Neglect led to tanneries loss
04/09/2007
The city authorities in Calcutta have acknowledged neglect of the Chinatown district of the Indian metropolis.
They have also accepted that this poor treatment of the Chinese community, followed by the forced removal of tanneries to the special Bantala leather complex outside the city limits several years ago, led to the loss of 500 tanneries.
Small tanneries were the mainstay of the Chinese community in Calcutta, which has lived for many years in a two square-kilometre township in the east of the city. At one time, as many as 550 tanneries were in operation there.
When the authorities announced the forced move to Bantala in 2004, only 45 of the traditional Chinese tanners went. The rest of these businesses closed down.
While its true that a supreme court ban on tanneries operating within the city limits would have made it impossible for these businesses to continue as before, the city authorities are now acknowledging that decades of neglect of Chinatown probably played a part in encouraging so many tanners just to give up.
For example, Chinatown has no link to the city's water supply and no sewerage network. At the same time, the city does not maintain the roads that connect it to the rest of Calcutta. This harsh treatment of the Chinese community may have been the result of conflict between India and China in 1962.
Now the mayor of Calcutta, Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya, has pledged to clean Chinatown up, saying: "We should have thought about the area much earlier."
Drains, water and roads are likely to be the first areas of improvement the city authorities will concentrate on. This has come too late to save the tanneries, but will bring welcome relief for the 1,000 people of Chinese origin who still live in the walled township.
