Kalyani is a planned town near Kolkata with a population of 82,000. It is seen as a city ‘made for middle class people’. However, the 52 slums around the city house almost 50% of the city’s population. Many of the slums’ inhabitants are migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh etc. Whilst some of the slums are more recent, some are as old as 50 or 60 years, and the majority have no toilet facilities.
In the past, health and development programmes always counted the number of toilets and households, and it was the role of the councillors to decide who would get a toilet.