Articles by Smita Khator/PARI

Smita Khator, originally from Murshidabad district of West Bengal, is now based in Kolkata, and is PARI’s translations coordinator as well as a Bengali translator.

Debashish Mondal looked vacantly at the broken walls of his home. All that remained of the house he was born in 35 years ago was broken bricks, chunks of cement and a shattered roof. On November 11, the colony he lived in, under Tallah bridge in north Kolkata, home to around 60 families, was reduced to rubble. The local municipal authorities and personnel from the Public Works Department (PWD), along with a posse of cops, came around 10:30 that morning. They had brought along labourers for the demolition, and two days later also called in bulldozers for some of the…

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