16/10/2016

Vishva Bharati Professor discusses growth of Siliguri in the age of neo-liberalism






Patna,(BiharTimes): “In the age of neo-liberal developmentalism, Siliguri presents a complex entanglement of control, crime, communication and capital. At another level, Siliguri shows us that the border economy does not remained confined to the border and borderland, but seeps and segues into the so-called mainland to bring about powerful transformations into the economies of the mainland and the cities therein.”

This was stated by Dr Atig Ghosh, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Vishva Bharati University, in his lecture, “Fluid Futures: Migrant Labour and Trafficked Lives in Millennial Siliguri.”

It was jointly organized by History Department of Patna Univeristy and Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Patna Centre at SAP Building, Darbhanga House on Saturday.

The presentation dealt with three related things. First, is the the labour that works in infrastructure projects, as well as the construction boom in the consumer, hospitalisty, education and health sectors. This comes in a big way from the big tea garden where there is a situation of permanent famine and to evade this, the tea workers are feeding into the workforce in infrastructure project and realty boom.

Second, they are also being lured into massive prostitution and trafficking racket that has come up in and around Siliguri.

Third, there is a chunk of the labour that comes from migrant population who mostly lives in slums. The paper discusses the nature of this migrancy, the periodicity and chronology of migration to the city, its regional sources, and the condition in which these migrants live and work out of the slums of Siliguri. To say that public health, hygiene, water supply, and living conditions in these migrant slums are abysmal is to understate the case.

The paper debunked studies which celebrate the migrant nature of Siliguri, giving much unthinking description of Siliguri as “a cosmopolitan town in letter and spirit.”

Dr Ghosh argued that the city itself may prove incidental to the purpose of neo-liberal development. The becoming metropolitan dream of forward and backward linkages and phenomenal growth may come to grief, for neo-liberal development has the nature of mobilizing capital from point to point without even touching upon the lives of actors and factors it traverses en route and works through.

He explained in detail the growth of Siliguri which has two airports, three railway stations and camps of army and air force, CRPF, SSB, BSF and Assam Rifle.

Situated very close to Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and not far away from China, it is strategically very well placed. Its importance will increase further in this era of Look East policy, he added.

Prof (Retd) Bharati S Kumar of Patna University, while chairing the programme, said that there is a need to study whether all these activities have increased poverty or decreased it.

Head of the Department Prof Amarnath Singh welcomed the guests while Prof Daisy Narain conducted it.

Prof Pushpendra of TISS delivered vote of thanks.

 

 

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