If the magical East Calcutta Wetlands are surviving, in whatever truncated form, the credit should to Dr Dhrubajyoti Ghosh, who passed away last year. For more than three decades he tirelessly campaigned for the wetlands to be recognised as a priceless resource recycling system - taking waste from the city in the form of sewage and giving back food in the form of fish and vegetables.
When he took up this cause, he was a civil engineer in the Public Works Department. For someone on that dry and constricting perch, he surprisingly also saw the world in its many complexities. . .