Busy streets and crowds have made his hometown feel safer, says this Kolkata author

Kolkata is the safest city in India, with people setting up stalls, shopping, and cooking meals late at night. Local initiatives to paint the city and create a sense of community are making it even safer.

The other day, a friend at an art exhibition in Kolkata asked me, “How far is your apartment from here?” “Not more than a 20-minute walk,” I replied. But then grumbled, “Except it’s not easy to walk it because the pavements are so crowded with stalls and hawkers.”

Last month, when I read about Kolkata being called the safest city in India for the third consecutive year based on statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), it made me realise that all the things that make it hard for me to make that 20-minute walk in peace probably also help make the city a little safer.

Congestion is also about life on the street. There are people setting up stalls, dismantling stalls, shopping, bargaining or just loitering. As the shops shut down, people set up makeshift kitchens and start cooking meals. Even late at night it rarely feels unsafe. Recently, I was in New Delhi. The neighbourhood was beautiful. In the morning, it felt delightful to walk through the gardens and the tombs, past people doing their stretches and pranayam and walking their dogs. But at night the streets were deserted. “Make sure the Uber drops you to the door,” warned a friend. “This is not Kolkata.”

The NRCB statistics say Kolkata reported 86.5 cases of cognisable offences per lakh population in 2022, way below Pune (280.7) and Hyderabad (299.2). In 2021, that figure was 103.4 for Kolkata. Ruling party Trinamool, unsurprisingly, took credit, tweeting that crime rates had plummeted under the “able guidance” of Mamata Banerjee and the “constant vigilance” of the Kolkata Police who had given the city “a sense of security seldom found elsewhere”.

The opposition BJP claimed the data had been manipulated. But it’s understandable that a city often accused of living off its bygone glory days would seize on this bit of data to feel good about itself. However, a cynical friend commented that this was yet more proof of the “decline” of Kolkata. It was not even a city with enough business to attract criminals. Kolkata had to be content with non-cognisable petty crimes.

It’s not all good news for Kolkata. The NRCB data also showed the number of crimes against women rose from 1,783 in 2021 to 1,890 in 2022. In that regard, Kolkata is behind Chennai and Coimbatore. And these are just cognisable offences. When a woman gets into a share three-wheeler in Kolkata and reflexively places her bag as a barrier to the man next to her in case he tries to cop a feel, that does not get recorded in these statistics. Crowded streets and jostling crowds can make you safer in some ways but also offer cover to pickpockets and perverts.

Author Nilanjana Bhowmick who grew up in Kolkata says, “In North India, the fear is very real. I remember coming back from somewhere at 1 a.m., the car stops, I’m surrounded by all these trucks and I can actually touch my fear.” Kolkata felt safer, a city she had roamed around in as a young woman, though she admits it was always in the more genteel areas of the city, areas that already had a lot of other women in it.