Though Calcutta was the richest and biggest city of Raj in the colonial era, the city was never blessed with a proper town planning project except a few like the Calcutta Maidan and the Strand Road.
Rapid unplanned urbanisation led to poor road surfaces, unfit enough to offer the proper mobility comfort that a large metropolitan area must have. It was clear from the beginning of the 1920s that to tackle the growth of population, the city must have a drastic change in its transportation system.
Therefore, the colonial masters thought of two gigantic developments to improve the transportation system of Calcutta. One was to build a big iron bridge over the Hooghly to connect Calcutta and Howrah stations, and the second was an underground tube railway line to commute faster inside the city.
Considering the massive cost and challenge of construction, both projects were shelved after primary surveys and studies. However, the bridge across the Hooghly River received approval, and in February 1943, an engineering marvel named it the Howrah Bridge, which was then opened to the public. The second project, an underground rail project, which passed all feasibility aspects, was sadly sent to cold storage for the next few decades.
The editorial note of The Statesman on 14 July 1929 went all emotional, saying, “A tube railway under river Hooghly and across Calcutta will come as a surprise to those who have accepted the widespread belief that the nature of the subsoil of the city rendered impracticable any such scheme. Mr Lydall, who was specifically brought out to examine local conditions, is confident that a tube railway such as those familiar to those who travel in London or Paris can be driven under the Hooghly from Howrah to Sealdah without going to any uncommon depth below the surface. It would cost four million pounds, would allow a two-minute service in either direction and would have its central station near Dalhousie square”.
Regrettably, a shortage of government funds crushed the hopes of The Statesman editor and the common people of Calcutta.
In the next 50 years or so, Calcutta, which was once an international cosmopolitan city, slipped to a bustling, overcrowded metropolis with abnormal growth of population, both human and vehicular.
At the same time, there was hardly any significant expansion of the city except a satellite township in the eastern part of Calcutta named Salt Lake.
At the beginning of the 1970s, Calcutta’s intercity mobility situation was precarious, prompting the Indian government to consider building an underground railway system. A survey team from Russia, named ‘Techno Export’, conducted a feasibility study and subsequently approved the project’s viability. However, Calcutta, because of its messy growth, doubted the possibilities of building an underground railway network.
Indira Gandhi, the then PM of India, soon announced two megaprojects to Calcutta.
One was another huge bridge over Hooghly, which should be even longer than the present Howrah bridge, and the other was India’s first metro railway, which initially was planned to cover 16 km from north to south. It also had the approval to do an expansion from Salt Lake City in the east to Ramrajatala of Howrah, in which it would cross the river bed. Gulzarilal Nanda was the then railway minister of India.
Soon a new railway managing body was formed in the name of the Calcutta Metropolitan Transport Project and became popular by the name ‘Calcutta Metro’. Noted Bengali journalist Amitabha Chowdhury coined a Bangla word and named it ‘Patal Rail’. The word hence became a part of common Bengali vocabulary.
Calcutta Metro formed a high-expert team including the finest engineers, town planners, geologists, meteorologists, and all the best brains in this domain. It involved organisations like Hindustan Construction Company, National Project Construction Corporation, Hindustan Builders, Geological Survey of India, and various technical institutes gathered to build one of the toughest city tube rails in the world. A Japanese technology firm, Taisei Corporation, also partnered in it.
A high-level team was sent to cities like London, Moscow, Paris and St Petersburg to experience the reality of tube rail in those countries.
Initially, the project aimed to complete the first phase by 1978 and cover a distance of 16.32 kilometres from Dumdum to Tollygunge by 1983. This would cover 17 stations, all underground except Dumdum. The estimated maximum speed would be 80 kilometres per hour, and the average speed would be 33 kilometres per hour. The passenger carrying capacity per hour by the end of 1990 was estimated to be nearly 67,000. The initial cost for 16.35 metres was estimated at Rs 2,000 crore. For the Salt Lake-Ramrajatala line, it was estimated at Rs 1,000 crore.
