Partha Majumdar
Kolkata
IT was November 1996. The Left Front government had launched Operation Sunshine to evict hawkers from the city’s pavements. A bitter battle was raging between hawkers and a government determined to see the last of them. Sudeb Pal, a hawker on the Gariahat road pavement, was staying awake night after night with his colleagues to prevent their stalls and goods from being destroyed. The hawkers were desperately hanging on to their share of the pavement. Pal was tired of the uncertainties of life on the pavement. One night he thought of a solution. He shared it with his colleagues but it sounded like a pipedream. After a few more nights of tension, fellow hawkers began to seriously examine Pal’s proposal. He had suggested that 100 hawkers come together under his leadership and set up a shopping mall for themselves. How could hawkers with just a few resources build a shopping complex? Pal looks like any other middle class Bengali. But his frail appearance and unassuming demeanor belie his true personality. He proved to be a man with grit and courage who could work his way through very difficult circumstances. Pal had set up shop on the pavement in 1979.
Business was good. As the eldest son, he had responsibilities to shoulder. He got his sister married in the early eighties and was reasonably happy. “The pavement has given me a lot,” he says gratefully. But he would always look for avenues to expand his business. “Ami jantam footpath amar babar sampatti noy, (I knew that I did not inherit the space on the pavement),” he says. That eviction was inevitable was clear to him. He did not want to be caught napping. In 1986, he set up a lamp factory in partnership with a friend, thinking it would give him an alternative source of livelihood. They still run the factory, but with cheap Chinese products flooding the market, business is down. In 1996, Suhas Chakrabarty, minister for transport and his lieutenant Kanti Ganguly, then a councilor in Calcutta Municipal Corporation were given charge of carrying out Operation Sunshine. The government allowed hawkers to continue doing business during the months preceding the Durga Puja festival. Plans were put in place to remove them once the festive season was over.
The hawkers’ associations had got a stay order for
21 days from the High Court. Ballygunge Hawkers’
Association, one of the oldest hawkers’ associations
in the city of which Pal was a member, was a petitioner.
Pal knew it was a temporary reprieve.
Stray incidents of demolition continued on the
sly despite the stay order. Generators belonging to
the hawkers that were switched on whenever there
was a power cut had also been seized. Pal told the leaders of his association that he wanted
a lasting solution to the problem because he
believed hawkers had no permanent rights to shops
on the pavements. They would be evicted ultimately,
he argued. He was rebuffed. Pal then began to
mull over his plan of setting up a shopping complex.‘We had no option left,” says Partha Dutta, who
now runs a shop of ready-to-wear garments in the complex.
Getting 100 people to back the plan was not really
difficult. A committee was set up with Pal as secretary.
A fund was raised from members with each
contributing Rs 500. Pal and his friends promised
to return the money if the plan fell through.
Search for a piece of suitable land began. After
taking a look at a few plots the group zeroed in on a
huge building on Gariahat road. It belonged to Chandranath Banik.
The property had an empty backyard which caught the attention of the hawkers. This was what they wanted to buy. Chandranath and his eldest son, Chandrakanta, were both in jail on charges of murdering Chandrakanta’s wife. Chandranath’s two younger sons were keen to sell the land immediately because there was talk of Chandrakanta being released on parole. Pal visited the two brothers with a proposal to buy the land. The brothers said: “First show us you have a million rupees at your disposal ”They asked for Rs 2 crore. Undaunted by the steep price, Pal replied: “I will show you the funds the day you sign an agreement with us after finalising the price’’. The negotiated price came down to Rs 1 crore for the piece of land. One of the shop owners said on condition of anonymity that the negotiated price was actually Rs 1.5 crore. Meanwhile, the order that allowed hawkers to do business during the Pujas was vacated. While the rest of the hawkers took to the streets, about 100 angry men kept their cool and met every Sunday to realise their dream. Registration of a 99-year lease deed was completed on January 2, 1997. Registration was completed in 100 different names so that each hawker became the owner of a plot of land instead of the committee owning it. Every contribution was not equal and the size of ownership varied proportionately.
Now began the endless rounds of various departments in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC). Pal managed to win over two crucial men: Gorachand Mandal and Manoj Kanti Majumdar. Gorachand Mandal was the city architect at the corporation. He carried the file up and down and got all the requisite signatures. Manoj Kanti Majumdar, was the chief of the planning and development cell. Mandal drew up the building layout, which was then given final shape by an architect. Pal was clear that they should raise funds for an air-conditioned complex. The building was planned so that it has a lot of empty space for shoppers to walk around. A lottery was held to determine the position of each member’s shop. Construction began in April 1997, with a deadline to complete the building in time for Durga Puja, the main shopping season. Every Sunday, members would be told the amount they needed to submit to keep the construction activity at full steam. By then the hawkers had so much faith in the project that they would beg or borrow to ensure they were ready with the money. To lower costs, committee members would visit wholesalers and buy the stuff directly from them. In June 1997 the shopping complex became operational. Called Shatadeep, which means a hundred lights, it is located in Gariahat, one of Kolkata’s busiest shopping centres. The complex had 100 separate electricity meters one for each of the 100 hawkers. It had taken grit, togetherness and sacrifice for them to realise their dream.
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