Sawaal Desk

Image Story · 01 Oct 2026

Jyotinagar: Water Crisis, Eviction Threat and a Battle Over Identity

There is another Kolkata within the Kolkata we know — one where tap water can disappear for months, power lines can be disconnected, and an MLA can use his power to tell residents they will get neither public services nor official help. Their offence? They belong to a religious minority. A Sawaal reporter travelled to this “other Kolkata”. This is the story of Jyotinagar.

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News · 12 Sep 2026

About Us

Sawaal began in April as a fairly incidental Facebook page. It grew faster than we expected: more than 25,000 people joined the page, and its posts reached nearly 30 million unique users. The answer had something to do with the politics of Sawaal itself. We did not want its fate to be decided by algorithm, by pursuit of numbers, by the peculiar economy of visibility that governs social media. Facebook helped us begin; it could not be our permanent inhabitation space.

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Monthly Feature · 11 Sep 2026

Hawker Evictions and the Role of Trade Unions: Three Interviews

Anadi Sahu, Atanu Chakraborty and Ziaul Alam—all three interviewees place hawker evictions within the context of wider economic and political changes, though they differ in emphasis, interpretation and political standpoint. On one point, however, they are unequivocal: the real character of the crisis disappears if hawker eviction is treated only as a problem of ‘illegal occupation’ or urban beautification. Behind it lie the shortage of jobs, the crisis of the informal economy, pressure on small businesses and the growing insecurity of self-employed workers.

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Monthly Feature · 11 Sep 2026

Hawkers’ Rights, Eviction and the Role of the State: Sawaal in conversation with Shaktiman Ghosh

Shaktiman Ghosh has decades of experience organising hawkers and fighting for their rights. In an economy marked by unemployment, job insecurity, and rising living costs, hawking remains one of the few available means of livelihood for millions of people. Ghosh’s account is at once the history of a decades-long movement, a critique of state policy and the role of political parties; it also points the direction the movement must take now.

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Monthly Feature · 11 Sep 2026

Whose City? Kolkata’s Hawkers, Eviction and the Politics of Development

The city is changing. Economic and social relationships that have grown into its history are being torn up with it. The alternative to eviction should therefore be democratic reconstruction. Hawkers can be recognised as citizens rather than criminalised. Their right to trade can be protected. To talk about hawkers is never only to talk about hawkers. It is also to ask what we mean by urban democracy, public space, livelihood and development.

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