Poverty in Calcutta

Calcutta is a port city on the Bay of Bengal in the northeastern state of India designated as West Bengal. As such, the majority of its population (66%) is comprised of Bengali-speaking natives of the region; although, in the true polyglot fashion of the country, Hindi- and Urdu-speaking Indians comprise sizeable minorities (20% and 9%, respectively). Technically, Calcutta proper is only one of 75 local governing bodies that make up the Calcutta Metropolitan District, or "CMD," which includes the infamous sister city of Howrah lying opposite Calcutta along the banks of the Hooghly River. Howrah had the dubious honor in a 1971 census of accounting for a population of nearly three-quarters of a million people - without a single sewer among them (Moorhouse Plate 9). By general consensus, Howra

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terms of spiritual value. Consequently, a learned Brahman scholar is of higher caste than a Rajput prince - though both are in the upper aristocracy - while among the Untouchables, a Doum (one who handles cremations) is considered lower than a homeless kangali, street urchins much in the mold of Dickens' Artful Dodger. One is born into a caste - and carries that identification throughout life. It was an identification that did not matter much to the British raj - although, obviously, a learned "wog" was of more value than an illiterate one - and Calcutta was the city where a Dalit had the chance to break centuries-old barriers of caste-bound, "untouchable" occupation. "Chance" is the key word here, because, while it is true that an Untouchable, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, rose to such position of respect that he was asked to draft the Indian Constitution, the majority of colonial-era Dalits were relegated to physical-labor industrial occupations only nominally better than their village positions had been. Still, it was an elevation that carried both increased financial security and some small level of prestige; there developed a two centuries old pattern of male Dalits coming into Calcutta for half-year periods of time to work hard, l
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2908
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)

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