Kolkata has long been celebrated for its rich cultural heritage, intellectual fervor, and colonial-era architecture. However, there is much more to the city, including socioeconomic disparities, problem of urban migration, and the struggle for survival The journey embarked upon in this book takes us through the crowded, narrow lanes of slums the slums of Kolkata. We navigate through the daily struggles for access to clean water, education, healthcare, and dignified employment. This book is a sociological study that invites readers to explore the nuances of poverty, the impact of urbanization, and the collective efforts to carve out a dignified existence. The data collection process undertaken to write this book are of two types:- a) Secondary data collection b) Primary data collection The primary data are the data’s which is in original from and is directly collected from the field. The secondary data’s are those data that were already collected someone and which may have passed through some statistical process. The secondary data have been collected mainly from Census of India, National Atlas and thematic Mapping Organization, Kolkata Metropolitan Developmental Authority and Kolkata Municipal Corporation etc. As we navigate the intricacies of life within Kolkata's slums, it is essential to recognize the systemic issues that perpetuate these challenges. From inadequate infrastructure to limited access to education and healthcare, the complexities are deeply rooted in broader societal structures.

This book looks at the typologies of cities and ideas of urbanity. Focusing specifically on cities in South Asia, it analyses the unique planning concepts, archaeology, art, culture, life, and philosophy of various cities of ancient and modern South Asia. The book explores the concept of urbanity and the idea of an ideal city; it interrogates general notions of urbanity by juxtaposing city life in various periods and geographies of South Asia. By analysing the demography, architecture, rituals, and culture of various cities, it looks at the different spatialities of these places in terms of their size, population, commerce, and philosophy as well as the reasons behind the transformation of these places into urban centres. Drawing from various archeological and literary sources, the volume includes rich details about heterogeneity, rituals, festivals, social stratification, penal systems, famines, and insurrections in ancient cities as well as modern cities like Lahore, Dhaka, and Calcutta, among many others in South Asia. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of ancient and modern history, archaeology, urban studies, urban and town planning, urban sociology, urban geography, cultural studies, post-colonial studies, ancient and medieval architecture, heritage studies, conservation studies, and South Asian studies.

Celebrated urban theorist Davis provides a global overview of the diverse religious, ethnic, and political movements competing for the souls of the new urban poor.

They live amid terrible poverty in one of the most crowded places on earth, the sector of Calcutta known as the City of Joy . This is the story of living saints and heroes, those who abandoned affluent and middle-class lives to dedicate themselves to the poor. And it is a testament to the people of the City of Joy. Their tragedies will move you, their faith, generosity, and most of all, boundless love will lift you,bless you, and possibly change your life.

Finalist for the 2020 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction | One of Time Magazines's 100 Must-Read Books of 2020 | Longlisted for the 2020 Porchlight Business Book Awards "An entertaining quest to trace the origins and implications of the names of the roads on which we reside." —Sarah Vowell, The New York Times Book Review When most people think about street addresses, if they think of them at all, it is in their capacity to ensure that the postman can deliver mail or a traveler won’t get lost. But street addresses were not invented to help you find your way; they were created to find you. In many parts of the world, your address can reveal your race and class. In this wide-ranging and remarkable book, Deirdre Mask looks at the fate of streets named after Martin Luther King Jr., the wayfinding means of ancient Romans, and how Nazis haunt the streets of modern Germany. The flipside of having an address is not having one, and we also see what that means for millions of people today, including those who live in the slums of Kolkata and on the streets of London. Filled with fascinating people and histories, The Address Book illuminates the complex and sometimes hidden stories behind street names and their power to name, to hide, to decide who counts, who doesn’t—and why.

This volume aims to look both at as well as beyond the ‘Delhi Gang Rape’ through the lens of Indian Media Studies. The editors consider it a critical event, or rather critical media event that needs to be contextualized within a rapidly changing, diversifying and globalizing Indian society which is as much confronted with new ruptures, asymmetries and inequalities as it may still be shaped by the old-established structures of a patriarchal social order. But the volume also looks beyond the ‘Delhi Gang Rape’ and introduces other related thematic areas of an emerging research field which links Youth, Media and Gender Studies.

In the popular imagination, Calcutta is a packed and pestilential sprawl, made notorious by the Black Hole and the works of Mother Teresa. Kipling called it a City of Dreadful Night, and a century later V.S. Naipaul, Gunter Grass and Louis Malle revived its hellish image. This is the place where the West first truly encountered the East. Founded in the 1690s by East India Company merchants beside the Hugli River, Calcutta grew into India's capital during the Raj and the second city of the British Empire. Named the City of Palaces for its neoclassical mansions, Calcutta was the city of Clive, Hastings, Macaulay and Curzon. It was also home to extraordinary Bengalis such as Rabindranath Tagore, the first Asian Nobel laureate, and Satyajit Ray, among the geniuses of world cinema. Above all, Calcutta (renamed Kolkata in 2001) is a city of extremes, where exquisite refinement rubs shoulders with coarse commercialism and political violence. Krishna Dutta explores these multiple paradoxes, giving personal insight into Calcutta's unique history and modern identity as reflected in its architecture, literature, cinema and music. CITY OF ARTISTS: Modern India's cultural capital; home city of

Healthcare in developing countries is often unreliable and of poor quality, thus reducing individuals incentives to use quality health services. This paper examines an innovative approach to access to and demand for quality health care from the poor. Using data from a field experiment in India, I examine the impact of high-quality care experiences in the form of a free medical consultation with a qualified nongovernmental organization doctor, randomly offered by a health insurance provider to a subset of its enrollees. The effects are twofold. First, receiving this additional benefit raises enrollees’ willingness to pay to renew health insurance by 51 percent. This impact appears mostly at the extensive margin and is driven by a perceived income shock, as well as increased satisfaction with the scheme and trust in the insurance provider. In addition, exposed individuals are 12 percentage points more likely to consult a qualified practitioner when ill two months after the free consultation. Providing some initial quality care thus improves the demand for quality healthcare through two different pathways—first by improving health insurance retention and second by raising the subsequent use of quality health services.

Being happy yourself has the potential to change other lives and foster a more caring society

The exclusion of the destitute population from the formal financial system is a long-standing problem in India. This book examines the performance of financial inclusion policies in India to understand their impact on two urban vulnerable groups, Slum Dwellers and Beggars. This study includes analysis at the national level, the variables of the financial inclusion index like Penetration, Availability, and Usage from 2006 to 2020 from the world bank data set. Similarly, the authors examine five policies on financial inclusion by conducting a primary level survey on two urban capital cities of Lucknow and Kolkata, using a well-structured questionnaire for data collection. The authors uses two sampling techniques: simple random in the case of beggars, and stratified random in the case of slum dwellers. This book highlights the difference between financial access and non-access of household respondents in capturing the impacts of financial inclusion schemes on their socio-economic condition and financial behavior. The findings indicate that access to these schemes is extremely limited for the underprivileged population, such as beggars and slum dwellers. The analysis has shown that claims made by the government are not based on real-life occurrences. This book demonstrates that these programs have a negligible effect on life-deprived people. This book will be of interest to academia, policymakers, and society at large.