Let them have clean water With 200 delicacies on offer, street food vendors in Kolkata maintain a rich tradition and provide a vital service; hence they deserve support from the municipal corporation, writes Sankar Ray

Let them have clean water

With 200 delicacies on offer, street food vendors in Kolkata maintain a rich tradition and provide a vital service; hence they deserve support from the municipal corporation

The food joints in central Kolkata, including the main commercial hub, Benoy-Badal–Dinesh Bag (erstwhile Dalhousie Square) are the symbol of city’s cosmopolitanism. Here, high-salaried executives stand in front of street food semi-kiosks alongside low-paid wage earners for one thing — the food’s mind-blowing taste. This ‘street food city’ extends over Kolkata’s south-central region along stretches of Shakespeare Sarani, Anandilal Poddar Sarani and Abanindranath Tagore Sarani. Here, you get a four or five course meal, complete with roomali rotis or tandoori rotis, scrumptious vegetarian and meat preparations for unbelievably cheap rates that fall below Rs20. Traditional meal hours are from 12pm to late afternoon. Almost 200 delicacies are laid out here to seduce foodies — chow mein, idli, dosa, uttapam, bhelpuri, golgappas, or pakodas, each available for Rs10 to Rs15. It gets cheaper still. A meal of rice, dal and vegetables can come for as little as Rs7 on the gastronomic streets of Kolkata. If you happen to find yourself somewhere near the Writers’ Buildings — the seat of the Government of West Bengal — after 5pm with a growling stomach, approach a street food hawker. He will offer you a plate of chow mein for Rs5 — something that can leave any Mumbaikar or Delhiite stunned. A few days back, I was very hungry and reluctantly (as restaurants in and around Benoy-Badal–Dinesh Bag would be crowded) ate a plate of chicken fried rice for Rs15. I casually told the hawker that people are hesitant to eat street food due to improper cleaning and the health hazards it poses. He replied, “If that’s true, could we be here for days together? There may be exceptions. But food poisoning from dishes sold by us has never been reported.” The soft-spoken street-hawker, who declined to be named, went on to refer to a study on Kolkata’s street food, undertaken by the All India Institute of Hygiene & Public Health, Kolkata in collaboration with the Rome-based UN outfit Food and Agriculture Organisation, between 1993 and 1995. The principal supervisors of the project were Professor Indira Chankravarty, former director, AIIH & PH and Dr Colette Canet, the then nutrition officer (food contamination, monitoring and control), food quality and standards service, FAO. Dr Chakravarty maintains that “it is a cottage-industry which is surprisingly nutritious, providing nearly 1,000 calories at incredibly low rates”. Dr Siddhartha Gupta, a physician, endorses the view. “Conclusions of the AIIH & PH-FAO survey are valid even today. The quality of street food is good on an average and incidences of illness among daily consumers are not high.” “Usually there is not much leftover after daily sale and hence rotten foods are not sold,” he continues. “Moreover, vendors and their food stalls thrive on the quality of food and their relationship with regular customers. So they remain conscious, too”, he explained. About 1,50,000 street food hawkers form 55 per cent of the total number of hawkers that keep the vibrant food culture of Kolkata alive. According to the Hawker Sangram Committee (HSC), a joint front for street vendors’ unions, Kolkata’s street vendors used to generate an annual business of nearly Rs8,800 crores in 2001-02. The food-sellers had over 50 per cent share in this turnover. Over 1,20,000 street-food-vendors, mostly operating during the day in make-shift stalls, could feed 7.8 million people a day. With the number of hawkers increasing by about 25 per cent and an equal rise in the number of customers, the yearly turnover has crossed Rs 10,000 crores. The HSC is, however, aware of the poor water quality in the hawking areas. “We have been asking the Kolkata Municipal Corporation to arrange potable water taps around the hawking areas,” explains HSC assistant secretary Murad Hussain. “We are ready to pay for that but ... cooperation from the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and the police are missing,” he says.