The megacity of Kolkata, West Bengal, India lies on the flood plains of the Hooghly River at an average elevation of 5.2 meters above sea level. One of the largest and densest settlements on the planet, the city was central to the development of capitalism, evolving from its colonial-era origins as a mercantile and industrial hub to a metropolis in post-liberalized India. This transition involved a shift from port-based and jute industries towards a model of capitalist development focused on information technology, finance, and infrastructure. In this narrative, Kolkata became a pivotal project for the British imperialists and capitalists with the rise of the British East India Company during the eighteenth century. The East India Company leveraged the strategic position of the city to expand its trade in saltpetre, opium, salt, silk, cotton, jute, tea and rice. The city soon became the financial heart of the British Empire in India, and the protective deltaic wetlands of the area – a sprawling area of saltwater marshes and swamplands – was transformed into a logistical centre through the creation of a riverine port by the early years of the nineteenth century.
Today, Kolkata is central for showcasing how technology, environment and sustainability intersect, often at the cost of biodiversity and sustainability of the environment. Discourses of “smartness” are reshaping the geography and wealth distribution of the city, while at the same time presenting both promises and dangers to sustainability and water management. Kolkata remains one of the most vulnerable cities globally that will be adversely affected by sea level rise. According to a World Bank report, an optimistic forecast of just 20 cm of sea-level rise by 2050 would make Kolkata the third most exposed city in the world to the risk of flooding.
Such projections no longer belong to the distant future. Kolkata has been experiencing cataclysmic floods annually as its search for “smartness” and mega urbanization come at the expense of the decimation of the vital ecosystem of the East Kolkata Wetlands. The wetlands have long served as both site of speculation and ecological catastrophe. Today, these silts and wetlands are rapidly being converted into shiny office towers in the drive towards “smartness”. The developers of the fancy peri-urban new and smart cities of the region such as Rajarhat and New Town, all tout slogans of clean “atmosphere”, green construction, green corridors, and “smart” services and buildings.
The distinctiveness of this ecological zone is further compounded by the fact that this area is a fertile ground for aquatic and terrestrial food sources, a conduit to cheap and energy-free sewage treatment, and perhaps more vitally, an important ecosystem for flood defence in the face of climate change. Further, there is ongoing dispossession of poor fishing and farming communities whose lands are being turned into speculative real estate. These illegal but largely unchallenged actions have put the area under serious threat of destruction despite being assigned as a Ramsar site by UNESCO in 2002.
Kolkata highlights the promise and peril of smartness. Smartness produces sustainability, but for whom? Concentrating on the site of the Rajarhat-New Town development area, the research will focus on how smartness creates new ideas of intelligence and knowledge. Ethnographic fieldwork will be supplemented with in-depth interviews with multiple stakeholders, including but not limited to current inhabitants of the area, such as residents and farmers, landowners, leaders of resistance movements, new migrants, bureaucrats, IT professionals, environmentalists and state officials. The findings from these interviews will be corroborated with archival material such as government white papers, business and government reports, census reports, and environmental impact assessment reports. This case study will serve as an important comparison to Hamburg, perhaps in demonstrating what we might learn from non-western regions about new forms of envisioning smartness in relationship to the environment.
