By Amina Khatoon

Girls in densely-populated Priya Manna Basti, Howrah, are married off at 14 to 18 years of age. They begin childbearing immediately. There is no sexuality/health awareness conducted by the state in this Muslim settlement, with disastrous consequences More...

In Part 5 of the series on urban poverty in Priya Manna Basti, Kolkata, Amina Khatoon recounts the absence of the most basic civic amenities: around 20 families share one toilet; excreta and waste flow into open drains; 38% of women get no healthcare during pregnancy More...

By Amina Khatoon

This is the story of Priya Manna Basti’s struggle since 1931 to keep education alive by setting up community schools and libraries funded by 1-anna donations from households. It is a chronicle of state neglect More...

At the root of the growing poverty in Priya Manna Basti is the absence of quality education. Only 10% of the residents have finished secondary education, and only 5% are graduates. Around 50% of children of school-going age are out of school. Amina Khatoon points out the reasons for these shocking statistics in the third part of her series on urban poverty More...

By Amina Khatoon

Twenty people to 100 square feet, 100 people to a single toilet, open drains, illegally “hooked” electricity, young men wrapped in plastic sheets sleeping out in the rain….Part 2 in our series on urban poverty in Priya Manna Basti, Howrah More...

In Part 1 of a series on urban poverty in a single settlement in Howrah, Amina Khatoon recounts the history of Priya Manna Basti, where she herself lives. Set up as a shantytown in the early-1900s to house migrant mill workers, little has changed a century later for the 40,000 poor Muslims who inhabit the basti More...