A Planning Proposal for the Jute Mills of Kolkata

A PLANNING PROPOSAL FOR THE JUTE MILLS OF KOLKATA URBAN DESIGN STUDIO, MIT SA+P 10 MARCH 2020

Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Architecture and Planning Urban Design Studio Spring 2020 Xio Alvarez Adiel Benitez Patricia Cafferky Somala Diby Angelica Door Nynika Jhaveri Eytan Levi Yanchao Li Tess McCann Alberto Meouchi Blanche Shao Gabriela Zayas del Rio Arindam Dutta Brent Ryan Professors Carmelo Ignaccolo Teaching Assistant

Copyright 2020 2

Figure 1. Map of India, showing the state of West Bengal, and Kolkata, its capital. Source: Open Street Map.

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Photo: Alex Sanyal 4

TA B L E O F CONTENTS E X ECUT IV E S U M MARY

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IN T R ODU C T I ON

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PROP OSAL

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Proposal Objectives Urban Conditions Jute Mill Conditions Opportunities Planning Paradigm Benchmarks

Site Evaluation Program Framework Illustrative Examples

IMP L EMENTAT I O N New Jute SPV Stakeholders Governance Incentives and Revenue Loan Amortization Implementation Instruments

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Photo: Alex Sanyal 6

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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Photo: IIT 8

EXECUTIVE S U M M A RY

In one of the most densely populated metropolitan regions of the world, the jute mills of Kolkata and West Bengal offer a clear development opportunity.

There is a dearth of developable land in the city, and as the jute industry has struggled in recent decades, causing mill closures and below capacity operation, the mills compounds increasingly appear to be large potential tracts of open land, ranging in size from 50,000 to 600,000 square meters or more.

The jute mills, taken together, are 59 parcels, ranging in size from 50,000 to 600,000 square meters.

These compounds embody many of the contradictions found in Kolkata’s development landscape. Large mill buildings of compelling architecture range from highly productive to shuttered for years or indefinitely. Roughly 350,000 jute mill workers, many of them migrant workers, opt to use outdated equipment, lest more efficient modern technology threaten to usurp their already-tenuous livelihoods. Compounds host large tracts of vacant or underutilized land, while the Kolkata region grapples with a major housing and land availability crisis. And despite jute mills’ prime proximity to the Hooghly River, the highly polluted but culturally significant waterway is a drastically underutilized economic conduit, transportation asset, and tourist destination.

In spite of these contradictions, the jute mill network remains deeply connected to the city’s most foundational systems: economy, housing, employment, transportation, and water resources. In turn, jute mills are uniquely positioned to address challenges across these sectors, and any solution must therefore preserve the jute industry.

Current development practices might see these jute mills merely as land; we propose a more hollistic approach to the development of these sites.

Due to the geographic spread of the mills, their compounds present a unique opportunity for the development of new hubs of housing, industry, and public amenities, dispersed throughout the city. Moreover, due to reliance on the Hooghly River for the shipping of goods, the majority of jute mill compounds have close river proximity, making them possible landing points for cross-river connectivity.

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The jute mill compounds represent an enormous development opportunity.

With the demand for land so high and the industry ailing, many jute mill sites could be used more effectively for other purposes. We propose a new economic engine for these sites in the form of micro- and small enterprises (MSME) in the textile and logistics sectors. These two sectors are growing at breakneck speeds, and they present a stable base through which to finance this ambitious development scheme. Development of this new economic program will serve as a foundation for improvements to urban systems, like transportation and water access, and to the local quality of life.

However, a simultaneous aim of this proposal is to strengthen the jute industry presence in West Bengal. The industry is vital to the culture and economy of the region. And so while we are proposing to turn a proportion of jute mill compounds over to development, we do so with the intention that a consolidation of interests and resources of the jute mill owners will help the industry to operate more efficiently and improve the local economy. We put forward a proposal to further develop the industry by framing its product as environmentally-responsible.

This proposal addresses four objectives, and through a hollistic and analytical process, we have identified strategies for attaining each one. These objectives, and their strategies can be see in the diagram below.

OBJECTI VES Ensure economic stability at each site

Reinvigorate the jute industry and institute new economic activity in thriving sectors at the sites

S T R AT EGI ES 10

Improve quality of life in the immediate neighborhoods of the mills

Invest in historic preservation and the cultural vitality of the region

Upgrade and develop housing, amenities, and community and systems infrastructure.

Celebrate and repurpose architecturally important buildings

Address these issues across scales

Encourage the movement of goods and people locally, regionally, and globally.

A model for a more holistic, consistent, and impactful form of urban development in Kolkata.

The strategies were developed from our planning paradigm, a model that draws from the unique conditions of the jute mill sites and frames a more holistic, consistent, and impactful form of urban development in Kolkata.

UN ITE THE SITES

PLA N N IN G PA RA DIGM EM BRACE A VARIETY OF SITE C ON DITION S

ESTA BLISH M IX ED USE PLAN NING A REAS

This proposal is organized into three parts.

The first part provides an overview of the current urban conditions of Kolkata and the surrouding region, with particular attention to the water and transportation systems, the housing conditions, and the jute industry in the region. We outline the development opportunities of the sites, and translate these opportunities into our actionable planning paradigm.

From here, we develop classifications for mills, as a way to analyze which compounds will remain as sites of jute production, and which will be developed with new programs. We put forth three jute mill typologies that are determined based on size, productivity level, proximity to industries and amenities of interest such as the MSME clusters and the Hooghly River.

These typologies dictate the scale of interventions any jute mill might receive.

We provide examples of how these concepts and this classification system work together in a series of six site plan sketches.

Finally, we outline our implementation plan. The New Jute Limited Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) can deliver this proposal by generating and implementing site plans and overseeing funding and operations. The SPV benefits from the broad jurisdiction and facilitates collaboration among the most critical governmental and private-sector actors, from national and state textile ministries to jute mill owners and manufacturers.

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Photo: Alex Sanyal 12

INTRODUCTION PROP OSAL O B JEC T I VES U RBAN C O ND I T I O NS J U TE MIL L C OND I T I ONS OPPORT U NI T I ES BE N C HMA R K S

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Photo: Alex Sanyal 14

PROPOSAL OBJECTIVES The four objectives outlined here serve a dual purpose.

First, they represent the individual and collective potential of jute mill sites to highlight and elevate Kolkata’s culture, economy, history, and environment.

Second, they serve as the connecting factor between the proposal and its intended longterm outcomes that are wellsuistained after this initial planning phase.

In essence, they inform our approach and establish our intended outcomes.

ONE : E N S U R E E CO N O M I C S TA B I L I TY We recognize the jute industry’s potential to breathe life into the regional economy once again and propel it toward a new trajectory of economic success. Yet, we acknowledge that our ambitious development proposal must be supported by other economic activities. We aim to achieve this goal by both reinvigorating the jute industry and instituting new economic activity in thriving sectors at the sites.

T WO : I M P R O V E LO CA L QU A LI TY O F LI F E Measuring the jute mills only against their economic potential would result in a misguided and incomplete plan. As such, we will leverage their geographic and cultural position in the region to also improve local quality of life. We propose to do so by providing workers with a safe place to rest and all residents with crucial community infrastructure and amenities.

T HR E E : I N V E S T I N HI S TO R I C P R E S E R VATI O N Through our site designs, we will be directly investing in the historic preservation of these culturally and architecturally important buildings.

Additionally, we introduce opportunities for these sites to become both a reflection of and a venue to the city and region’s rich culture.

F O U R : E N CO U R A G E CO N N E CT I O N S B ET W E E N LO CA L A N D G LO B A L Just like the region, jute mills sprawl from north to south along the Hooghly River’s eastern and western banks. Their location along the river and Kolkata’s richness in transporation modes —from India’s oldest metro system and only remaining tram to countless forms of informal mobility (e.g., rickshaws)— place jute mills in an unparallel position within the region to connect local economics to each other and to global markets.

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Figure 2. Regional map of Kolkata. Source: Open Street Map.

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URBAN CONDITIONS

In this section, we will discuss the urban conditions of Kolkata and the surrounding region, paying particular attention to challenges surrounding water supply, transportation, and housing. We end this section with a review of the current state of the jute industry, and begin to paint a picture of how the jute mills can address the challenges faced by the city.

INTRODUCTION

Kolkata is a city of 4.5 million people that sits on the banks of the Hooghly River, part of the delta of the River Ganges. Connected to the plains in the northwest and to the Bay of Bengal in the south, the city first emerged as a British trading post and rose to prominence as the capital of British India.

Its roots as a cosmopolitan commercial hub, and as the center of India’s cultural and intellectual life, are still evident today in the city’s architecture, an emerging gallery scene and vibrant and distinctive shopping districts.

The city also grapples with a wide array of challenges, chief among them being water. The Hooghly River, one of the city’s greatest assets, can be uncompromising. It swells each year with the monsoon, often breaking its banks and changing course. This changing morphology makes it difficult to build a span across the river. The immediate region of Kolkata has three bridges connecting the two river banks. Only three additional bridges serve the remaining 150 miles of the river, constantly congested with private cars, vans, buses, trucks, rickshaws, and pedestrians.

Though Kolkata offers variety in transportation options, this diversity poses its own challenge: there is a paralyzing lack of connectivity between different modes of transit. The inability to travel in a multi-modal way around the city has led to a proliferation in private car ownership, which only clogs the streets further. Beyond connectivity issues, increased reliance on cars also exacerbates the city’s notorious air pollution challenges.

Demographically, the city is saddled with an ageing and shrinking middle class as a result of the “brain drain” of the city’s young, educated people, for whom there are few jobs in Kolkata. Not only the upwardly mobile face joblessness: 34% of the roughly 1.8 million Kolkatans who live in informal settlements do 17

not have steady employment. These casual laborers often live on a wage of Rs. 400 a day.

Kolkata also faces an acute housing crisis. New housing development typically prioritizes luxury homes for higher-income residents. With a smaller middle class, and an increasingly shrinking young population, there is no one to fill these new homes, so they lie vacant, or half-constructed, due to decreasing demand. Meanwhile, millions live without reliable access to electricity, water, and toilets. An abiding lack of land in the city limits new housing development close to the livelihoods of Kolkatans of all incomes.

In the view of the central government, affordable housing development in West Bengal is inhibited by lack of available land, underutilized land occupied by ailing industries, and defunct government-owned land, combined with high concentrations of residents in areas where land is already limited.

Thus, in addition to new housing development and slum and infrastructure improvement, the central and state governments also see key policy opportunities in the development of land inventories and the conversion and adaptive re-use of land, especially industry- and government-owned land.

(West Bengal Urban Affordable Housing and Habitat Policy 2015). The jute mill sites, and the underutilized land of the vast compounds, thus present the opportunity to capitalize on land redevelopment.

Additionally, given the gradual decline of the jute industry, many jute mill workers live unemployed or have adopted work as street hawkers or rickshaw drivers, operating in areas around their former jute mill employers. Others who have yet to find new work tend to cluster around shuttered mills, waiting (often in vain) for their payouts. In remaining geographically connected to the jute mills, these individuals are as much a part of the jute mill ecosystem as formal workers. While we do not have formal figures on their housing conditions, anecdotal evidence tells us that it’s common for these individuals to sleep where they work, such as in storefronts, rickshaws or trucks, or on sidewalks. These conditions on the jute mill sites furthers complicates their existing politics, folding labor, housing, land tenure, land availability, and land productivity all together.

Our proposal seeks to understand these complex urban dynamics and recommend a development paradigm that suits these unique conditions.

CURRENT DEVELOPMENT PRACTICES

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There are signs that Kolkata is primed for renewed investment, evident by encouraging practices being undertaken by the state of West Bengal and by private actors. The state government has developed strategies to support the growth of small businesses, particularly women-owned small businesses through the Ministry of Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSME).

In this business model, small business form clusters through which they share resources, while the government supplies utilities, infrastructure, and machinery in return. This is a promising program that shows a sensitivity to the huge amount of economic activity represented by firms of this scale. In addition, through local adoption of national housing schemes like Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, the state government has expressed its commitment to developing new affordable housing, improving slum and infrastructure, and

developing land inventories to promote the conversion and adaptive re-use of land, especially industry- and government-owned land.

There are a number of policies and projects that, while done in good faith, will not address the myriad of challenges the city is facing. Currently, much of the economic stimulus and transit development occur on the periphery of the city, evident in the development of new industrial parks, logistics hubs, and IT campuses. This is a distinctly anti-urban approach. It is also self-perpetuating: this pattern will continue to draw capital outside of the city, away from where it is needed most for urban improvements. As an example, a new metro line scheduled to open in the coming years will link industrial parks on the periphery to the urban core. But the cost of the metro is prohibitively expensive for unskilled laborers who live in informal settlements in the city.

So while these logistics hubs might provide jobs for lower-income workers, it would be near-impossible for them to get to work.

WATER

Water is inseparable to Kolkata’s socioeconomic development. Flowing beside Kolkata’s western side, the Hooghly River serves as the main source of water use, as the pivot waterway logistics access, and as the important carrier of social culture. Wetlands and a huge amount of groundwater are located on the eastern side of Kolkata, serving as the substitutes of water commodity, the ecological infrastructure to treat wastes, and the resource for fishery and agriculture. Apart from these benefits, Kolkata is also facing challenging water problems including flood, water pollution, and water vulnerability due to extreme weather events.

WAT E R U S E S TR U CTU R E According to the Census of India, out of Kolkata’s water consumption, 59.3% of the water is served for agriculture, 27.9% for inland navigation, 7.7% for ecology uses, and the remaining water is used for household commodity (2.2%), industry (2.9%), and forestry (0.1%).

The demandsupply gap of water for domestic use in Kolkata is 135 million liters per day

In this section, we will focus on domestic water use. 89% (1080 million liters per day (MLD)) of the domestic water is supplied by surface water provided by the Hooghly River; the other 11% (135 MLD) is extracted from groundwater. In Kolkata, water leakage happens frequently, where 35% of the total water supply is lost. After accounting for water loss, the water supply is 790 MLD. Considering the daily water demand estimation and population in Kolkata, the per capita domestic water supply is 140LD, but given the water loss, the demand-supply gap ends up being 135 MLD. The details of the Water Statistics of Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) area are compiled in Figure 3.

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Structure of Water Consumption in Kolkata

Navigation

Ecology and Environment

Agriculture

Industry

Domestic Forest

135 MLD

1080MLD

Surface Water

35%

Ground Water

Water Leakage

Fig19 Domestic Water Consumption per Day (KMC) Figure 3. Structure of Kolkata’s water consumption. Source: Mukherjee et al. 2018.

