What Do I Want To Do: by Ranu Ghosh

I had been following the workers and their dependants mentioned above for some time, documenting their stories, recording their disbelief at their reduced status, how they were trying to adjust to the vicious change in their lives, and how they continued to live in 'jhuggi-jhopdis' beside the wall of the South City development. Skilled workers were now caretakers of private property; running tiny shops; plying cycle rickshaws; itinerant vendors; or simply sitting by the blocked gates despondently watching what is touted as the one of the tallest constructions in this part of the world, growing skywards in leaps and bounds every day.

At the same time, because of my own interest in environmental issues, I interacted with the local Nagarik (Citizens') Committee who have filed a case against the developers in the Calcutta High Court, accusing them of illegally filling up a large natural water body – the Bikramgarh jheel - to construct the fourth tower of the high-rise complex, and of also causing untold damage to the environment as a consequence of their activities. The case, filed on the basis of a signature campaign among 250 or so resident families, initially seemed to have received unexpected, but indirect support from the West Bengal Pollution Control Board who submitted to the Court that no clearances for the real estate project had been issued by them. But construction continues unabated. In fact, at last count, a high powered committee chaired by the Chief Secretary of the state government is “looking into the matter”, and it is popularly believed that all vested interests will be served, completely denying former Usha factory workers of their rights and further justice, and resulting in an irretrievable loss of environment for the local residents, many of whom have been living there for decades before the Usha factory came up in the 50s.

Popular belief also holds that the PCB and the Calcutta Municipal Corporation have told the developers that were they to create an artificial water body within the South City complex equivalent in size to the natural water body they have usurped, the official clearances required to complete construction would be forthcoming!

In 2006, when I returned to document how the staff living quarters, the school and playground had been destroyed, the walls raised and the gates blocked to make way for the construction, I accidentally got to know of Shambhu Prasad, a second-generation worker of Jay Engineering. While talking with the other workers, they told me of Shambhu who stubbornly resided in his officially appointed quarters, slap-bang in the middle of the mammoth real estate development. South City's four gigantic towers are actually rising around his house.