The Decaying Sewage Infrastructure of Calcutta, India

Kolkatan sewers were once the envy of the world, built during the Victorian era and spanning 90 kilometers below the city. Because the Kolkatan sewer system is now 130 years old, it no longer functions as it should, especially when accounting for the increasingly large modern day population of Calcutta, India. Due to this, teams of workers with buckets enter the sewers every night all over Calcutta to shovel and remove excrement so that blockages don’t occur. Workers typically work 11:00 PM – 5:00 AM because this is when the least amount of people are awake to use the bathroom. The problem is becoming increasingly worse as time progresses, being that more and more people are now connecting into the central city sewage line as incomes and quality of life increases throughout India

 

The Socioeconomic Reason As To Why Inner-City Schools Are Often Academically Inferior to Suburban Schools and Provide Less Opportunity to Students 

The reason inner city schools are often gravely underfunded and therefore poorly equipped to provide and meet even the minimum standard of education required by U.S. law is because of the way in which racial integration changed the United Stated of America. Often referred to as “white flight”, as African Americans migrated from the southern U.S. towards the north, many Caucasians became increasingly aware and uncomfortable with their neighbors, particularly of the direction in which their cities were headed. This caused many Caucasians to move away from the city and into suburban areas which resulted in the majority of the Caucasian population no longer being emotionally or financially invested in what occurred in the city which they once resided in. This lack of interest alongside the push by Caucasian’s to ensure Caucasian tax dollars went towards areas of self interest, namely the suburbs surrounding these cities, caused less and less income to flow or even trickle into the city alongside fewer and fewer people who cared what occurred politically inside the city. Over time, inner city educational districts became markedly worse off and gradually this new low came to be accepted as a new normative standard, while suburban school districts had an opposing trajectory as they statistically became able to offer a better standard of education, also being accepted as a new normative standard. This gross dichotomy between the inner city and outer suburbs continued to occur for decades which is why post World War II, the U.S. educational system has been in constant disarray and need of improvement in respect to the opportunities afforded to students to acquire the information they need to compete and succeed in life. The irony of this situation is that no nation on Earth is better equipped to resolve such an issue as the U.S. is the wealthiest nation to have ever been formed