Calcutta Poor: Inquiry into the Intractability of Poverty

by Frederic C. Thomas

Overview

Calcutta is notorious for its pavement dwellers, street children, and scavengers that have become a portrait of the worst sort of human degradation. In this illuminating critique, Thomas investigates the standard solutions - improved housing, increased job creation, and intervention of social services agencies - only to come to the conclusion that such initiatives have little effect on the inherent nature of the problem of poverty. Based on historical and anthropological findings, and the author's visits to the slums of Calcutta, what becomes clear is that even in the midst of great poverty, there is a nobility of character, a vitality of ethnic and cultural ties, and an energy that bring out inventiveness and ingenuity in the lives of the poor. If Calcutta's poverty is not to be an intractable problem, these internal forces must be awakened to generate solutions. Illustrated with stunning photographs, Thomas's reflections provide new insight into an age-old problem.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781315479231
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/16/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	200
File size:	901 KB

About the Author

Thomas, Frederic C.

Table of Contents

Preface, Introduction, Impressions, Black Town and the City of Palaces, Bhadralok and the Genteel Poor, Refugees and Migrants, Slums and Squatters, Bustees from Within, Improving the Bustees, Caste and Occupational Niches, Providing Livelihoods, Mobilizing the Community, Slum Politics, The Intractability of Urban Poverty, Notes, Bibliography, Index

Editorial Reviews

What solutions could possibly exist for the horrible poverty suffered by Calcutta's poor? Thomas's (Univ. of California-Berkley) investigation moves beyond the impressionable and grapples with the evidence of advances made in potable water, underground sewage, sanitary facilities, health service, nutrition, and child care. The author sets the framework by providing a historic summary of the City of Palaces and the succeeding waves of migrants into Calcutta's slums during the 20th century. He proceeds to summarize the various Indian government and international social and economic programs applied in solution to this scene of impoverishment and destitution. Only when internal programs are developed and administrated by Calcutta's slum dwellers does Thomas report a modest mitigation of famine, disease, filth, and the like. Compared with hysterical studies that have previously emerged, Thomas's work casts the steady eye of a discerning professional anthropologist and historian and subtly points out the possible answers to the extremes represented in Calcutta's slums. For larger public libraries.-John F. Riddick, Central Michigan Univ., Mt. Pleasant

Library Journal

A revisitation into the standard solutions<-->improved housing, increased job creation, and intervention of social services<-->normally prescribed for the problems of Calcutta. Suggests that such initiatives have little effect on the problems of poverty, and that successful solutions must draw on the inherent strength of character, ingenuity, and vitality of the impoverished people themselves. Based on historical and anthropological findings, and the author's visits to the slums of Calcutta. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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