al. (2013, p. 93).
- 17.
The method involves extraction of relevant information from the “daily account of time” recorded through a time diary.
- 18.
“Syndicate raj” implies the working of syndicates and influential men (in terms of wealth, political positions, etc.) consisting of a combination of politicians, administrators, police, and criminal strongmen, who have inflicted violence against farmers, fishers, and sharecroppers to exert control over territories, dispense their own justice, and make decisions with respect to life and death (Kundu 2016b).
- 19.
Field visits and informal onsite conversations conducted in January 2019. The information was later validated through KIIs with bheri owners.
- 20.
Families living in and around Rajarhat face acute drinking water scarcity due to indiscriminate sinking of deep tube-wells and submersible pumps that is also causing rapid ground water depletion. The same is true for the residential complexes and hotels lining the EM Bypass, which was supposed to be covered by the Dhapa Water Treatment Plant. The plant has been inaugurated, but it is yet to become functional with its promised potential and service delivery. The huge extraction of ground water on the delta city’s east is a major risk considering its location on the tectonic plate.
- 21.
Drawing from Benjamin (2008), Kundu (2016b) applies the concept of “perforations” in her study on Rajarhat to analyze the way in which top-down master-planned spaces are challenged and resisted by “occupancy urbanism,” a political process through which planned spaces are appropriated in parts by the marginal for their own purposes and interests.
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Mukherjee, J. (2020). Transformed Infrastructures. In: Blue Infrastructures. Exploring Urban Change in South Asia. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3951-0_6
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