Whose city? Ethnic communities in Kolkata, India: An exploration into decentralization of urban governance system in preserving their cultural identity

Ethnic groups have always been a part of a city’s cultural landscape giving a relief the monotony of the concrete jungle, the ‘facelessness’ of modern cities. This is particularly true in the context of colonial Indian cities. There have been attempts to understand, define and explain from different perspectives the characteristics of different ethnic groups. There has been very little attempt to explore the issues related to their role in governance or decision making and how it affects their well-being and socio-economic position. The need of such a study is increasingly realized as these communities or ethnic minorities are often the victims of the social seclusion and find themselves in a recurrent struggle to preserve their identity. A contradiction to this situation is when amendments like that of 74th Constitutional Amendment Act (CAA) are to assure inclusion of the people (specially focusing on women, minorities) in the local area governance system. After almost more than 2 decades of the implementation of 74th Amendment Act, there still prevails a question of its effectiveness and applicability. This research project focuses on the role of the decentralization process of the urban governance in preserving the cultural identity of the ethnic communities. This study takes into account concepts like diaspora and transnational identity as a base to explain the cultural identity as well as the social seclusion and related power relations. Also, it is an attempt to understand the continuous change and process of adaptation. The research also addresses to identifying the relation between the social exclusion of the ethnic communities and effectiveness of the decentralization policies. This will also focus on identifying the means to incorporate the special need of ethnic communities in the planning process through policy intervention and change in institutional structure. The proposed research methodology will be predominantly based on qualitative techniques .Initially quantitative techniques (like random and stratified sampling) can be used for determining the ratio of population of the ethnic community with the total population. Once this is done, the qualitative techniques can be extensively used to know how people from the community perceive the city and their identity and influencing external factors. This Ph.D project has a strong practical implication. It identifies the policy and legal linkages to strengthen the participation of the ethnic communities to ensure their rights and preserve their cultural identity. This will empower them to have better access to urban services, employment and ensure the representation of their culture in the city. This research also aims at a people centric urban planning with better dialogue between the ethnic communities and the local governance.