D R I N KI N G - WATE R R E S E R V I O R POL LU TI O N Due to water shortage, Kolkata has a 256-ML reservoir capacity to store water for safety use. However, contamination of reservoirs for drinking water purposes results in an increased risk of illness. Such problems are common in jute mills. Researchers have found that there is a high correlation between contamination of drinking water from the reservoirs and cholera outbreaks that have happened among workers of the jute mills. Hence, health authorities need to enforce the sanitation of reservoirs and improve the germ test quality.

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WAT E R WAY LO G I S TI CS 0.5% of goods are currently being transported through India’s inland waterway. Compared with other countries, India has a low proportion of waterway logistics—8% in the counterpart of the USA and 8.7% of China, indicating a huge opportunity for waterway logistic capacity in future logistic systems.

Among the river navigating system in India, Ganga-Bhagirathi-Hooghly River is one of the most active inland waterways (Figure 4). This river is where the waterway logistics of Kolkata are based on.

Kolkata plays an important role in India’s waterway transport system. The waterway stretch between Kolkata and Delhi passes through one of India’s most densely populated areas, and 40% waterway-based trades happen in the region between Kolkata and Delhi. Acknowledging the waterway’s potential, the central government has released the National Waterways Act, 2016, where a plan is laid out to develop 106 additional National Waterways.

Fig20 Waterway Logistics in Kolkata

Delhi

Kolkata

Kolkata

Ganga-Bhagirathi-Hooghly river Figure 4. Waterway Logistics in Kolkata. Source: Compass Digi Mag.

Fig21 Conceptual Hydrodynamics of Siltation

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Kolkata

T HE CH A LLE N G E O F S I LTATI O N

Kolkata

Siltation is the most severe challenge facing the waterway logistics development in Kolkata. Siltation does harm to both the river and nearby ports by decreasing the river’s storage capacity. According to previous research, 10% of West Bengal’s water storage was lost due to siltation. Figure 5 illustrates a simple conceptual hydrodynamics diagram of siltation. Some geologists say increased incidents of landslides in the Himalayan region have resulted in increased silt in the rivers that flow down to meet the river Ganges. Different degrees of siltationGanga-Bhagirathi-Hooghly can also happen in different zones of the ports. Generally speaking, ports near the estuaries have a higher rate of sedimentation. Considering the damage of siltation to waterway logistics, more implementation should be done to maintain the normal river Fig21 navigation.

Conceptual Hydrodynamics of Siltation

Clear water circulation induced by density current

Delta formation

Live storage Density current Dead storage Muddy area

Figure 5. Conceptual Hydrodynamics of Siltation. Source: Economic Times.

TRANSPORTATION

Kolkata was designed for pedestrian movement and mass transit, and its transit history in many ways is the transit history of India. Kolkata Metro was the first rail-based urban mass transit system in India. The tram service has been around for over 130 years and is the only one in the country remaining in operation. As the city grew with narrow and compact streets, people’s transit options developed to reflect that urban morphology and character.

The city’s transportation system has evolved and diversified since its founding, now characterized by a mix of multi-modal private and public mass transportation systems. The majority of people (Figure 6) uses road-based mass transport, despite the city having a limited road network capacity with only 5.5% of its land dedicated to transport use (IDFC 2008; Dey & Bhaduri 2012). Private buses dominate the mass transit market, accounting for more than 40% of all transit rides and moving 9.4 million people on the average weekday (Dey & Bhaduri 2012). Paratransit is the second most used mode of transport, with about 20% of the population relying on rickshaws and

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taxis. Rail-based mass transport is a close third, largely influenced by people commuting from the suburbs and exurbs into the city, and water-based mass transport remains underutilized, accounting for only 1% of daily trips.

The majority of trips are between 3-5 kilometers in distance.

Although Kolkata’s compact street design lends itself to walking, biking, and paratransit, a combination of technological advancements and historical disinvestment in the mass public transportation system has resulted in more motorized vehicles on the streets. Compared to other cities in India, Kolkata has the highest car density and second highest car ownership rates (Urban Age 2007). Its car ownership (61 cars per 1,000 residents) is relatively low compared to other major cities like New York (210 cars per 1,000 residents) or Mexico City (383 cars per 1,000 residents). Rather than cars, two wheelers and bicycles are the most common vehicles owned by households in Kolkata (IDFC 2008). That said, the city’s car density (1,421 cars per square kilometer) exceeds that of Berlin (1,367 cars per square kilometer) and is close to that of London (1,634 cars per square kilometer) (Urban Age 2007).

The number of privately-owned vehicles, including taxis, operating on the limited road system presents a major challenge for congestion, sustainable and affordable transport, and climate action. Taxis and private cars together account for the largest share of traffic (IDFC 2008). As a result, trams increasingly compete against motorized vehicles for the Right of Way, drastically impacting their ridership. These interactions between different modes of transportation are important to understand and address in order to increase connectivity and decrease competition.

WATER-BASED (1.7%)

PARATRANSIT (20%) ROAD-BASED (57.9%)

RAIL-BASED (20.4%)

Figure 6. Transit breakdown.

Source: Dey & Bhaduri 2012).

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C O N N E CTI V I TY As is demonstrated in the maps accompanying this section, the city has a robust transportation system, but it lacks the same level of robustness in its connectivity. The water-based and land-based systems are disconnected, and system redundancy is predominant in road-based and paratransit systems. On the eastern bank of the Hooghly River, only 14 out of 75 ghats are at present in operation. As of 2013, the total number of operating ghats is at 23 (Dey 2013). This stands in stark contrast to the original founding of Kolkata as a trading post city with a dominant inland navigation system. The jute mill sites provide a much-needed opportunity to reinstate and strengthen the waterbased system and connect it beyond the riverbanks to the land-based system.

Photo: Alex Sanyal

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Jute Mills

R OAD NET WO R K

Service Residential Primary road Secondary road Tertiary road Other

NORTH PARAGANAS HOOGLY

HOWRAH

KOLKATA

SOUTH PARAGANAS

N

Figure 7. Road network. Source: Open Street Map.

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HOUSING

Demand for high-end housing is declining, while demand for affordable housing is consistently high.

Since the liberalization of India’s economy in the 1990s, real estate development has driven broader urban development and revitalization efforts across the country (Searle 2016). Kolkata’s policy approach to the housing market has thus sought to accommodate developers, investors at home and abroad, and other private-sector actors who are best positioned to create new, profitable real estate assets. This is evident through the emergence and proliferation of public-private partnerships (PPPs) to drive new housing development. Seeking the largest return on investment, PPPs have primarily focused on developing new high-end housing to attract future middle- and high-income tenants and homeowners who can afford higher rents and generate larger property tax revenue (Sengupta 2007).

However, recent housing market trends suggest that this strategy may be backfiring. In 2019 alone, Kolkata saw declines, not increases, in home sales, and a consequent decline in the launch of new housing construction ranging from 45 - 70 percent (Law 2019). In response, developers have pivoted away from new housing construction, prioritizing instead the completion of existing housing projects and the development of novel incentives to entice buyers to purchase built stock that currently lies vacant (Law 2019). In addition, developers and investors now occupy a precarious financial position wherein they lack the capital to finish housing projects, capital that they once anticipated receiving through higher-end tenants. Kolkata’s predicament is echoed nationally, prompting action by the national Ministry of Finance which. In 2019, it put forth several bailout packages including the Alternative Investment Fund and the Stress Asset Fund to reserve last-mile construction funding for stalled real estate projects (Bhadauria 2019a; 2019b).

The city’s struggle to deliver and sell housing to middle- and higherincome groups indicates an overall low demand among these groups and, by extension, low profitability in the higher-end real estate market. Put simply, higher-end housing development is likely not the most lucrative land development strategy for the jute mills or for Kolkata more broadly.

By contrast, developing affordable housing for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) and Lower Income Groups (LIG) who comprise the majority of the city may be more promising (Victor 2019). A recent report by real estate analytics firm 99Acres estimates that 76% of housing demand in Kolkata in 2019 was for affordable housing, compared to 18% for middle-income housing, and 6% of luxury housing (Chawla 2020; see Figure 8). Currently, Kolkata is not meeting this demand: West Bengal faces a housing shortage of 1.15 - 2.2 million, almost entirely felt among EWS and LIG residents, which face a combined shortage of 95.62% (56.18% and 39.44% respectively) (IPE Global Private Limited 2015). We imagine that these effects are felt most

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heavily in the Kolkata region, where 40% of the state’s urban population lives.

Thus, current real estate development practices in Kolkata are overlooking the profit-making potential of developing housing for the city’s majority.

Beyond the profitability of real estate, Kolkata pays for insufficient housing for the poor in other ways. Lower-income residents have most visibly adapted to housing market constraints by constructing and occupying slums. Slums in West Bengal are defined as “compact areas of at least 300 population or about 60-70 households of poorly built congested tenements, in unhygienic environments usually with inadequate infrastructure and lacking in proper sanitary and drinking water facilities” (IPE Global Private Limited 2015). One-third of the city’s population, nearly 1.5 million people, have disproportionately less access to drinking water, sanitation, and solid waste management; spatial segregation from other parts of the city; lack of adequate road infrastructure; and tenuous tenancy status that limits how low-income residents access capital. Slum residents often struggle with health issues, crime, and deepening poverty that impacts the broader city’s economy.

Kolkata Kolkata HousingHousing DemandDemand and Supply and Dynamics Supply Dynamics Housing demand and supply in Kolkata by income level, Oct - Dec 2019

by Income

by Income Group, Group, Oct - Dec Oct 2019 - Dec 2019 100% Affordable Housing (within Rs 40 lakh) 90%

Mid-income Housing 80% (Rs 40 lakh - Rs 1 crore) 70%

Luxury Housing (Rs 1 crore and above) 60% 50%

Figure 8. Housing demand and supply in Kolkata by income group, 40% Oct - Dec 2019.

Source: Chawla 2020.

100%

6%

90%

14%

18%

80% 70%

38%

60% 50%

76%

40%

30%

30%

20%

20%

10%

10%

0%

0%

48%

Demand

Demand Demand

Supply S up p ly

Supply

Luxury Housing Luxury (Rs Housing 1 crore and (Rs 1above) crore and above) Mid-income Mid-income Housing (RsHousing 40 lakh (Rs - Rs 40 1 crore) lakh - Rs 1 crore) Affordable Housing Affordable (within Housing Rs 40(within lakh) Rs 40 lakh)

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THE JUTE INDUSTRY

In recent decades, the jute mills of West Bengal have sputtered and shuttered due to declining efficiency. As a result, their compounds have become desirable to developers keen on accessing their vast amounts of land, with compounds being as large as 600,000 square meters. The development potential of the land owned by jute mill industrialists thus comes into conflict with the social and economic imperative to safeguard the cultural, economic, and environmental significance of jute mill lands.

Finding common ground between these competing priorities, this proposal envisions a reinvigorated jute industry that anchors new development in housing, industrial, transit, and community sectors, dispersed across the city.

This vision both retains the jute mill industry and repurposes certain jute mills for other productive purposes. We believe that a consolidation of the interests and resources of the mills will improve the efficiency of the jute industry and enhance the local economy, retaining a major proportion of jute sector while embracing adaptive reuse of select components.

Preservation of the jute industry is a prerequisite of our proposal, as jute is intricately tied to the economy, livelihoods, and agricultural ecology of the region.

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C U LT U R E Though the rise of the jute industry as it exists today is intricately tied to British colonialism, as well as the coal and tea industries, jute harvesting in Bengal dates back to pre-medieval times, when it was used primarily to make rope, mats and coarse clothing. In the 17th century, the industry began industrializing by adding hand looms and craftsmen. By the 19th century, most households engaged with the industry in some way or another, whether that be in the mills, in the supply chain, in agriculture or in adjacent service industries (Roul 2009).

Since industrialization, jute has been used globally as a packing material for a diverse range of products, including rice, wheat, sugar, coffee, cotton, wool, cement, and fertilizers. While the advent of cheap high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and polypropylene (PP) has absorbed much of its global demand for packaging, jute has continued to flourish domestically in India, where it is still the primary packing material of the agriculture industry. After India achieved independence from Britain in 1947, the jute industry also offered a new kind of Indian entrepreneurship. At the time, Marwaris overtook a large share of the existing managing agencies of the jute mills. Many are still operating today but under a different generation of Indian ownership (Roul 2009).

R AW JU T E PR O D U C T I O N , 2016-2 0 1 7 , AND K O LK ATA’ S HINT ER L AND RAW JUTE PRODUCTION [tonnes] >0K

8350K

HINTERLAND OF KOLKATA PORT Jammu and Kashmir

Punjab

Himachal Pradesh

Ganga River System

Uttaranchal Haryana

Delhi Sikkim Uttar Pradesh

Rajasthan

Assam

Tripura Gujarat

Madhya Pradesh

Nagaland

Meghalaya

Bihar

Jharkhand

Arunachal Pradesh

West Bengal

Manipur

Mizoram

Chhattisgarh Orissa Maharashtra

Area of Jute Mill Concentration

Andhra Pradesh

Goa

Karnataka

Kerala

Tamil Nadu

Figure 9

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EC O N O M Y + LI V E LI H O O D S Today, the jute industry is currently operating well below capacity, with at least 9 of the 59 mills in West Bengal currently closed, and many more closing cyclically or producing a fraction of the product possible based on machinery and labor. This makes the employment and livelihoods of the 350,000 mill workers of the Kolkata metro region unstable yet marginally better than those without employment prospects (IJMA 2020). For every active mill that closes, more workers join the growing number of the skilled and unemployed labor force in West Bengal. For this reason, our proposal rests on the use of mills which have already closed, as well as careful consolidation of struggling mills. We believe this approach can provide stable employment to as many mill workers as possible, while providing new job opportunities through the conversion of other mills into places of new commerce and small industries.

Moving up the supply chain, millions of wokers engage with the industry through trading, shipping, extraction and rhetting, farming, and support services. Within agriculture, about 4 million farmers, many of who live in West Bengal, harvest jute. One of jute’s many additional uses is to help prepare farms during pre-monsoon and early monsoon season. For example, it is used prior to rice paddy planting (Figure 10). This crop rotation ensures the health of the soil, increases the productivity of all crops, and diversifies the income of the farmers. If demand for jute were to be diminished or removed, it would simultaneously disrupt the agricultural ecology of the system and strain the livelihoods of the farmers, of whom 92% are classified as small or marginal in West Bengal (Figure 11). This would in turn have cascading effects on other crops that depend on it to grow. Beyond this, jute is an eco-friendly, renewable product with huge potential in the global economy.

A NNUAL JU T E FAR M C R O P R OTAT ION

FA R M S I Z E S OF WEST BENGAL

te

La r be

cto

O

ER CROP O INT RF W A W O LL

TE

RIC E PA D D Y

arch

92% Farmers in West Bengal are MARGINAL OR SMALL

Lat eJ

uly

JU

Mid-M

Figure 10

30

Figure 11

What is jute?

