Holi Days In The Slums Of Kolkata

I’m walking towards a taxi rank in Kolkata when a driver accosts me and starts haggling. He’s probably asking too much for the journey I want to take, but it’s difficult to negotiate with a man who’s painted bright pink from head to toe. Then again, aside from a few patches of blue around the cheeks, so am I.

Today has been Holi, India’s festival of colours, and as he tells me a few minutes later when I’m safely ensconced in the back of his cab, it’s a festival that levels everyone – no matter your caste, class or everyday skin colour, nobody is safe from the powders, paints and water bombs and everyone looks the same when you’re covered in colours.

Kolkata is a city that really embraces Holi and with it the opportunity to come together for a shared party. It was here in Bengal that the tradition of playing with colours started, when worshippers would visit Krishna temples and cover themselves with red powder to signify the passion with which they would work to honour Krishna and struggle to improve society.

In Kolkata, that struggle is still great. In a city of 15 million people, the third largest in India, some 3 million people live in slums. According to UN-Habitat’s ‘Global Report on Human Settlements’ there are 5,500 slums here, of which around 2,011 are registered slums known as ‘bustees’. The other 3,500 unregistered slums have grown up by the side of canals, large drains, garbage dumps, railway tracks and roads. Space in the slums is hard to come by, and on average each small room is shared by 13 people.

Many of the authorised slums date back to the days of British colonialism, when middlemen let out huts on landowners’ land to migrant workers. These migrants needed a place to live and had no alternative but to accept accommodation without basic amenities. Today, the situation is much the same as workers come from states such as Orissa, Jharkhand and Bihar to seek work in Kolkata.

Dr. Nitai Kundu interviewed Kolkata slum dwellers for the UN-Habitat report. One man he spoke to, Safi Ahmed, lives in a Kolkata slum called Narkeldanga and works laminating paper. As a child he lived in a slum in Park Circus with his parents but after his marriage moved to Narkeldanga to live with his family. He earns Rs 300 (just over £4) per week with which he supports seven family members, and he pays Rs 300 a month in rent for their shared home.

Another man, Rajan, is 70 and has works in a slum in ward 38. He is employed rolling bidis: small, leaf-rolled cigarettes tied with string. He makes 500-600 bidis every day and is paid Rs 70, less than £1. All the members of his family share a single room so it’s normal for the male members to sleep outside on the pavement, a common sight on Kolkata’s streets.

Stories like these highlight the industriousness of the slums and how long and hard their inhabitants work for such a paltry reward. But on days like Holi, when Kolkata forgets its divisions and comes together in celebration, its true colours shine through.

Why Aid India?

When Andrew Mitchell, the secretary of state for international development, announced recently that the UK plans to give more than £1billion in aid to India over the next four years, it prompted a wave of derision from some sections of the press. “Why on earth is cash-strapped Britain giving £1billion of aid to a country that can afford its own space programme?” asked Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail while over in the Express, Jimmy Young argued ‘India doesn't need our aid anymore... Britain does.’

I can see why people are making this argument – India has the world’s second fastest growing economy and is now firmly established as a ‘middle-income country’, but the fact remains that there are 450 million people living on less than US$1.25 a day. This apparent disconnect extends well beyond India. It used to be the case that development aid was about helping poor countries, but now 72% of the world’s poor people live in middle-income countries.

I think part of the problem is a failure to grasp India’s vast size. There are more poor people in eight Indian states than there are in the 26 countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined, and looking at these states individually makes the need for aid obvious. For example, Bihar has a population the size of Germany and an annual income per person of £200.

DFID will focus its spending in just three states: Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa – the state where I live and work. I decided to get in touch with DFID here in India to get their opinion on the debate. They told me: “The pace of India's transformation to date is remarkable. But India's poorest states - each of them larger than most African countries - still face huge development challenges. For example close to half of the young children in Orissa are undernourished. To put the scale of the challenge into context, in Orissa - just one of India's 28 states - the number of people who live on the equivalent of less than 80 pence a day ($1.25) is 40% of the entire UK population.”

They added: “As part of the revitalised British relationship with India, following Prime Minister David Cameron's successful visit last year, our development partnership has an important role to play. We are discussing with the Government of India a new approach. Over the next few years, in India's poorest states, we want to help the private sector to deliver jobs and basic services like health and education in areas which desperately need them. We also want to target our support to the poorest women and girls, and help them get quality schooling, healthcare and nutrition.”

Meanwhile in the UK, Christian Aid director Loretta Minghella welcomed the fact that DFID money will be going where it is needed most: “The emphasis of the UK government programme is on three of the poorest states in the country where there remain huge challenges, particularly in providing education and health care, nutrition and jobs.”

The Indian government is running a host of its own schemes designed to alleviate poverty in these states, but the UK’s attention is able to leverage support and attention for the poorest people who often lack a political voice within the country. There’s also an argument that by helping the poorest Indians, the UK is making friends and influencing people who will soon be a global power themselves. As Ms Minghella pointed out: “The UK aid will fit in well with the Indian government’s own strategy of targeting the poorest and most excluded communities. To withdraw aid at this crucial juncture in India’s development would be extremely short-sighted.”