ABSTRACT
The current state of affairs in urban West Bengal in general and more so in and around the capital city of Kolkata have a lot to do with a significant distress migration and a prolonged decline in the gainful economic activities in the state over the past 100 years or so. The land reforms of the 1970s, however, brought a stint of fresh air by bringing down rural poverty in the state in a significant way though it failed to arrest the overall declining trend effectively. In this chapter, we discuss the background to the emergence of an increasingly informalized labour market in urban West Bengal and a gendered segregation of at least a part of it. We focus on two major politico-economic changes: land reforms and the industrial policy reforms in post-independent West Bengal. The new industrial policy could not make any dent into the declining trend of the manufacturing sector for various reasons. The social indicators have not really improved much over the Left regime of 34 years from 1977 to 2011. Some indicators related to gender are indeed worrisome. Unfortunately, things seemed to be worsening since the demise of the Left in 2011. This chapter will be based on secondary literature only.