Also known as the ‘golden fiber’, jute is a vegetable fibre native to the Indian subcontinent, which can be spun into thread like cotton. It is traditionally used to make burlap sacks, twine, and rope. The jute sticks are also repurposed as building material and for fuel, while the leaves are used in medicine and food.

The process to convert raw jute into threads for textiles involves planting and harvesting, followed by a rhetting process of soaking for 20 days to break the fibres from the outer shell. The stalks are then stripped and line dried, after which they are bundled and sold to the market and processed in mills.

Figure 12

Figure 13. Workers harvest and bundle jute after soaking.

31

DISPERSION O F TH E J U TE M I LLS OF WEST BENGAL

NADIA

JUTE MILL

R AW

JUT

E FL OW

Area of Jute Mill Concentration

HOOGHLY NORTH PARAGANAS

HOWRAH

HOO

GHLY

RIVER

KOLKATA

SOUTH PARAGANAS

Figure 14. Geographic exent of jute mills in West Bengal. Source: IJMA.

32

0

3

N

6

12 km

JUTE MILL CONDITIONS

Viewed through the lens of traditional development practices in Kolkata, the mills and their compounds present opportunities simply by virtue of being large parcels in a city that’s desperate for more developable land.

The development proposal we suggest does not simply see the jute mills as vacant land; quite on the contrary, we understand the mills as cornerstones of city life in Kolkata. This begins, of course, with the jute industry itself, which, as discussed in the previous section, employs hundreds of thousands of people in Kolkata and West Bengal. We propose maintaining the industry, while also introducing new programs to improve the lives of mills’ neighbors, all anchored by vigorous economic activity on the sites. Our proposal aims to leverage the mill compound land to embrace opportunities to improve citywide urban systems that were reviewed in the previous section (housing stock, transportation networks, and water and energy systems).

Before outlining our planning paradigm and the opportunities as we see them, in this section we provide an overview of the conditions at the jute mills, focusing on their location, and the services on the sites.

KEY CONDITIONS

There are five key conditions of the jute mill compounds that we wish to highlight at the highest level: 1. Geographic dispersion within the Kolkata greater metro region, allowing programs to be utilized by a broad population.

2. Proximity to the Hooghly River, allowing for transportation, religious, and tourism uses.

3. Existing strength of supply chain connectivity and worker access, meaning that many can connect to the sites.

4. Size of mill compounds and existing mill buildings, providing ample space for redevelopment.

5. Existing mill compound amenities, which have the spatial capacity to be expanded upon.

33

TRANSIT AROUND COMPOUNDS

The jute mills are dispersed throughout the city and the regions to the north and south. Almost all of them are located along the Hooghly River. Because of this, most mills have ghats on or near their property. Because of the need to receive raw jute, and to distribute cloth at the end of produciton, mills are also relatively well-linked to existing freight transit (Figures 15 & 16).

Almost all of them are still operating as jute mills, though with varying levels of efficiency and production scale. Most compounds have a large building that houses the milling equipment, a handful of out buildings, a retainment pond, and, significantly, housing for the mill laborers. An overview of the housing on mill compounds offers a useful lens through which to understand these unique sites.

TRAN SIT L I NES A ND MIL L S

F E R RY G H ATS A N D M I LLS

Jute Mills Rail Bus Tram

NORTH PARAGANAS

NORTH PARAGANAS

HOOGLY

HOOGLY

HOWRAH

HOWRAH

KOLKATA

KOLKATA

SOUTH PARAGANAS

SOUTH PARAGANAS

N

Figure 15. Transit system. Only shows “formal” public transit system.

Source: Open Street Map.

34

Jute Mills Ferry Ghats

N

Figure 16. Ferry ghats. Mapped ghats do not indicate that they are fully open operating. Source: Google Maps.

HOUSING ON COMPOUNDS

At present, jute mills in West Bengal provide direct employment to a large share of Kolkata’s workforce at 230,000 people, and indirect benefits to 4,000,000 people. According to a 2015 report commissioned by the National Jute Board, two-thirds of jute mill households are renters, living either in housing on mill sites or private, according to the same survey (Riddhi Foundation 2016). (Note that all of the following data reported is sourced from this report; a subset of this data is referenced in Figures 17-23.

Housing tenure appears to be connected to worker status, which includes: permanent (those entitled to benefits and paid leave); casual (those who receive benefits only for the days they worked and do not receive PF, ESI, or gratuity); budli and special budli (those who receive wages for 220 days or the number of days they worked as well as proportional leave); temporary (contract workers employed for special jobs and receive minimum wage for days worked). Most workers are permanent (44.6%) or budli/special budli (35.2%). Permanent workers make up the largest share of homeowners (45.7%), while casual workers dominate mill quarters (42.6%), and budli/special budli workers making up the majority of private-market renters (44%).

Among renters in both the mills and the private market, nearly two-thirds pay between Rs. 101 and 500 per month for rent. Most (85.8%) jute mill households reside with families that average 4.8 in size, and nearly threequarters (69.5%) of respondents live in a single room, compared to 41.7% of urban households in West Bengal.

Rent paid by jute mill workers for housing accommodations Chart Title

45 40 35

Workers living in private rentals

30

Workers living in mill quarters

25 20 15 10 5 0 0 (Nil)

Below Rs.50/-

Rs.50/- to 100/-

Rs.101/- to 250/-

Rs.251/- to Rs.500/Private house

Rs.501/- to Rs.1000/-

Rs.1001/- to 2000/-

Rs.2001/- to 3000/-

Rs.3001/- to 5000/-

Above Rs.5000/-

Mill Quarter

Figure 17. Rent paid for accommodations by jute mill workers. Source: Riddhi Foundation 2016.

Figure 11

35

Many jute mills already have housing assets in place, but these assets are old, insufficient in size, and in poor condition. Jute mill worker housing, or “coolie lines,” were built around the time that jute mills themselves were constructed.

Historically, these take the form of back-to-back lines of houses laid out in a continuous row and are located directly on jute mill compounds. Originally designed for single men who traveled without families, each unit typically consists of a single room of 90 to 120 square feet, a small 30-35 square-foot veranda. They are commonly constructed with cement floors and roofs prone to leakage, and lack individual kitchens and/or sanitation facilities.

By and large, jute mill worker housing was built haphazardly and with poor ventilation, due in part to being surrounded by buildings or jute mill walls on all sides.

Although the history of jute mill housing warrants deeper exploration, one can presume that existing jute mill housing remains in the poor condition that it is in for several reasons. First, given the history of slum redevelopment in Kolkata, tenants—workers and their families—will likely show opposition to any kind of housing redevelopment scheme out of fear that they will be permanently displaced if they leave. Second, improvement of jute mill housing is largely up to the discretion of the jute mill owner. Depending on the productivity of the mill, owners may or may not have the cash reserves to upgrade housing.

Others who see jute mill labor as expendable may not see the overall benefit of improving worker quality of life through housing improvements. It should be noted that these housing conditions are not ubiquitous across sites: certain jute mills offer larger and healthier living accommodations for their workers.

Differences across jute mills occur on a case-by-case basis and largely subject to the jute mill owner’s discretion.

!"#$%&'(%)*

Ownership Status

Distribution of jute mill workers’ dwelling types

1% Other/ shared 36.2% Owned

27.8% Private Rentals

Distribution of jute mill workers by labor category

1% Temporary

45% Permanent

11% Casual

27.8% Mill Quarters Own

36

Mill Quarter

Private Rent

44% Budli/Sp. Budli

Others/shared

!"#$%&"&'

(%)*%

+*,-./0123+*,- .

4"$15#%#6

Jute mill worker dwelling types, by labor category Housing Tenure by Labor Category 100%

0.5%

90%

28.7%

Owner-occupied

29.6%

Mill quarters

80%

44% 60%

70%

60%

25.6%

Other/shared

50%

42.6% 27.1%

40%

Figure 18 (left) Figure 19 (bottom left and right)

30%

45.7%

Source: Riddhi Foundation 2016.

40%

20%

10%

0%

Private rentals

Permanent Permanent Own

27.8%

28.4%

Casual Casual

Budli/Sp. Budli Budli/Sp.Budli

Mill Quarter

Private Rent

Temporary Temporary

Others/shared

Physical characteristics of jute mill worker housing, by dwelling type Owned

Mill Quarter

Priavte Rent

Total

Other

No.

%

No.

%

No.

%

No.

%

No.

%

181

36.2

139

27.8

179

35.8

1

0.2

500

100

85

47

11

7.9

25

14

0

0

121

24.2

With electricity

176

97.2

136

98

169

94.4

1

100

482

96.4

Resides with Family

177

41.3

99

23.1

152

35.4

1

0.2

429

100

1.5

1.5

Total HHs With separate kitchen

Average no. of rooms

2.2

1.1

1.3

1

Figure 20. Source: Riddhi Foundation 2016.

37

Regardless of whether workers live on or off-site, living conditions of laborers are generally poor, which has an adverse impact on the quality of life. Though most workers have shelter, their housing fails to meet other needs such as privacy and sanitation. Examining their living conditions more closely, only one-quarter have separate kitchens compared to 65% of urban households in West Bengal. Though nearly all workers have electricity (96.4%), 43.6% of jute mill households surveyed rely on hazardous sources of fuel for cooking, including kerosene, coal, and firewood. Although most respondents are satisfied with their water quality, the overwhelming majority (75.4%) do not treat their water before drinking, which exposes them to risk of illness. About one-third of study respondents have exclusive bathing facilities, while 44.5% share with others they live with, and 23.8% use public facilities with limited or no privacy. While garbage disposal methods are variable, 44.6% of respondents have to walk 21-50 meters to dump their trash, while another one-third must travel 51 meters to dispose of trash.

Today, the gradual decline of the jute industry has led many workers to unemployment and to work as street hawkers or rickshaw drivers near their former job sites. Others who have not found new work tend to cluster around shuttered mills, waiting for their payouts. These individuals are as much a part of the jute mill ecosystem as formal workers. Both currently and retrenched laborers use their workplaces—from jute mill floors, storefronts and rickshaws, to public pay-per-use restrooms near their workplaces—to satisfy basic needs like sleep and sanitation.

Treatment methods for drinking water among!"#$%&'(%)* jute mill workers Boiling 2% Physical refining Filtered 10% (nonelectrified) 21% No treatment 75%

Bathing facilities available to jute mill workers % share

Other (pond) 0.8% Public with limited or no privacy 23.8% Exclusive 29% Public with full privacy 1.8%

Distance between dwellings and nearest waste%disposal location share

< 100 meters 7.5% 51-100 meters 25.5%

10-20 meters 22.4%

Share with others on premises 44.6% !"#$#%&

'()*#+,$-./0#%#%&

1#$2/34--5$/+23#0#/61#$2/34-7"%8-5$/+23#0#/67"%/

Figure 21 (top) Figure 22 (middle) Figure 23 (bottom) Source: Riddhi Foundation 2016.

38

Exclusive

Share with Others within the premises

Public facility with full Privacy

Public with limited or no privacy for bathing

Other(pond)

Within 10 meter

21-50 meters 44.6% 21-50 meter 51-100 meter

10-20 meter

More than 100 meter

Photo: Alex Sanyal

39

Photo: Alex Sanyal

40

O P P O RT U N I T I E S

When considering a development proposal for the Kolkata jute mills, we are presented with many opportunities. These range from the economic prospects of programs we can place in these sites and from opportunities to address the system-wide services discussed in earlier sections, to housing, transportation, and water. These opportunities are all rooted in the land of the jute mill compounds: its location, its size, and its ability to tap into existing strengths of the city in order to further strengthen it.

ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES

We see a wonderful opportunity to support the financing of this project through an embrace of economic activity at the Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprise scale, which is the engine of West Bengal’s economy. We see our development scheme being supported by economic activity at the jute mill sites. There are two general areas of economic activity: first, a jute industry that is strengthened by the development of new markets and uses for the product. And second, a logistics and textile manufacturing industry that operates at the Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprise (MSME) scale.

What is MSME? MSME denotes a scale of business, not an industry. There are microenterprises across every economic and industrial sector in India. The Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises Development (MSMED) Act of 2006 defines MSMEs in two sectors, manufacturing and services: Manufacturing Sector

Service Sector

Enterprise Category - Investment in plant & machinery

Enterprise Category - Investment in equipment

Micro Enterprises - Revenue does not exceed twenty five lakh rupees

Micro Enterprises - Revenue Does not exceed ten lakh rupees

Small Enterprises - Revenue more than twenty five lakh rupees but does not exceed five crore rupees

Small Enterprises - Revenue more than ten lakh rupees but does not exceed two crore rupees

Medium Enterprises - Revenue more than five crore rupees but does not exceed ten crore rupees

Medium Enterprises - Revenue more than two crore rupees but does not exceed five crore rupees 41

MSME: T HE E C ON OMI C E N G IN E

MSMEs employ 10 million people in West Bengal.

The economic engine of West Bengal is the small-scale, flexible, and diffused nature of most of its markets. 80% of enterprises in the state operate at the micro scale, often as single-person operations or small cooperatives.

The government, both federal and state, have frequently tried to develop measures by which these enterprises can be formalized and organized; indeed, they set up a whole Ministry, Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Ministry, to help understand and support these businesses. These government efforts have no doubt been useful, providing infrastructure and economic support to “clusters” of these micro-scale businesses; however, they have been happening at the same time as large-scale, top-down development schemes.

MSME accounts for 30% of India’s overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and in some sectors, up to 45% of the exports.

West Bengal is home to the largest number of MSMEs in the country, representing 14% of the national total. These MSMEs employ 10 million people in the state. Compared to other states in India, West Bengal has seen a disproportionate increase in investment to these businesses. In 2017, it recorded the largest bank credit flow to MSME in all of India: $15 million over five years.

We believe that the best way to unlock the economic potential of West Bengal is to mimic and integrate with what is so successful about the state’s economy as it stands today: its small-scale, fine-grain, highly localized nature. With the right program, we can both integrate into this economic function and tap into global markets.

We suggest using certain jute mill compounds to establish MSMEs in two sectors: logistics and textile manufacturing.

MI CR O LO G I S TI CS Logistics, a sector growing globally, is likewise growing in West Bengal, with headlines celebrating the state as an emerging logistics center in the region.

Logistics hubs are a central point in a supply chain at which companies can organize and coordinate the transportation and distribution of goods.

Kolkata is particularly well-located for logistics, with existing maritime infrastructure, improvements to these in the pipeline, and new freight infrastructures being built in the coming years.

The Sagarmala program is a government program that is helping to finance port-led development projects. State officials, as well as officials from the World Bank, are committed to improving its existing port infrastructure at Haldia and Kolkata under this scheme, and ensuring that the new deep sea port at Tajpur will feed into a state-wide increase in the amount of freight that passes through West Bengal. The Hooghly River, a historic connector from the agricultural hinterland to the ports at Kolkata and Haldia, will continue to be important as these regional routes are linked up to the transshipping routes Figure 9 between Asia and Africa.

