Slum Dwellers Of Kolkata-India Editorial Image

January 18,2011 Tangra,Kolkata,India,Asia-For a long time the capital of West Bengal has been known, pejoratively but with justification, as the 'black hole of Calcutta'. It has some of the largest slums in India, a population of over 4 million, and a population density of almost 25,000 people per square kilometre. The air is polluted, there is a shortage of clean drinking water, diseases are rampant, and yet thousands of people pour into the metropolis from surrounding rural areas in search of work and to escape famine and poverty. But Calcutta, despite its disastrous image, is a place of contradictions