ABSTRACT
The chapter examines the history of slums (as an informal part of the city’s housing sector) in maintaining the socio-economic infrastructure of Calcutta during its urbanization from the colonial era to the present. It also addresses the issue of housing rights of the urban poor, who mainly live in slums and form the major labour force which meets the needs of the better-off inhabitants of Calcutta by providing them with such services as domestic help, tailors, carpenters, and rickshaw pullers, among many other similar manual jobs. Yet, while thus acting as agencies of urbanization, the slum dwellers have also suffered victimization at each stage in that process. With every new step in the expansion of the city’s borders, the slum dwellers living on its edges were evicted to make way for the living spaces of the upper classes.