ACTIVE JUTE MILL MACHINERY HALL

42

There are three new land-based freight corridors being planned in the region, all of which pass through the greater Kolkata region: the terminus of the new Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor in Dankuni, just west of the city, and two vehicle transportation corridors, the BBIN (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal) and the BCIM (Bangladesh, China, India, Myanmar) which will link India with its neighbors to the southeast and northeast (Figure 24).

These infrastructural developments make Kolkata an ideal site for logistics.

Some estimates see the logistics sector in West Bengal reaching $20 billion by 2020.

We advocate tapping into this growth, but at a scale that matches the urban fabric and economic grain of transactions in Kolkata. That is, logistics at an MSME scale. We envision a form of warehouse that operates at the same micro scale as many of the businesses in Kolkata. A vendor of silk, for example, Figure 24. Logistics corridors

LO G IST ICS C OR R IDO R S

43

might be able to store his or her wares in a warehouse that is shared by many hundreds of other vendors of other goods.

Micrologistics would allow micro-scale businesses to partake in the benefits of warehousing their goods, and thus enter the larger regional and transnational market. A core concept of micrologistics is their embeddedness in the urban fabric. They are accessible to micro-enterprises and vendors who operate in the heart of the city. Thus, we see these micrologistics hubs as engines of local economic opportunity, and as sites at which the local economy can flow into the global economy.

T EX T I LE M A N U FA CTU R I N G Given the state’s history of jute production, MSMEs specialized in the production of textiles are particularly prominent in West Bengal. Recently, the state has targeted a 10% growth in its textile output by 2022, and has dedicated Rs. 10.5 million to achieve this goal. In addition, their policies have relaxed regulations and increased subsidies for the establishment of new textile enterprises at MSME scale. More recently, the state government has developed an export strategy to connect MSME-produced goods to the export market. According to estimates, these measures will lead to a vast increase in employment, from 1.5 million people today to 10 million by 2022.

The support and cultivation of micro enterprises on these sites is undoubtedly a way to secure their economic prosperity. And, as anchors of their planning areas, these new economic hubs can usher in an era of sustainable and stable growth for neighborhoods throughout Kolkata.

J U TE: A M OR E SU S TAIN AB L E FU TUR E

In addition to MSME activity, we wish to support and give new life to the jute industry. We see this happening by embracing the environmental perogative of our time to make more sustainable products. Luckily, jute is well positioned to be a part of the global “green turn.”

The global need for a commitment to sustainable materials is clear based on the scientific community’s consensus on climate change. Jute offers a clean alternative to synthetic packing materials, as it is bio-degradable, renewable, and relies on chemically light treating processes. In 2006, the Jute Manufacturers Development Council commissioned Price Waterhouse Coopers Ltd. to perform a Life Cycle Analysis of jute products. In their report, PWC concluded that, with only a short series of recommendations, the jute industry could earn the label “eco-friendly” (Roul 2009). We believe it to be in the best interest of both India and the global community to preserve and expand the use of jute as a replacement of synthetic alternatives.

44

There is a global need for a committment to sustainable materials.

Jute is renewable, bio-degradable, and utilizes chemically light treatment processes.

Much research has also been conducted into how jute might be used in other applications beyond textiles and twine. Products like jute geotextiles, jute pulp and paper, and jute composites all have substantial levels of academic support.

Jute geotextiles in particular have been in use since the 1930s (Raul 2009).

Although investment in these products and the expansion of their production could offer a clear path to revitalize the jute industry, the low cost of crude oil and synthetics has historically made it difficult for jute to compete. However, as the international community becomes more aware of the growing need to prioritize sustainable materials, we believe that the jute industry of West Bengal is well positioned to help fill that need, benefitting both the global environment and the regional economy.

G E O TE X TI LE S CURBING PAVERS SAND BASE

GRAVEL SUBBASE GEOTEXTILE Figure 25

GEOTEXTILE APPLICATION EXAMPLE

Geotextiles are permeable fabrics used in geotechnical engineering with rock, soil, and sand to provide erosion control, drainage, filtration and soil reinforcement. Applications include most building projects with foundations, roadways, earth berms, retaining walls, and in combination with sub-surface drainage pipes to aid in filtering. Most geotextiles used today are synthetic, but jute offers a viable alternative.

45

HOUSING OPPORTUNITIES

Jute mills are uniquely positioned to intervene in— and benefit from—Kolkata’s housing market by providing affordable housing.

46

In May 2019, Times of India chronicled real estate development on lands on factories bordering the Hooghly River—factories much like the jute mills. The article presents a revealing quote about this moment in Kolkata’s real estate market: “For any election, the usual poll planks are availability of drinking water, drainage, lights, sewerage and jobs, but not here. The fight here is over the spoils of real estate development and brokerage.” Sentiments like these underscore how jute mills are uniquely positioned to intervene in Kolkata’s current housing market predicament, while accruing profit in the process.

Beyond private real estate actors, the central and state governments also recognize the housing development potential of jute mill sites. In their view, affordable housing development in West Bengal is inhibited by lack of available land, underutilized land occupied by ailing industries, and defunct government-owned land, combined with high concentrations of residents in areas where land is already limited. Thus, in addition to new housing development and slum and infrastructure improvement, the central and state governments also see key policy opportunities in the development of land inventories and the conversion and adaptive re-use of land, especially industryand government-owned land (IPE Global Private Limited 2015).

Converting underutilized jute mill land to affordable housing not only aligns with governmental policy approaches, but also connects jute mill owners to a segment of the real estate market with the highest demand: lower-income groups. Most people functioning within the jute mill ecosystem—formal laborers, migrants, retrenched workers, and their families—can be classified within this demographic category. Jute mill owners thus stand to benefit substantially from housing development on their sites: first as industrial leaders who can improve worker health and productivity through quality of life improvements; and second as housing developers who stand to profit from providing housing for the people who need it most. Our proposal seeks to leverage demand from underserved groups, while overcoming housing market and policy constraints, to make sustainable and lucrative quality-of-life improvements for people who live and work in and around jute mills.

Photo: Alex Sanyal

47

TRANSPORTATION OPPORTUNITIES

We view increasing connectivity as a precursor to economic revitalization.

The harmonious movement of goods and people lead to a more vibrant society and economy. While new bus routes and more buses, taxis and other private cars have led to the decline of the ferry, we see the development of concurrent, redundant but coordinated systems as an opportunity to promote cooperation rather than competition between modes (Dey 2013). If the ferry system is strengthened to provide more reliable service and better connectivity, this would reduce pressures on land-based systems, leading to less congestion at the bridge terminuses on both the Howrah and Kolkata sides.

The locations of jute mill sites are launching points to increase interactions and connections in the region’s transportation system. To achieve this, it is necessary to consider them as a part of a larger system, identifying the main economic activities in the mill sites and designing an adequate transportation system to fit within it. This also means operating at multiple scales. At the micro scale, the planning area of each mill, the site plan must facilitate walkability in terms of street design and proximity to transit mode options, especially since 60% and 78% of total trips are less than 3 kilometers and less than 5 kilometers, respectively (IDFC 2008). For example, dedicated lanes for biking and for rickshaws could ease the movement of people to and from other major transit options, like a bus stop or ferry terminal. At the larger metro-regional scale, the movement of goods requires a network of infrastructure that can facilitate movement within Kolkata and across the region. As sites of production, the jute mill sites must incorporate the movement of not only workers but also products. Both landing spaces for ferries and small barges for river freights, as well as other rivercraft by water, will be available in riverfront sites. These water-based systems will further be supported by dedicated land areas for truck and paratransit loading and parking.

Further, Kolkata is what it is today thanks to its strategic location by the Hooghly River and the Bay of Bengal. We extend the goal of connectivity to also encompass the Port and the multiple logistics hubs across the region. The Port of Kolkata has the potential to reach close to two billion people north of the city (Rakhi Basu, personal communication, February 17, 2020). As such, we will align the movement of goods and people to increase connectivity overall.

Without a connected transportation system, economies cannot move forward.

But, we believe certain unique characteristics about Kolkata already put it in a favorable position to achieve better connectivity. They are: a concentrated population, a compact city design, a limited road infrastructure—which helps regulate the number of private vehicles—and a network of public transport (Centre for Science and Environment 2011). We hope that the jute mill sites become a physical manifestation of these characteristics.

48

DIAGRAMMING JUTE MILL SITE OPPORTUNITIES

The opportunites outlined in this section can be summarized in a diagram, as shown below (Figure 26). The physical advantages of most jute mills include riverfront access, large interior mill spaces, extremely large tracts of land when considering the entire mill coumpound, on-site mill amenities like worker housing and schools, and community accessibility. Two major considerations for development include the level of productivity in mills and the physical disrepair of many sites due to long-term neglect. This is discussed in more depth in the following section.

Figure 26

49

PLANNING PA R A D I G M

FROM OPPORTUNITIES TO ACTION: DEFINING OUR PLANNING PARADIGM

ONE : U N I TE TH E S I TE S The jute mill sites are dispersed throughout the city, on both sides of the river, in many different neighborhood and immediate contexts. Framing them as a single, but variegated, network allows us to think on a systems-level about how to use them as an extended site for addressing the challenges in Kolkata.

The mill sites, and available land within their compounds, offer the flexibility to reconsider their utilization, productivity, and programming. These sites present themselves as a potential network of available land, allowing for design thinking that is holistic and able to respond to variable conditions across the cities diverse urban fabric.

Our proposal unites the sites systematically through a governance structure, and physically through concrete urban design interventions. Understanding the mills as one system allows us to address Kolkata’s challenges at their urban scale, as well as at their most granular. More information about governance can be seen in the Implementation section, and our urban design interventions are expanded in the Proposal section.

The spine of our network is the river; being so central to the city’s history, it is only fitting that it be central to our planning paradigm. The mills along the river form three distinct clusters based on their proximity to the central city.

We have used this natural pattern to designate three zones: the North Zone, the Central Zone, and the South Zone of mills (Figure 27). We expand on this notion in the section that follows.

50

WEST BANK MILLS

HOOGHLY

EAST BANK MLLS

UMA SPINNERS TITAGHUR GANGES

ISHWAR GUPTA SETU

PR

O PO SE D

FE RR Y

HOOGHLY RIVER GHAT RAIL BRIDGE

GONDALPARA VICTORIA SAMNUGGAR

EXISTING FERRY

NORTHBROOK DALHOUSIE

ALEXANDRA AUCKLAND MEGHNA WEAVERLY

KELVIN EMPIRE KINNISON CALCUTTA EASTERN

WELLINGTON HASTINGS

MAHADEO

RELIANCE ANGLO INDIA NAFARCHAND KANIKARA

JUTEX

INDIA

BALLY

NUDDEA

GANGES (GMC) ALLIANCE SHYMMNAGORE

ANGUS

NORTH ZONE CENTRAL ZONE

HUKUMCHAND NAIHATI GOURIPUR

KARDAH

NIVEDITA BRIDGE

KAMARHATTY AGARPARA PRAKARTAK BARANAGAR

AMBICA TIRUPATI SHREE HANUMAN BHARAT HOWRAH FORT WILLIAM

CENTRAL ZONE SOUTH ZONE

Figure 27. Diagram of the three designated zones of mills.

SURAH HOWRAH BRIDGE HOOGHLY BRIDGE

HOOGHLY

DELTA BOWREAH GLOSTER

PREM CHAND KANORIA LUDLOW

BUDGE BUDGE NEW CENTRAL CHEVIOT

BIRLA

51

T WO : E M B R A CE VA R I E TY O F C O N D I TI O N S While we acknowledge the mills as a united system, we also want to embrace the differences among the mills. These different conditions require a flexible and differentiated strategy for the development of new uses at each site or the rehabilitation of existing uses. We have developed programming and incentive suggestions that still treat the mills as a holistic system, while leaving room for flexibility based on the mill’s immediate context.

Jute Mill building(s)

Jute Mill compound

on-compound housing

Figure 28. Series of diagrams representing each mill’s context.

52

water features

formal water access

53

T HR E E : E S TA B LI S H M I X E D - U S E PL AN N I N G A R E A S To celebrate the existing diversity of uses in the urban fabric of Kolkata, mixed use is at the center of our planning paradigm. We are establishing a mixed-use planning area around each site, to encourage a vibrant mix of activities that address our priorities of affordable housing, transit connectivity, local economic development, and neighborhood amenities [Figure 29].

This planning area is a one-kilometer offset of the mill’s site, a region large enough to establish a sense of place, but small enough to retain neighborhood qualities. The planning area’s mixed-use programming will be incentivized through government programs and subsidies, more information on which can be found in the Implementation section.

Pla

Hoogh l y R i v e r

Property

Figure 29. Example of planning area.

54

lin

e

Mill 1km

nn

in

g

ar

ea

Photo: Alex Sanyal 55

BENCHMARKS

The projects on the following pages served as references as we developed thoughts about the future direction of Kolkata’s jute mills. They are not examples of industrial adaptive reuse—there are plenty of these to be had, ranging from Germany’s Zollverein to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. In choosing benchmarks, we sought projects that had a triple-bottom-line mission. That is, whose purpose, though underpinned by economic reason, was to surpass this economic raison d’être and serve communities within their local context and their global one.

We have two categories of benchmark: program and governance. The program benchmarks reflect our interest in serving local communities with our development proposal; the governance benchmarks begin to illuminate how we envision funding our ambitious program, a subject which is fully explored in the final section of this proposal.

PROGRAM BENCHMARKS

QU I N TA M O N R O Y, EL EM E N TA L, CH I LE The project worked “to settle the 100 families of the Quinta Monroy, in the same 5,000 sqm site that they have illegally occupied for the last 30 years, which is located in the very center of Iquique, a city in the Chilean desert.

We think that social housing should be seen as an investment and not as an expense. So we see the initial subsidy as adding value over time. The urban strategy also allowed for communal spaces to break up the row houses and allow for play.

An incremental strategy for social housing, the architects provided vital infrastructure in the initial “half” house, while leaving open the possibility to add to the house over time, at the discretion of the homeowners whenever they best saw fit. In having half a good house, the project also provided enough constructed dwelling space to make the project “move-in-ready” and allow for the community to transition into their homes more quickly.

56

Figure 30

Figure 31 57

AR AN YA TO W N S H I P, B A LKR I S H N A VI T H A LD A S D O S H I , I N D O R E , I NDI A Aranya is a site and services project completed in 1989 in Indore, India.

The project was organized in six parts around a central spine, which was designated as the central business district. The integration of green spaces was a key component of the project. There were different scales of open space, from small spaces shared between three to four families, to large open spaces shared across the six sectors of the project. This included, for example, large playing fields to be shared by the whole community. The project focused on creating a sense of neighborhood and family life. This was further bolstered

by Doshi’s integration of pedestrian pathways that connect back to the central spine of the project. The site and services project also gave more agency to the communities to build at their own pace, creating a variety of housing types, from one room shelter to more spacious variations, and adding to the neighborhood scale of the development.

