Howrah Pilot Project was started in 1997. This is an experiment in civic and grassroots action, for social and environmental justice, and metropolitan renewal in Calcutta. A long-term community action programme was initiated in Priya Manna Basti, in the Shibpur locality of Howrah. Talimi Haq School, a non-formal learning centre for children, was started in 1998. The school is run by community volunteers. The goal is to build leadership and capabilities for community uplift among disadvantaged youth. We welcome communication, linkage and collaboration.
Mr. V RAMASWAMY, the Founder and Chairman of HCPP, is a Kolkata -based business executive. After completing his formal education in economics in Calcutta and higher education in the U.K, Ramaswamy entered public action in 1984, working with and for the labouring poor in Calcutta. He was a founding member of Chhinnamul Sramajibi Adhikar Samiti, a city-wide platform of squatter organisations, social and political activists and workers’ unions. Ramaswamy was also associated with Unnayan, an important social action group in Calcutta; the National Campaign for Housing Rights, which brought together activists and campaigners from across the country and was successful in advancing state housing policy; and TARU, an Indian research and consulting network. In 1995, on behalf of Unnayan and Asian Coalition for Housing Rights, he developed a proposal for comprehensive inner city renewal in the blighted canal-side Beliaghata area of Calcutta, through basti redevelopment and squatter rehabilitation. He has undertaken research studies for the Govt of India and international agencies like the World Bank and DfID, and was Social Development Coordinator of the Calcutta Environmental Management Strategy & Action Plan, a project of the Dept of Environment, Govt of West Bengal during 1995-97. In 1997, he established the grassroots organisation, Howrah City Pilot Project, in Priya Manna Basti, a century-old jute workers' settlement in Shibpur, Howrah. HCPP runs Talimi Haq School, a non-formal learning centre for poor children, and works to build awareness, capabilities and leadership for community development among slum youth. Ramaswamy has also worked as a social planner at the Jerusalem Institute for Urban Environment and taught economics at St Xavier's College, Calcutta and at Calcutta International School, and urban sociology at the Dept of Architecture, Jadavpur University and at the Centre for Urban Economic Studies, Calcutta University. He has written and lectured extensively over the years on issues of Kolkata’s slums and squatters, among others. He was an active blogger on Cuckoo’s Call. Since 2005, Ramaswamy has been translating the Bengali anti-establishment and little magazine writer, Subimal Misra. His translations, The Golden Gandhi Statue from America, Wild Animals Prohibited and Two Anti-Novels were published in 2010, 2015 and 2019 respectively. He was a recipient of the Sarai fellowship in 2013 and been invited to writing residencies in Sangam House (India), Ledig House (USA) and Toji Foundation (Korea). He was awarded the inaugural Literature Across Frontiers–Charles Wallace India Trust Fellowship in Creative Writing & Translation at Aberystwyth University in 2016.
Email: rama.sangye@gmail.com
