1992: I was working on a film project on closed and sick industries in Bengal for CINDIT of New Delhi who were involved with development issues. While I had earlier worked on a voluntary basis and in a sort of activist mode with small, local organisations, this was the first time I was to professionally explore the issues that have always interested and concerned me.
In 1994, Jyoti Basu then Chief Minister of West Bengal, made some significant remarks regarding closed and sick industries of the state, which would have far-reaching implications. With this background I began to privately work on documenting and filming social issues which concerned me, many of which were shown in India and abroad. Simultaneously, I also worked on a commercial basis in the industry for personal sustenance, but I always tried to work on projects in which a certain level of protest and activism was apparent. These included environmental issues like water and air pollution in which their severity and ill-effects were highlighted.
In 1995, I was living in rented accommodation in the locality right behind the erstwhile Usha Factory on Prince Anwar Shah Road, the site of the present mammoth real estate development known as South City. The Jay Engineering factory (a unit of Usha Industries) which occupied most of the industrial enclave was still partly functional and had not yet been shut down. The smaller workshops and sheds of ancillary manufacturers and vendors abutted the factory and I could see a lot of them from the rooftop of my house.
A year before, while doing a film on the Calcutta wetlands, I closely observed the changes that were taking place because of the new constructions and real estate development in the areas off the bypass including Salt Lake. We projected effects on the environment and were amazed to find that town planning norms had never actually included the development of these areas. In fact, this side of the city was never meant to be developed so drastically at all. The sites proposed for development were meant to be on the other side of the river, in the Howrah region!
Over the last few years, I can see how the eastern and southern areas of the city have undergone rampant development, how built-up settlements have rapidly expanded, and I am a witness as well as a co-sufferer of the many problems facing the residents. This aspect was made acutely aware to me one day when the cycle rickshawala taking me home, in an aggrieved tone full of aggression, suddenly told me that the housing complex in which I resided was built on a paddy field, and that the manicured lawn on which I often spent some relaxed time was exactly the spot where his own paddy crop had been cultivated. He, along with other farmers, had been forcibly evicted from there with a miniscule compensation and he was now trying hard to earn a living as a rickshawala while his wife worked as a domestic help in that very complex. This piece of information shocked me out of my comfort zone and strengthened my resolve to do something positive .
In 2004 I heard that the Usha factory land had been sold to the consortium developing the high-rise South City complex. This was completely contrary to what Jyoti Basu had declared in '94 when he said that the Usha Factory land would be used for the construction of Apollo Hospital and that a pharmaceutical factory would also come up there, providing employment and other benefits to the local population.
I am personally against the real estate development in the Eastern Metropolitan bypass and adjoining areas. I visited the Usha factory location in '04 and talked with the residents who lived around it. From them I learned that the employees of Usha factory still living in their allocated staff quarters were to be evicted very soon. I also heard that CITU, the CPI(M)'s labour union, had taken over the negotiations with the factory owners, depriving the affected workers of a large portion of their deserved compensation.
Most of the workers had quietly accepted whatever handout came their way and had left the quarters. As soon as they vacated their premises, the housing was dismantled, making it inhabitable. I interviewed the women and migrant workers most affected by the strong-arm tactics of the developers, documented my findings, and saw the last vestiges of two generations of a community on the brink of oblivion. I saw these people, immigrants from neighbouring districts and states, unable to accept the changes that had been forced on them. I saw the way they tried to cope with the drastic degradation in their lifestyles, their lack of suitable employment leading to penury, and how all this affected them so deeply that they were unwilling to take leave of the area, opting to live in crude hutments and shacks beside the high wall that now enclosed their former place of residence, without the benefit of basic amenities. This is when I firmly decided that I would devote my time, energy and limited personal funds to highlight their plight.
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