Figure 32

58

Figure 33.

Figure 34.

59

GOVERNANCE BENCHMARKS

To design an inter-jurisdictional corporate agency to implement the interventions specified in the previous sections, we are informed by many local and global benchmarks.

I NT E R - J U R I S D I CTI O N A L A G E N CY: T EN N E S S E E VA LLE Y A U TH O R I TY (TVA) Created in 1933, the Tennessee Valley Authority started as a governmentowned corporation in the United States to provide electricity and employment to the Tennessee Valley region during the Great Depression.

Today, TVA has grown as a regional planning agency that is in charge of economic development. The highlight is that TVA is an inter-jurisdictional agency that covers most of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small slices of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia.

According to David Lilienthal (also known as Mr. TVA), TVA became a model for the U.S. to help modernize agricultural societies in the developing world. (Governance—TVA n.d.)

In terms of governance structure, TVA has a nine-member Board of Directors and five working committees. There are working committees concerned with risk and regulation, external relations, finances and rates, nuclear oversight, and people and performance to help the board fulfill its responsibilities.

The board elects the CEO, who is in charge of the implementation of TVA programs. (Ibid.)

However, during the early years of TVA, it faced controversies over eminent domain laws. Many of the early hydropower projects used eminent domain and led to a substantial number of local residents being displaced. Those who refused to sell land to TVA were evicted under court orders. Moreover, some of the projects took place on Native American lands. Some other projects got cancelled and the lands acquired under eminent domain were given to private developers. (Ibid.) The abuse of eminent domain laws serves as a lesson and should be avoided at all costs in our implementation agency.

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B O S TO N R E D E V E LO P M E N T AU T H O R I TY ( B R A ) The Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) was established in 1957, superseding the authority of the Boston Housing Authority (BHA). BRA’s primary goal is to work with Boston businesses and developers to provide direction for development in the city of Boston. The agency’s redevelopment authority includes the jurisdiction to buy and sell real estate, acquire real estate through eminent domain, and grant tax concessions to encourage commercial and residential development. (BPDA website n.d.)

Established during the urban renewal era, one of the first projects the BRA did was demolish the West End in Boston. (Slade 2013) Displacing more than 7,500 residents, it received relatively negative press across the country. Another project the BRA did was the Prudential Tower in Back Bay. In this project, eminent domain power was invoked. In the 1960s, Boston’s new mayor, John Collins transformed the BRA into the single, all-powerful agency and recruited a Robert Moses–style city planner to lead the authority. (Ibid.)

In 2016, Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh changed the name of BRA to the Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA). Walsh promised that this new agency would give residents more say over what gets built in their neighborhoods. (Logan 2016) According to Logan, this change was an attention-grabbing piece of the plan that intended to make the city government more transparent and to put a friendlier face to a bureaucratic agency that rules upon major construction in the city (Ibid.). On the BPDA website, it indicates that the agency is charged with growing the tax base, cultivating the private jobs market, training the workforce, encouraging new business to locate in Boston and existing businesses to expand, planning the future of neighborhoods with the community, identifying height and density limits, charting the course for sustainable development and resilient building construction, advocating for multi modal transportation, responding to the city’s changing population, producing insightful research on our City, and ensuring Boston retains its distinctive character. (BPDA website n.d.)

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Photo: Arindam Dutta 62

PROPOSAL SITE EVAL UAT I O N PROG R AM F R AM EW OR K SIX IL L UST RAT I VE EX AM P LE S

63

Figure 35 AGARPARA JUTE MILL, COMPOUND ENTRY

64

JUTE MILL SITE SELECTION CRITERIA This proposal envisions that most jute mills could qualify to participate in this redevelopment approach.

Because our proposal encourages the consolidation of interests among jute owners, the larger the number of mills that participate and share benefits and burdens, the more successful our plan will be. However, we believe the rollout of the proposal will need to be gradual, and so some mills will need to be prioritized over others. The general steps to determine how integral it is for a mill to be redeveloped is as follows: 1. Determine “Type” of development mill qualifies for. [Figures 36, 38, 39] 2. Determine “Zone” mill falls within. [Figure 37] 3. Determine potential uses for mill based on adjacent communities and proximity to resources. [Figures 40-45] 4. Evaluate potential use overlaps and priorities for adjacent community.

5. Rank mill for priority of selection.

TYPES OF JUTE MILL REDEVELOPMENTS T YP E 1

Mill is to remain as jute industry use, either receiving demand from another mill or adding new product R&D uses. Site compound to receive new uses and/or upgrades.

T YP E 2

Mill has some functioning jute manufacture that should stay on site and be consolidated. Newly freed portion of site to be redeveloped.

T YP E 3

Mill is already closed or is near complete closure and is suitable for a complete site redevelopment. No Jute manufacture to remain.

Figure 36

DEVELOPMENT ZONES The zones describe what kind of connectivity the site has to the central Kolkata, and what the aim of using the site for additional connectivity can be. Sites in the Central Zone should be linked as one network, which sites in the North and South Zones should be viewed as hubs within their respective satelitte communities and as potential points for cross river connections.

N ORT H Z ON E

C EN T RA L Z ON E

S OU T H Z ON E Figure 37

65

DETERMINING JUTE MILL ADAPTATION TYPE In Figure 38, below, the decision tree lays out how to decide which type of site [Figure 36] each mill will become. Refer to Figure 39 for the categorization of what each mill would likely be. This is contingent on the consolidation aspect of the dcision tree.

JUTE SITE IS THE MILL CLOSED? NO

YES

IS THE MILL OPERATING AT HIGH EFFICIENCY?

SITE QUALIFIES AS A TYPE 3 [REFER TO PROGRAM PACKAGES FOR POTENTIAL USES]

NO

YES

IS THE MILL AT MEDIUM OR LOW EFFICIENCY?

MILL NOT SELECTED

MEDIUM

LOW

IS THE MILL IN PROXIMITY TO A “LOW” MILL FROM WHICH IT COULD TAKE WORK?

IS THE MILL IN PROXIMITY TO A “MEDIUM” MILL THAT COULD RECEIVE IT’S WORK?

[CONSOLIDATION]

NO

YES

NO

YES

SITE QUALIFIES AS A TYPE 2

TAKE WORK TO MEET 100% POTENTIAL

ADD JUTE R&D PRODUCTION/ INVESTMENT

MOVE WORK, MACHINERY, & LABOR

SITE QUALIFIES AS A TYPE 1

SITE QUALIFIES AS A TYPE 1

SITE QUALIFIES AS A TYPE 3

[REFER TO PROGRAM PACKAGES FOR POTENTIAL USES]

[REFER TO PROGRAM PACKAGES FOR POTENTIAL USES]

[REFER TO PROGRAM PACKAGES FOR POTENTIAL USES]

[REFER TO PROGRAM PACKAGES FOR POTENTIAL USES]

Figure 38

66

JUTE MILL TYPE IDENTIFICATION

UMA SPINNERS JUTE MILL

NADIA

TITAGHUR JUTE MILL

NOT TYPE TYPE TYPE

SELECTED 1 2 3

CLOSED MILL LOW EFFICIENCY MILL MEDIUM EFFICIENCY MILL HIGH EFFICIENCY MILL

GANGES JUTE MILL

HUKUMCHAND JUTE MILL NAIHATI JUTE MILL GOURIPUR JUTE MILL

NUDDEA JUTE MILL RELIANCE JUTE MILL ANGLO INDIA JUTE MILL GONDALPARA JUTE MILL

HOOGHLY

NAFARCHAND JUTE MILL

KANKINARA JUTE MILL VICTORIA JUTE MILL

ALEXANDRA JUTE MILL MEGHNA JUTE MILL

SAMNUGGAR NORTH MILL

AUCKLAND JUTE MILL WEAVERLY JUTE MILL

ANGUS JUTE WORKS

GANGES JUTE MILL (GMC) JUTEX JUTE MILL

NORTH ZONE

NORTHBROOK JUTE MILL

ALLIANCE MILL

DALHOUSIE JUTE MILL

SHYAMMNAGORE MILL

CENTRAL ZONE

KELVIN JUTE MILL THE EMPIRE JUTE MILL

INDIA JUTE MILL

KINNISON JUTE MILL CALCUTTA JUTE MILL WELLINGTON JUTE MILL

THE EASTERN JUTE MILL

HASTINGS JUTE MILL

KHARDAH JUTE MILL

KAMARHATTY JUTE MILL AGARPARA JUTE MILL PRABARTAK JUTE MILL BALLY JUTE MILL

BARANAGAR JUTE MILL

MAHADEO JUTE MILL

NORTH PARAGANAS

AMBICA MILL TIRUPATI JUTE MILL SHREE HANUMAN JUTE MILL BHARAT JUTE MILL

HOWRAH CE NT

SO

UTH

SURAH JUTE MILL HOWRAH JUTE MILL FORT WILLIAM JUTE MILL

RA

LZ

ZO

ON E NE

DELTA JUTE MILL

KOLKATA

BOWREAH JUTE MILL GLOSTER JUTE MILL PREM CHAND MILL KANORIA JUTE MILL LUDLOW JUTE MILL

BUDGE BUDGE JUTE MILL

HOOGHLY JUTE MILL

NEW CENTRAL JUTE MILL CHEVIOT JUTE MILL

SOUTH PARAGANAS

N

BIRLA JUTE MILL

Figure 39

0

3

6

12 km

67

SELECTING MILLS

BY PROXIMITY AND SIZE

TR A N S I T LI N K O P P O RTU N I TY KAN I KAR A

Prioritizing which mill sites should be targeted for redevelopment is first based upon the mill’s physical qualities and opportunities, including but not limited to the following:

GOND A LPA R A

A LEX AN D R A A LLIA NC E

IND IA

• Transit Link Opportunity

KHA RD AH

• Proximity to land transit • Proximity to water transit • Proximity to MSME Cluster

BHA R AT

• Proximity to Tourist Areas,

HOWRA H

• Parks, Leisure • Size of Mill Buildings • Size of Mill Compound • Amount of River Access

HOOGHLY KA NOR IA

NEW CENTRA L

• Access to Ghats

Figure 40

• Flood Risk • Existing Compound • Amenities (Housing, Schools) • Productivity of Mill

P R O X I M I TY TO TO U R I S M A R E A

• State of Repair • Aesthetic Quality

GOND A LPA R A

Refer to Figures 40 to 45 for examples of the selection process for some of the mills based on the different desired qualities.

KINNISO N

TIR A PUTI FORT WILLIA M

SUR AH

Figure 41

68

LO G I S TI CS O P P O RTU N I TY

PROX IMIT Y T O MSME C L U S T ER H U K U M C HA ND

GOURIPUR

ALEXAN DRA

WEAVE R LY

ALLIAN CE

IND IA

IN DIA

HA STINGS

BALLY M AH ADEO AM BICA S HREE H AN U M AN T IRU PAT I H O WRAH F ORT WILLIAM

SU RAH

HOWRA H

H O O GH LY

HOOGHLY

B U D G E B U D GE N E W CE N TRAL CHE V I OT

Figure 42

A CC ESS TO R IVER

Figure 44

GAN GES

AN GU S N ORT H BRO O K

IN DIA HA S TI N G S / WELLIN GT O N

H U K U MCHA ND N AIH AT I GO U RIPUR N U DDEA RELIAN C E AN GLE ALEXAN DRA/A UCKLA ND M EGH N A WEAV ERLY GAN GES ALLIAN CE

LA R G E S T CO M P O U N D GROUNDS

GA NGES

GOURIPUR KAN KI N AR A

A NGUS

A LEXAN D R A WEAVE R LY A LLIAN C E SHYA MM N AG O R E

K IN N ISO N /K E LVIN IND IA

KELVIN KINNI S O N

K H ARDAH K AM ARH AT T Y

BALLY M AH ADEO AM BICA

BARAN AGAR

S HR E E H AN U M AN N

D E LTA B OW R E A H P R E M C HA N D L UDL O W KANO RI A

D ELTA BOWR EA H PR EMCHA ND

H O O GH LY

KA NOR IA

B U D G E B U D GE N E W CE N TRAL CHE V I OT BIRLA

HOOGHLY

NEW CENTRA L

Figure 43

Figure 45

69

DETERMINING JUTE MILL PRIORITY FOR INTERVENTION In Figure 46, below, the questions which determine if a site is a high priority for intervention are laid out based on the mill type determined earlier [Figure 38]. Refer to Figure 47 for the determination of which mills we propose be the highest priority. Many of the answers to the questions below are determined through geographic analysis, examples of which are shown in Figures 40-45.

Figure 46

70

TOP PRIORITY MILLS FOR INTERVENTION NOT PRIORITY

UMA SPINNERS JUTE MILL

CLOSED MILL LOW EFFICIENCY MILL MEDIUM EFFICIENCY MILL HIGH EFFICIENCY MILL

TOP PRIORITY TYPE 1 TYPE 2 TYPE 3

NADIA

TITAGHUR JUTE MILL GANGES JUTE MILL

HUKUMCHAND JUTE MILL NAIHATI JUTE MILL GOURIPUR JUTE MILL

NUDDEA JUTE MILL RELIANCE JUTE MILL ANGLO INDIA JUTE MILL GONDALPARA JUTE MILL

HOOGHLY

NAFARCHAND JUTE MILL

KANKINARA JUTE MILL VICTORIA JUTE MILL

ALEXANDRA JUTE MILL MEGHNA JUTE MILL

SAMNUGGAR NORTH MILL

AUCKLAND JUTE MILL WEAVERLY JUTE MILL

ANGUS JUTE WORKS

GANGES JUTE MILL (GMC) JUTEX JUTE MILL

NORTH ZONE

NORTHBROOK JUTE MILL

ALLIANCE MILL

DALHOUSIE JUTE MILL

SHYAMMNAGORE MILL

CENTRAL ZONE

KELVIN JUTE MILL THE EMPIRE JUTE MILL

INDIA JUTE MILL

KINNISON JUTE MILL CALCUTTA JUTE MILL WELLINGTON JUTE MILL

THE EASTERN JUTE MILL

HASTINGS JUTE MILL

KHARDAH JUTE MILL

KAMARHATTY JUTE MILL AGARPARA JUTE MILL PRABARTAK JUTE MILL BALLY JUTE MILL

BARANAGAR JUTE MILL

MAHADEO JUTE MILL

NORTH PARAGANAS

AMBICA MILL TIRUPATI JUTE MILL SHREE HANUMAN JUTE MILL BHARAT JUTE MILL

HOWRAH CE NT

SO

UTH

SURAH JUTE MILL HOWRAH JUTE MILL FORT WILLIAM JUTE MILL

RA

LZ

ZO

ON

NE

E

DELTA JUTE MILL

KOLKATA

BOWREAH JUTE MILL GLOSTER JUTE MILL PREM CHAND MILL KANORIA JUTE MILL LUDLOW JUTE MILL

BUDGE BUDGE JUTE MILL

HOOGHLY JUTE MILL

NEW CENTRAL JUTE MILL CHEVIOT JUTE MILL

SOUTH PARAGANAS

N

BIRLA JUTE MILL

Figure 47

0

3

6

12 km

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THREE PROGRAM PA C K A G E S Based upon our three jute mill project typologies, we propose a unique package of potential programs for each [Figure 48].

These packages act as a “kit of parts”, where the options are laid out for the individual project stakeholders, with the intention that selection be made based on neighborhood context, grographic opportunities, and the needs of the community.

Large and small scale interventions can occur with any of the packages, and include

government incentives which are earned by the project as the amount of programs selected that benef it the community increase.

analysis of what will generate the most benef it to jute mill owners, workers, and the broader Kolkata economy.

The programs proposed in the packages are broken down by major economic uses, minor economic uses, and community uses, with major economic uses acting as the f inancial cornerstone of this proposal, specif ically through the prioritization of space for MSME development. Other programs were determined based on

Regardless of how a jute mill has been categorized, all interventions will have to be uniquely tailored to each jute mill site. We encourage designers and f iscal agents of new jute mill schemes to assemble parts that are most suitable to each site. The following section demonstrates case studies utilizing our program packages.

TYPE 1 MILL MAJOR ECONOMIC USE CHOICES

[ALL JUTE]

JUTE - FACTORY OR R&D

MINOR ECONOMIC USE CHOICES COMMUNITY USES + IMPROVEMENTS

GOV’T INCENTIVES

UPDATED MACHINERY AND JOB TRAINING

RICKSHAW STAND, BUS PERMITS, SIDEWALK IMPROVEMENTS, TEMPORARY DOCK

SMALL OUTDOOR MARKET

PUBLIC PARK + RECREATION SPACE

HOUSING RENOVATION

ON-SITE CHILD CARE

SOLAR PANELS + ENERGY GRID IMPROVEMENTS, WATER PURIFICATION

Figure 48

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TYPE 3 MILL

IM

TYPE 2 MILL

MILL

[PARTIAL JUTE]

MAJOR ECONOMIC USE CHOICES

OR T

ON-SITE CHILD CARE

GOV’T INCENTIVES JUTE FACTORY

UPDATED MACHINERY AND JOB TRAINING

AND UPDATED MACHINERY AND JOBMSME TRAININGOR

LOGISTICS

EDUCATION AND LABOR SKILLING FACILITIES, TRUCK LOADING FACILITIES

OUTDOOR RICKSHAW STAND, BUSMARKET PERMITS,

HABITABLE STORAGE

RICKSHAW STAND, BUS PERMITS, SIDEWALK IMPROVEMENTS, FERRY CONNECTION

SIDEWALK IMPROVEMENTS, TEMPORARY DOCK

PUBLIC PARK + HOUSING RECREATION RENOVATION SOLAR PANELS + ENERGY SPACE GRID IMPROVEMENTS,

ON-SITE CHILD CARE

SOLAR PANELS + ENERGY GRID IMPROVEMENTS, WATER PURIFICATION

WATER PURIFICATION

TYPE 3 MILL

MINOR ECONOMIC USE CHOICES

MAJOR ECONOMIC USE CHOICES

[NO JUTE]

COMMUNITY USES + IMPROVEMENTS

G ON

COMMUNITY USES + IMPROVEMENTS

ORY D

MINOR ECONOMIC USE CHOICES

E]

GOV’T INCENTIVES

MARKET (RENTS)

MSME

GALLERY/ MUSEUM

PUBLIC PARK + RECREATION SPACE

GOV’T INCENTIVES

EVENT SPACE

AFFORDABLE HOUSING

HOUSING RENOVATION

ON-SITE CHILD CARE

EDUCATION AND LABOR SKILLING FACILITIES, FERRY CONNECTION, GREENWAY CONNECTORS

RICKSHAW STAND, BUS PERMITS, SIDEWALK IMPROVEMENTS, JETTY, BIKE LANES, FLOOD PREVENTION

SOLAR PANELS + ENERGY GRID IMPROVEMENTS, WATER PURIFICATION

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NOT SELECTED

CLOSED MILL LOW EFFICIENCY MILL MEDIUM EFFICIENCY MILL HIGH EFFICIENCY MILL

TOP PRIORITY TYPE 1 TYPE 2 TYPE 3

NADIA

HOOGHLY

ALEXANDRA JUTE MILL

NORTH ZONE CENTRAL ZONE

WELLINGTON JUTE MILL HASTINGS JUTE MILL

BARANAGAR JUTE MILL

NORTH PARAGANAS

HOWRAH

SURAH JUTE MILL

HOWRAH JUTE MILL

CE NT

SO

UTH

RA

LZ ON E ZO NE

KOLKATA

HOOGHLY JUTE MILL

SOUTH PARAGANAS Photo: Alex Sanyal Figure 48 Illustration of the six sample mill sites

74

0

N

3

6

12 km

SIX I L L U S T R AT I V E EXAMPLES IN THE FOLLOWING PAGES, WE HAVE PROVIDED EXAMPLES THAT PUT OUR PLANNING PARADIGM INTO ACTION.

75

mill mill housing transit playgrounds & parks schools hospitals & clinics zone boundary property

Figure 49. Satellite image of Howrah Mill and planning area.

76

HOWRAH MILL TY P E 1 : JU T E S TAYS

NEIGHBORHOOD NEEDS The Hooghly neighborhood surrounding the Howrah site is densely settled. Many residents live at or below the regional poverty line.

Located between the Howrah Rail Terminal and the 2nd Hooghly Bridge, the neighborhood has good connectivity but is plagued by congestion. The neighborhood is home to a ferry connection which runs directly across the Hooghly River from the north end of Fort William.

SITE The Howrah Mill is located just south of the Howrah Train Station.

The compound stretches between two large roads, one a state highway (SH6) and the other a wide district road, Upper Foreshore Rd. The compound has a total footprint of 375,102 sq m. The mill buildings are 32,747 sq m distributed between two large buildings, one at the north end of the compound and one at the south. The site contains a significant amount of worker housing, around 39,228 sq m in footprint. The compound is built up significantly and includes a hospital.

Established in 1890, the Howrah Mill has lately been underproducing vis à vis its potential. Though it remained open for all of 2019, it produced at only a third of its capacity. The complex’s existing physical presence makes it a good candidate for industrial improvements.

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PROPOSED INTERVENTIONS Existing Housing

THE SITE

Water Access Compound

T YPE 1

Proximity to transit

yes; renovation of existing homes, improve sanitation facilities no;

yes; add floating jetty, improve public access to ghat no; street improvement to ensure improve access to ghats if possible large; add new ghats, water collection/filtration, open pools small; site improvements to provide outdoor leisure space yes;

no; add rickshaw stand

low; inject FDI for geotech + update machinery + employee training

THE MILL

Productivity/ Health high; focus on exterior programming

INCENTIVES WAT ER Ghats are built to enable the Howrah Jute Mill residential area to connect with Hooghly River alongside a transportation reorganization, and a visual connection to embrace water.

Figure 50. Site of incentives.

78

ENE R G Y

TR A N S P O RTATI O N

High residential density and large jute production in Howrah requires 2,000 megawatt electricity annually in total. A feasible solar system size is around 400 megawatt, with 300 megawatt for jute production and 100 megawatt for housing.

Street improvements to better connect the site to the rail station for shipping, as well as to the existing ghat on the water. This would also include paratransit stands as well as parking to accomodate both rickshaws and trucks.

1. Rainwater recollection and storage 2. Sunpower generation and storage 3. Hydropower generation 4. New public pool 5. Ferry dock 6. Flooding mitigation 7. New ghats 8. Festivals and cultural activities

FERRY CONNECTION

IMPROVE CONNECTION TO HOWRAH STATION

JUTE PRODUCTION

NEW HOUSING

HOUSING RENOVATION

FERRY RENOVATION

JUTE PRODUCTION

HOUSING RENOVATION

Figure 51. Map of proposed intervention.

0m

25m

75m

150m

79

mill mill housing transit playgrounds & parks schools hospitals & clinics zone boundary property

Figure 52. Satellite image of Barranagar Mill and planning area.

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BARANAGAR MILL TY P E 1 : JU T E S TAYS

NEIGHBORHOOD NEEDS Baranagar is a city and municipality of North 24 Parganas district close to Kolkata. The Jute Mill is a major economic institution in the manufacturing sector of the city.

SITE The Baranagar Mill is located north of Kolkata in the city of Baranagar.

It is just south of the Vivekanada Setu rail bridge and the Nivedita road bridge, which are the northernmost river crossings of the KMDA. The mill compound is on the eastern riverbank of the Hooghly River.

The compound is 201,000 sq m of land, and is primarily connected to the larger region at the north end, where Surya Sen Rd connects to the Belghoria Expressway. The mill buildings make up 82,297 sq m of the site. The compound includes a collection of worker housing at either end, totalling 4,805 sq m.

The northern point of the complex includes a temple and a ghat.

The Baranagar mill was built in 1859 and today it operates at around 25% efficiency, leaving a lot of room for improvement. Even at low productivity, it accounts for 39,582 bales of government orders, and it was open every month of the last year. These factors make it a good candidate for rehabilitation rather than redevelopment.

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PROPOSED INTERVENTIONS Existing Housing

THE SITE

Water Access Compound

TYPE 1

Proximity to transit

yes; renovation of existing homes, improve sanitation facilities no;

yes; add floating jetty, improve public access to ghat no; street improvement to ensure improve access if possible large; add new ghats, water collection and filtration, open pools small; add public park/ leisure space yes;

no; add rickshaw stand

low; inject FDI for geotech + update machinery + employee training

THE MILL

Productivity/ Health high; focus on exterior programming

INCENTIVES WATER The pivotal water issue here is to integrate water (Hooghly River) into the public activity space. Two main ways to embrace water include: building ghats to increase accessibility to water, building purified water pools as an alternative holy-dip site.

Figure 53. Site of incentives.

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ENE R G Y

TR A N S P O RTATI O N

Electricity for jute production at this site is around 1,300 megawatt per year. Considering the solar system cost ($100/KW), feasible solar system size of 250 megawatt is recommended.

Street improvements to better pedestrian, truck, and paratransit access would create direct corridors between the site and the connections to intra- and extra-regional markets.

Co-location with the Port connects land and water transit.

1. Rainwater recollection and storage 2. Sunpower generation and storage 3. Hydropower generation 4. New public pool 5. Ferry dock 6. Flooding mitigation 7. New ghats 8. Festivals and cultural activities

IMPROVE CONNECTION TO RAIL, BRIDGE

FERRY RENOVATION

HOUSING RENOVATION

JUTE PRODUCTION

HOUSING RENOVATION

0m

25m

75m

150m

Figure 54. Map of proposed intervention.

83

mill mill housing transit playgrounds & parks schools hospitals & clinics zone boundary property

Figure 55. Satellite image of Hooghly Mill and planning area.

84

HOOGHLY MILL TY P E 2 : M ANU FAC T U R I N G & LO G I S TI CS

NEIGHBORHOOD NEEDS The dockside neighborhoods abutting the Hooghly Mill site are full of manufacturing operations, but also of many temples, sports grounds, and markets that cater to the workers who live and work in the area. MSME clusters in the neighborhood focus on garment, leather and fan production.

Because of the port, this area has a higher road density than other areas of the city. The neighborhood has strong potential for rail connections, with a major suburban line on the other side of the docks and a few smaller pieces of rail infrastructure connecting to other manufacturing compounds.

SITE The Hooghly Mill compound is located directly next to the Kolkata Port Trust, slightly south of downtown Kolkata. The compound spans across Garden Reach Rd with a total footprint of 347,748 sq m, of which 249,576 is unoccupied. The mill buildings occupy a footprint of 59,357 sq m, and are arranged along the river bank, which may be accessed by ghat. The compound also includes worker housing, located south of the mill buildings and totaling 11,761 sq m.

The mill first opened in 1913, and today production capacity is managed across 462 looms and 7,508 spindles. The mill received 26,826 government orders in total in 2019, and it was open 9 months of the year.

Compared to other mills in West Bengal, it has consistently produced relatively less than mills of similar size, making it a good candidate for redevelopment.

85

PROPOSED INTERVENTIONS

THE SITE

Existing Housing

yes; renovation of existing homes, AND additional housing + community amenities improve sanitation facilities no; add new housing + community amenities

Water Access

yes; ferry jetty, flood protection, public access, new ghat if absent no; street improvement to ensure improve access to ghats if possible

Compound

TYPE 2

Proximity to transit

THE MILL

Productivity/ Health Proximity to another mill

large; add waterfront greenway,sports grounds, pools open to the public small; add public park/ leisure space yes; no; add rickshaw stand, bus stops

low; inject FDI for geotech and/or modify program based on proximity to: high; inject FDI for geotech

msme cluster; reallocate space to msme production and market tourism/leisure; reallocate space to cultural programming, public parks port; reallocate space to manufacturing and logistics

yes; consolidate operations to free up additional space for new program no;

INCENTIVES WAT ER

ENE R G Y

TR A N S P O RTATI O N

Considering the residential size surrounding Hooghly Jute Mill, water collection and purification is the main issue here. Roof water reservoir, underground water tanks and other water collection/ purification equipment is recommended.

40% of jute production remains here, requiring about 900 megawatt electricity per year. Newly built housing increases the need for domestic electricity consumption.

300 megawatt of solar substitute is designed to mitigate the stringent electricity demand we expect.

Street improvements to better pedestrian, truck, and paratransit access would create direct corridors between the site and the connections to intra- and extra-regional markets.

Co-location with the Port connects land and water transit.

Figure 56. Site of incentives.

86

1. Rainwater recollection and storage 2. Sunpower generation and storage 3. Hydropower generation 4. New public pool 5. Ferry dock 6. Flooding mitigation 7. New ghats 8. Festivals and cultural activities

0m

25m

75m

150m

FERRY WAREHOUSE

MANUFACTURING JUTE PRODUCTION

IMPROVE CONNECTION TO DOWNTOWN KOLKATA

PUBLIC PARK

HOUSING RENOVATION

COMMUNITY CENTER

Figure 57. Map of proposed intervention.

87

mill mill housing transit playgrounds & parks schools hospitals & clinics zone boundary property

Figure 58. Satellite image of Wellington & Hastings Mills and planning area.

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WELLINGTON & HASTINGS MILLS TY P E 2 : JU T E C ONS OL I D ATI O N

WEL LI N G TO N

H A S TI N G S

SITE The Wellington and Hastings mills are neighboring compounds.

Though neither are particularly healthy, their proximity makes them good candidates for consolidation.

By shifting productivity out of Wellington and into Hastings, the overall productivity of the system may be retained while opening up other mill buildings for new uses.

The compound occupies 283,580 sq m in total, and Wellington’s redevelopment opens up new opportunities for industry, with infrastructural and logistical agglomeration possible through the colocation of new uses.

NEIGHBORHOOD NEEDS Serampore is a pre-colonial city on the western bank of the Hooghly. The neighborhood is highly urbanized, and reflects patterns found elsewhere in the region as far as concentrations of poverty alongside industrial districts along the river’s edge.

Marginal workers exceed the number of main workers here.

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PROPOSED INTERVENTIONS

THE SITE

Existing Housing

yes; renovation of existing homes, AND improve sanitation facilities no; add new housing + community amenities

Water Access

yes; ferry jetty, flood protection, public access, new ghat if absent no; street improvement to ensure improve access to ghats if possible

Compound

T Y PE 2

Proximity to transit

THE MILL

Productivity/ Health Proximity to another mill

large; add waterfront greenway, sports grounds, pools open to the public small; add public park/ leisure space yes; no; add rickshaw stand, bus stops

low; inject FDI for geotech and/or modify program based on proximity to: high; inject FDI for geotech

Figure 59. Site of incentives.

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msme cluster; reallocate space to msme production and market tourism/leisure; reallocate space to cultural programming, public parks port; reallocate space to manufacturing and logistics

yes; consolidate operations to free up additional space for new program no;

INCENTIVES WAT ER & AC C ES S ENE R G Y 1,000m vegetation buffer is built to avoid flood risk. The width near Wellington is 50m, while the width near Hastings is around 100m, which will act as a public leisure space at the same time.

additional housing + community amenities

There would be a large electricity needs after the industrial agglomeration is completed. A size of 700 megawatt solar energy system is recommended, addressing 25% of the whole consumption. Energy-saving manufacturing equipment is highly encouraged for the nearby MSMEs.

TR A N S P O RTATI O N Street improvements to better pedestrian, truck, and para-transit access would create direct corridors between the site and the connections to intra- and extra-regional markets.

1. Rainwater recollection and storage 2. Sunpower generation and storage 3. Hydropower generation 4. New public pool 5. Ferry dock 6. Flooding mitigation 7. New ghats 8. Festivals and cultural activities

MSME

NEW HOUSING

MARKET

HOUSING RENOVATION

FERRY

JUTE PRODUCTION

0m

25m

75m

150m

Figure 60. Map of proposed intervention.

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mill mill housing transit playgrounds & parks schools hospitals & clinics zone boundary property

Figure 61. Satellite image of Surah Mill and planning area.

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SURAH MILL TY P E 3 : TAK EOVER - T O U R I S M

NEIGHBORHOOD NEEDS Phoolbagan is a dense residential neighborhood which abuts the Salt Lake development in eastern Kolkata. The area is relatively well off, and has previously been targeted for transitoriented development by KMDC. A newly opened metro line connects it to downtown Kolkata.

SITE The Surah mill compound is located relatively far from the river compared to other mill compounds in the region. Located in densely residential urban fabric, the compound is small relative to other mills at 51,728 sq m. The mill buildings themselves are 14,836 sq m.

The Surah mill is closed, though it still has equipment, it did not produce any jute in 2019. Though it is well connected to humanscale transportation, the urban development of Kolkata has not created the conditions to support mass movement of product into or out of the site. Its location makes it ideal for a new type of market attraction.

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PROPOSED INTERVENTIONS

THE SITE

Existing Housing

yes; renovation of existing homes, AND additional housing + community amenities improve sanitation facilities no; add new housing + community amenities

Water Access

yes; ferry jetty, flood protection, public access, new ghat if absent no; street improvement to ensure improve access to ghats if possible

Compound

T YP E 3

Proximity to transit

THE MILL

INCENTIVES WATER The main issue is providing clean water in the two pools to improve the local people’s leisure experience.

Water collection is also recommended in the housing area.

Figure 62. Site of incentives.

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Productivity/ Health Neighborhood Needs

large; add waterfront greenway,sports grounds, pools open to the public small; add public park/ leisure space yes;

no; add rickshaw stand, bus stops, cross river connection

msme cluster; reallocate space to msme production and market neighborhood; reallocate space to cultural programming, public parks port; reallocate space to manufacturing and logistics

low; replace program according to proximity to: high; inject FDI for geotech, new machinery outskirts: new local hub for cultural + economic needs city center: new tourist/leisure program

ENE R G Y

TR A N S P O RTATI O N

Surah has a relatively low level of energy consumption compared to the other sites. A size of 200 megawatt solar energy system is recommended.

Potential funding can com from the CSR program in Kolkata.

Improvements will focus on bringing people into the site from the existing transit hubs of nearby metro stations.

They will include road and sidewalk improvements and formal rickshaw stands.

1. Rainwater recollection and storage 2. Sunpower generation and storage 3. Hydropower generation 4. New public pool 5. Ferry dock 6. Flooding mitigation 7. New ghats 8. Festivals and cultural activities

0m

25m

75m

150m

HOUSING RENOVATION

TOURIST CENTER

METRO

M

IMPROVE CONNECTION TO SALT LAKE CITY, DOWNTOWN

Figure 63. Map of proposed intervention.

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mill mill housing transit playgrounds & parks schools hospitals & clinics zone boundary property

Figure 64. Satellite image of Alexandria Mill and planning area.

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ALEXANDRA MILL TY P E 3 : TAK EOVER - C U LTU R A L CE N TE R

NEIGHBORHOOD NEEDS Bhatpara has a high density of jute processing plants along its riverbank. The mills have drawn a large labor force from neighboring states of Bihar, Odisha, and eastern Uttar Pradesh, and these migrant workers often comprise the majority of the population surrounding the mills. They primarily live in shanty towns and slums along the riverside mill compounds.

Though suburban rail reaches the eastern edge of the neighborhood, road-based transit is the major form of access to the site.

SITE The Alexandra mill occupies land at the bend of the Hooghly River around 22km north of the Nivedita Bridge and 13km south of Ishwar Gupta Setu as the crow flies. It shares a compound with the Aukland Jute Mill. The river forms the western boundary while the eastern boundary is largely shaped by Bangaon - Kulpi Rd or State Highway 1.

The compound totals 599,854 sq m, making it one of the largest along the Hooghly. Of that area, only 1/6th of the land is occupied by mill buildings. The Alexandria mill itself occupies 40,421 sq m of the complex, and is accompanied by 4,761 sq m of worker housing.

The Alexandra mill has closed, leaving the large compound and mill building open for repurposing.

There is potential to develop a new cultural center for the northern edge of the Kolkata metropolitan region, drawing on existing patterns of industry and cultural significance of the river to bring new life to the site.

97

PROPOSED INTERVENTIONS

THE SITE

Existing Housing

yes; renovation of existing homes, AND additional housing + community amenities improve sanitation facilities no; add new housing + community amenities

Water Access

yes; ferry jetty, flood protection, public access, new ghat if absent no; street improvement to ensure improve access to ghats if possible

Compound

T YP E 3

Proximity to transit

THE MILL

INCENTIVES WATER The primary task is flood control.

We propose building 2,000m of vegetation buffer (60~100m in width) to decrease the flood risk.

Second, we will build spaces to facilitate water-based public activities such as religious festivals and ferry crossings.

Figure 65. Site of incentives.

98

Productivity/ Health Neighborhood Needs

large; add waterfront greenway,sports grounds, pools open to the public small; add public park/ leisure space yes;

no; add rickshaw stand, bus stops, cross river connection low; replace program according to proximity to: high; inject FDI for geotech, new machinery

msme cluster; reallocate space to msme production and market neighborhood; reallocate space to cultural programming, public parks port; reallocate space to manufacturing and logistics

outskirts: new local hub for cultural + economic needs city center: new tourist/leisure program

ENE R G Y

TR A N S P O RTATI O N

Being a potential landmark, Alexandra provides a future perspective for post-industrial Kolkata. Therefore, the solar system size here is recommended to cover 100% of electricity consumption, around 1,000 megawatt per year.

With bridges relatively far to the north and south, the Alexandra site would be best served by supporting a new ferry terminus to connect Bhatpara to the other cities in the region. Road improvements on the land would connect the compound to suburban rail.

1. Rainwater recollection and storage 2. Sunpower generation and storage 3. Hydropower generation 4. New public pool 5. Ferry dock 6. Flooding mitigation 7. New ghats 8. Festivals and cultural activities

0m

25m

75m

150m

PUBLIC PARK

NEW HOUSING

HERITAGE CENTER

MARKET

FERRY

FESTIVALS AND CULTURAL ACTIVITIES

JUTE PRODUCTION

Figure 66. Map of proposed intervention.

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Photo: Photo: AlexIITSanyal 100

IMPLEMENTATION N E W JUT E S PEC I AL PL AN N I N G V E H I CLE STAKEHOLD ER S G OV ER NA NC E IN C EN T IV ES AND E X PEC T ED R EVENU E LO AN AM ORT I Z AT I ON IMP L EMENTAT I O N I NS T RU M E N TS

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Fig 67. New Jute planning areas.

102

NEW JUTE SPV Mission statement To implement the jute mill interventions that would revitalize Kolkata’s economy, establish new connectivity with Kolkata and beyond, enhance workers’ quality of life, and other purposes regarding jute mill development, we create New Jute Limited—a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV). New Jute is an interjurisdictional corporate agency under of the Finance Ministry of the Government of West Bengal, handling disbursements of capital funds from the 7600 crore rupees (equivalent of $1 billion) loan from the Global Development Bank.

Through the establishment of planning-area-level departments, this agency would permit funding of infrastructure, housing upgrading, river stabilization, docks, and other improvements. This agency would have regulatory power over the other types of incentives to redevelop areas currently zoned as jute production, including designation of planning areas, preservation, property taking, acquire property through eminent domain, and grant tax concession to encourage commercial and residential development.

Status The Special Purpose Vehicle is in the form of a limited company incorporated under the Companies Act, 2013. New Jute operates on inter-jurisdictional level, with the Finance Ministry of the Government of West Bengal holding majority of shareholding and control.

Jurisdiction In the current administrative setup of the Kolkata Metropolitan Area, projects that span across the boundaries of municipalities are run by the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA); an agency responsible for crafting the long-term vision of the agglomeration but operating with limited executive powers in parallel to municipal and state government. KMDA mainly acts over three fronts: regulatory functions, planning for development and project implementation.

However it only holds consultancy powers and cannot always enforce the execution of its strategy. To ensure that New Jute’s mission may be fulfilled, a series of planning areas are created around selected jute mills and placed under the coordination of the West Bengal Ministry of Finance through New Jute Ltd. At the current stage, New Jute identifies six planning areas containing six different jute mills (and compounds): Alexandra, Baranagar, Hastings and Wellington Compound, Hooghly, Howrah, and Surah.

different federal and state ministries, develop good relationships with other stakeholders, and take measures to mobilize resources.

4. Issue Requests for Proposals (RFPs) as part of the land disposition process to achieve planning-areabased community development goals 5. Execute interventions with complete operational freedom.

6. Set timelines and ensure timely completion of projects.

7. Review the financial and operational performance of the company, and long-term impacts of the interventions with independent exports.

8. Incorporate joint ventures to enter public private partnerships for the implementation of jute mill related interventions.

9. Collect tax and user fees as prescribed by the Ministry of Finance of the Government of West Bengal.

Scope The key functions and responsibilities of New Jute are to: 1. Designate planning areas and their corresponding departments to implement the missions of New Jute SPV. 2. Create incentives, define criteria, and select projects in accordance with the missions of New Jute SPV. 3. Facilitate collaboration with 103

S TA K E H O L D E R S

State level New Jute is a multi-stakeholder company created to overcome the trans-jurisdictional nature of the jute mill network of West Bengal.

New Jute is placed under the direct authority of the Ministry of Finance of West Bengal. Other relevant ministries in the Government of West Bengal are included in New Jute’s governance and may be involved in the company’s implementation program. Within the Government of West Bengal, the Department of MSMEs and Textiles, the Ministry of Urban Development and Urban Affairs, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Ministry of Tourism, are represented in New Jute’s governance. Other ministries and government agencies may be consulted and involved at the request of New Jute’s board of directors if their expertise and authority is required for the implementation of a specific program on a given site.

Federal level New Jute also serves as a connector across national, state and local levels.

A number of federal agencies are involved in New Jute at different levels. These include India’s Ministry 104

of Textile, in charge of leading the future of textile at the scale of the country and overseeing the National Jute Board’s strategy, India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry, which is responsible for the country’s export promotion internationally, India’s Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, overseeing accelerated land acquisitions for the development of transportation infrastructures, India’s Ministry of Shipping, which owns the Kolkata Port Trust, and India’s Ministry of Jal Shakti, in charge of water resources.

Local level On the other hand, several local entities are directly or indirectly impacted by the rejuvenation of West Bengal’s jute mills. New Jute’s authority, conferred by the West Bengal Ministry of Finance, allows the SPV to execute its actions through limited planning areas and to coordinate the different stakeholders within these planning areas. The following actors all have stakes in New Jute’s planning areas, but also happen to be under the authority of the West Bengal and Central Government ministries that constitute New Jute’s governance: the Kolkata Port Trust, the West

Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Indian Jute Mills Association (IJMA), and the municipalities that belong to the Kolkata Metropolitan Area.

Owner level Finally, New Jute is working closely with jute mill owners - as well as jute mill workers and labor unions, suppliers, clients and neighbors - to mutually find resolutions that work for every party and reposition West Bengal’s jute mills in the 21st century.

New Jute offers incentive packages to jute mill owners in order to facilitate the implementation of a coherent plan across the different planning zones.

Fig 68. New Jute SPV organizational chart 105

Fig 69. New Jute SPV overall and local governance.

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GOVERNANCE Overview The governance structure of New Jute is composed of a board of directors and four working committees. There are eleven members on the board, including a chairman and a Chief Executive Officer (CEO). The chairman is ex officio chief secretary for Chief Minister of West Bengal, who presides over the company-related functions and conferences. The CEO should be appointed by the Ministry of Finance of the Government of West Bengal. The CEO is responsible for overseeing the overall management of the company.

Board members For the rest of the nine members, one third should be appointed by the Central Government of India, to represent the National Jute Board under the Ministry of Textile, Kolkata Port Trust under the Ministry of Shipping, and the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, respectively.

The three ministries are crucial players for the success of New Jute’s missions on the federal level. Another one third of the board should be appointed by the Government of West Bengal, with the consideration to represent the Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Urban Development and Municipal Affairs, and Ministry of Tourism, respectively. The ministries are important stakeholders at the state level. Another one third of the board should be elected by the Indian

Jute Mills Association Committee members, who represent the actors of the jute industry.

manages labor relations, safety standards, and compensation regarding employees of the company.

Working committees The New Jute board establishes four working committees concerning regulation, external relations, finances, and evaluation to help fulfill its responsibilities:

4. Finance Committee This committee focuses on New Jute’s financial health and planning. Its duties include overseeing, reviewing and making recommendations about the budget and distributing funding to different projects.

1. External Relations Committee This committee oversees the relationship with other stakeholders involved in jute interventions, including but not limited to the World Bank, Kolkata Port Trust, Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry, National Jute Board, Indian Jute Mills Association, other ministries under the Government of West Bengal, Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority, Kolkata Municipal Corporation, and members of the public.

2. Evaluation Committee Aiming for the projects to bring positive impacts to the region, this Committee oversees the operational and financial performance of the company in conjunction with independent experts on project evaluations.

3. Regulation Committee Overseeing financial reporting, regulatory policies, compliance and ethics, this committee ensures that the company complies with its financial and legal obligations.

In addition, this committee also

Planning Areas To take neighborhood-level decisions in each planning area, New Jute establishes a Planning Area Council, which is composed of five representatives, respectively for the mill owner, New Jute, the mill’s Labor Unions, the planning area’s Neighbor Association, and KMDA. The owner and New Jute representatives have veto power over decisions taken by the Council, which seeks developers and operators. It engages in contracts with private and public entities regarding improvements matching the missions of New Jute, such as infrastructure, engineering, water, and housing. Each department has regulatory power over the other types of incentives to redevelop areas currently zoned as jute production, including designation of planning areas, preservation, property taking, acquiring property through eminent domain, and granting tax concession to encourage commercial and residential development.

107

Fig 70. Incentive packages.

108

INCENTIVES AND REVENUE

Type I Revenue The revenues expected by New Jute align with the reinforced industrial focus of the planning areas. First and foremost, the incentives provided would generate a higher productivity of every Type I mill, which would make them more attractive for domestic and foreign direct investment (FDI) as investors could target flagship healthy mills. In order to receive Type I incentive packages, mill owners will need to create privately-owned public spaces on their property. Those public spaces may be financed by leasing out land for commercial activities on the site.

Type II Revenue The ambition of Type II incentive packages consists in increasing visibility for the jute sector by welcoming new uses on the mills and specializing the mill activities, as well as in securing alternative revenue

opportunities for mill owners by leasing out parts of their mill to new commercial activities. Type

II mills create more privately-owned public spaces in the planning areas under New Jute’s authority, which would enable tourism and leisure infrastructures. Mill owners may also elect to sell or lease out parts

Besides its regulatory functions, New Jute would also have a set of incentive packages to increase jute productivity and promote more efficient land uses on current jute mills sites. It is worth noting that one of the major incentives throughout the packages is land use conversion.

Under the West Bengal Land Reform (1955), individual entities are not allowed to have more than 25 acres holding of land (Ghosh and Nagaraj 1978). Section 14 Y of the WBLR Act provides an opportunity to acquire and hold land in excess of 24 acres and use it for any of the 17 purposes as specified therein after obtaining specific permission from the Government of West Bengal, including the use of jute mills (Ibid.). After the 2017 amendments to WBLR, an entity will now be entitled to hold such land as a long term lease (99 years) and use it for either the existing industrial use such as jute mills or for any of the 17 purposes specified in Section 14Y of the WBLR Act. Since all the schemes require a conversion of land use—on the current jute mill sites that are all over 25 acres—New Jute sees this as an opportunity to incentivize jute mill owners and private developers to meet the criteria for redevelopment.

To increase jute productivity and promote more efficient land uses on current jute mills sites, New Jute SPV works with relevant ministries to devise the following three incentive packages.

Type I Package To qualify for a Type I jute mill, the mill should be productive or have the potential to be productive with the above incentives. Moreover, the mills should be open 100% of the time in the year before applying. Type I mills will continue to operate as jute mills and receive government funding and other investments.

To incentivize jute mill owners to increase productivity. New Jute SPV would provide the following funding opportunities to Type I mills: machine upgrade, employees’ training, power grid upgrade, and renewable energy installation. The jute mills owners may also lease out land for commercial activities on the public spaces on the site. New Jute SPV will work with relevant ministries to accommodate changes in land use and other use regulations.

In addition, New Jute SPV would work with the owner to seek foreign direct investment opportunities.

109

To meet the application criteria, the owners of a Type I jute mill should work with the relevant ministries to increase public space and public access to the site. The owners should also renovate housing on the site through contracts with developers.

Type II Package To qualify for a Type II jute mill, the mills have medium or mediumto-low productivity, and remain open for less than 70% of the time in the year prior to submitting the application. Qualified mills would receive medium-scale interventions, with a half of the site operating as jute mills, and the potential to transform the other half to mixeduse development. Jute mills in the same compound may be paired together to satisfy the requirement.

To apply for New Jute funding, the owners of a Type II mill or mill compound should meet the following criteria. For the spaces that would remain as jute mill, the owners should work with the relevant ministries to provide micro logistics infrastructure (such as warehouse and habitable storage) and increase public space and public access to the site. The owners should also renovate housing on the site. For the spaces that would be transformed into a mixed-use development, the owners may lease out spaces following a site plan developed by the Ministry of Urban Development. Alternatively, the owners may sell the land to a private developer, with the conditions that the developer propose an infill development plan—with a combination of tourism and leisure infrastructure (including but not limited to market, gallery, and tourist center), cultural and festival space, and mixed-income housing.

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The housing units should take up at least 40% of the total development.

Type III Package To qualify as a Type III jute mill, the mills have low or zero productivity, and remain open for less than 20% of the time. in the year prior to submitting the application.

Qualified mills would receive large-scale interventions, with the potential to transform the site into mixed-use development.

New Jute SPV seeks private developers to transform Type III jute mills sites. SPV would accommodate changes in land use—specifically, converting from industrial to mixed-use development—and other use regulations. SPV would also provide adequate funding for water and land transportation, including but not limited to rickshaw stand, jetty, and parking, sidewalk, and street improvement. There would also be funding opportunities for utility infrastructure such as renewable energy installation and on-site flood protection.

The developer should meet the following criteria in order to purchase a Type III jute mill. The developer should propose a brown field redevelopment plan, with a combination of tourism and leisure infrastructure (including but not limited to market, gallery, and tourist center), cultural and festival space, and mixed-income housing.

The housing units should take up at least 30% of the total development.

In addition, if a jute mill is qualified by the Ministry of Information and Cultural Affairs of the Government of West Bengal as a heritage site, the mill architecture should be preserved.

of their property to mixed-income housing developers, to increase their income, develop a market for on-site commercial activities and provide housing in locations that were formerly limited to industrial usage but are attractively located within the Kolkata Metropolitan Area and which will benefit from reinforced mobility connections.

Type III Revenue Type III incentive packages enable a total repositioning of poorly performing jute mills to give back vacant or under-utilized lands to the Kolkata Metropolitan Area population. New Jute oversees the transformation of Type III mills by seeking a developer who could offer current mill owners more revenue than industrial activities, and who would develop a mixeduse plan that fits within New Jute’s vision and allows the site to be connected to its surroundings through mobility improvements. With Type III incentive packages, mill owners may elect to maintain the ownership of their property and to lease it for a number of years to a mixed-income developer, or to sell their property to a developer.

Fig 71. New Jute and mill owner revenues.

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LOAN A M O RT I Z AT I O N

Approach New Jute functions under a simple financial scheme: it works closely with jute mill owners on repositioning their property towards socio-economically highest and best uses. New Jute is responsible for the repartition and reimbursement of a $1 billion loan from the Global Development Bank through the deployment of incentives over planning areas for jute mill owners whose mills do not operate at full capacity or who wish to shift the usage of their property. New Jute subsequently determines a sitespecific strategy for each property in partnership with local, state and federal level stakeholders.

Range of actions New Jute accommodates a broad spectrum of engagement for the jute mill owners: from helping with total property transfer to limited strategy advising. Jute mill owners may elect to maintain ownership over their property while involving New Jute at different stages along the repositioning process.

Income generation New Jute allocates portions of the Global Development Bank loan 112

to each of the planning areas, and ensures through the overall income of all planning areas that yearly payments to the Global Development Bank are made.

New Jute also generates income for its operations through service charges for its expertise in strategy, development fees for the projects it initiates, and commercial revenue from the services it manages.

Financial Product The $1 billion loan from the Global Development Bank has been secured by the West Bengal Finance Ministry under the following conditions: Because of the Indian rupee volatility, the Global Development Bank required that the loan be made with fixed spreads, which have slightly higher interest rates than variable spreads, but make it easier for India to pay back the loan if the rupee drops against the dollar.

The loan will have to be paid back within 12 years, and interest rates will consequently be constituted of the LIBOR (London Inter-bank Offered Rate) + 0.95%, plus a 0.25% front-end fee and a 0.25% yearly

commitment fee.

The total interest perceived by the Global Development Bank is over $79 million.

Loan Amortization Schedule https://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates/loan-amortization-schedule.html

© 2008-2020 Vertex42 LLC

Loan Information

Summary Loan Amount (in USD) Annual Interest Rate Term of Loan in Years First Payment Date Payment Frequency Compound Period Payment Type Rounding

1,000,000,000.00 1.20% 12.00 44,197.00 Annual Annual End of Period On

Rate (per period) Total Payments Total Interest Est. Interest Savings

0.01 1,079,354,669.15 79,354,669.15 350,530.20 . .

[42] Annual Payment

Amortization Schedule Year Due Date Payment Due 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 7.00 8.00 9.00 10.00 11.00 12.00

44,197.00 44,562.00 44,927.00 45,292.00 45,658.00 46,023.00 46,388.00 46,753.00 47,119.00 47,484.00 47,849.00 48,214.00

89,975,433.28 89,975,433.28 89,975,433.28 89,975,433.28 89,975,433.28 89,975,433.28 89,975,433.28 89,975,433.28 89,975,433.28 89,975,433.28 89,975,433.28 87,124,903.07

89,975,433.28

Additional Payment 2,500,000.00

Interest 12,000,000.00 11,034,294.80 10,087,001.14 9,128,339.95 8,158,174.83 7,176,367.73 6,182,778.95 5,177,267.09 4,159,689.10 3,129,900.17 2,087,753.77 1,033,101.62

Principal 80,475,433.28 78,941,138.48 79,888,432.14 80,847,093.33 81,817,258.45 82,799,065.55 83,792,654.33 84,798,166.19 85,815,744.18 86,845,533.11 87,887,679.51 86,091,801.45

Balance 1,000,000,000.00 919,524,566.72 840,583,428.24 760,694,996.10 679,847,902.77 598,030,644.32 515,231,578.77 431,438,924.44 346,640,758.25 260,825,014.07 173,979,480.96 86,091,801.45 (0.00)

Fig 72. Global Development Bank loan amortization schedule 113

Fig 73. Smart City Mission SPV governance structure.

Fig 74. Bus Rapid Transit System SPV governance structure 114

I M P L E M E N TAT I O N INSTRUMENTS Public-Private Partnership (PPP) The primary benefit of using PPP instead of public funds is efficiency gain. Public agencies are less likely to have clear incentives due to annual budget cycle and other organizational constraints. An SPV has narrowlydefined objectives. It also has more administrative and financial freedom.

Moreover, under long-term contracts it can improve maintenance as many governments use a stop-and-go approach that prioritizes building new projects and only providing maintenance when the infrastructure has deteriorated. In comparison, an SPV is bound to provide continuous maintenance under contracts. PPP might also be preferred over complete privatization because the scope of planning often exceeds individual projects. Infrastructure like road networks and port facilities require planning control that cannot be done by firms alone (Engel et al. 2014).

The following two cases demonstrate how an SPV function in India.

SPVs for Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) in India Bus rapid transit system, considered as a solution to urban transit problems, has gained popularity in recent years. Under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission by the Government of India, the task to develop BRTS in Indian cities was initiated in 2008.

It is estimated that between 2008 and 2015, BRTS in India expanded from two cities to eight cities with a substantial increase in ridership

(Kathuria et al. 2016).

Led by the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Urban Development, SPVs were formed in different cities. The SPVs are in charge of the operation and maintenance of BRTS. The participation of the private sector was intended to increase the efficiency of the system, as many transport authorities lack the institutional capacity to carry out BRTS. In addition, arrangements within transport agencies create liabilities on government institutions which can be costly. Thus, introducing private partners allow those authorities to use their funds on other development works (Ibid.).

SPV for Smart City Mission The Smart City Mission is an urban renewal and retrofitting program by the Government of India. It intends to develop 100 smart cities across the country. The implementation of the Mission at the city level is done by an SPV, which plans, approves and distributes funds, implement, manages, and evaluate Smart City development projects. Each smart city has an SPV, headed by a full-time CEO and has nominees of the central government, state government, and urban local bodies on its board (Special Purpose Vehicle 2017).

The execution of the projects is done through PPPs. Each SPV is a limited company incorporated under the Companies Act, 2013 at the city level. In the case of Smart City SPVs, the state and urban local bodies would be promoters having

fifty-to-fifty equal shareholding.

Private sectors are allowed to take equity share, but the public sector has majority shareholding and thus control of the SPV (Ibid.). One of the primary reasons for the creation of an SPV for the Smart City Mission is to ensure operational independence and autonomy in decision making and mission implementation. As a result, the urban local body “delegates the rights and obligations of the municipal council with respect to the smarty city project to the SPV” (Special Purpose Vehicle 2017, 5).

Under such provision, the SPV has complete operational freedom to execute Smart City proposals.

Besides, West Bengal also has a strong interest in developing a variety of public-private partnerships (PPP).

In effect, West Bengal is the only state which has introduced a State Policy on PPP since 2012. The policy intends to facilitate private funds in the development of physical and social infrastructure. The underlying logic of the policy was that the participation of the private sector can enhance the quality of services provided by the state. An example of PPP in West Bengal is the upgrading of a deep sea port at Sagar, which was planned as a joint venture of the Government of West Bengal and Ministry of Shipping, Govt. of India (Investment and Industrial Policy of West Bengal 2013).

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Figure 25. “Nonwoven Markets – Geotextiles.” Accessed March 5, 2020. https://www.nolarindustries.com/nonwoven-geotextiles Figure 35. “Agarpara Jute Mills Limited - Kamarhatti - North 24 Paraganas.” Wikimedia Commons. April 11, 2012. Accessed March 6, 2020. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Agarpara_Jute_Mills_Limited_-_Kamarhati_-_North_24_Parganas_2012-04-11_9466.JPG All other photos are courtesy of Arindam Dutta, Alexandra Sanyal, and IIT. 117