The Calcutta Metro, from land acquisition to logistics to political opposition, became a matter of socio-economic-political case study.
By following the ‘Cut and Cover’ process of tunnelling, the project made the city into a virtual necropolis by digging roads, cutting trees, relocating people, demolishing buildings, destroying parks and gardens, and making the already doomed city traffic into a nemesis. Giant cranes and earth-moving machines with ugly-looking tin covers ruled the landscape of Calcutta. A part of Calcutta Maidan became an open warehouse of metro material, with thousands of labourers camping in almost every corner of the city. It destroyed the colonial iron pavilion, polluted water bodies in Chowringhee, and removed the statue of Mahatma Gandhi opposite Park Street forever.
Esplanade, Central Avenue and Hazra crossing took an ugly look at dirty construction sites, all with a hope to see a better tomorrow. When the Janata Party came to power in 1977, one of the first things that they did was to stop funding Calcutta Metro. Hence, there was hardly any pace in the work from 1977 to 1980.
In 1980, Indira Gandhi was back in power, and Barqat Gani Khan Chowdhury, from Malda, became her railway minister. Gani took extraordinary care to complete Calcutta Metro by 1983. However, he and his team finally managed it by the end of 1984.
Finally, on 24 October 1984, Calcutta got its memorable Diwali gift, as the 75th city in the world and as the first city of India to have a commercially active underground tube line of 3.4 km covering only five stations: Esplanade, Park Street, Maidan, Rabindra Sadan and Bhawanipur.
At 8:40 am in the morning, the general manager of Metro Rail, Khagendra Narayan Dasgupta, broke a coconut on the platform of Esplanade station, and the first Metro rolled with 1000 passengers cheering and whistling in joy. Every station experienced a near-gate crash situation having hardly an 8-minute ride. The following day, The Statesman’s front page proclaimed in bold letters, ‘Metro commercial run begins’.
But neither Prime Minister Indira Gandhi nor the chief minister, Jyoti Basu nor the railway minister, AB Ganikhan Chowdhury, were present on this historic occasion. Nonetheless, Chowdhury only issued a telephonic message to all from Malda.
Calcuttans were in a celebratory mood that day, and therefore, in mayhem, few things went chaotic that day. Many people took multiple rides by purchasing a single ride ticket and intentionally did not vacate the coach after reaching the terminus, creating a chaotic situation for the next passengers. A public announcement had to be made to ask people to vacate coaches and cooperate with the next batch of passengers. The train even stopped at Bhawanipur station for the police to manage the crowd.
The massive rush at Esplanade saw the breaking of glass panes where one passenger got injured. He was later given first aid. An inaugural crime followed where a gold necklace was snatched from a lady who boarded the train from Rabindra Sadan with her husband in an overcrowded coach.
However, despite the country’s success with India’s first Metro, left parties in power indirectly opposed it, with some of their leaders being in public to discourage people from using it.
Another 2.15 km stretch between Dumdum and Belgachia became operational on 12 November 1984. It was the longest distance between two stations but was not an underground section.
Calcutta had to wait nearly 2 years to see more stations and areas being added. On 29 April 1986, finally, Dumdum was connected with Tollygunge through 17 stations. In this phase, another 9.79 km was added through 11 stations.
However, from Belgachia there was a long gap to the next nearest station, and that was also solved on 15 February 1995 when stations like Chandni Chowk, Central, Girish Park, Shobhabazar and Shyambazar stations were opened to the public. MG Road, the only non-operational station, was also made usable from 27 September 1995.
When Calcutta Metro was a booming mode of transportation ruling the lives of common commuters, cities like Delhi, Bangalore, Bombay, Gurgaon were still using traditional modes of transport. After 18 years of Calcutta becoming the first city in India to have an underground tube railway, Delhi had it in 2002, becoming the second city in India with this facility.
Ever since Calcutta got this unique mode of transport, it became a must-visit destination for any new visitor to the city. A journey that started 40 years ago with less than 4 kilometres is now expanded to 60 kilometres plus, and in next years, with more new lines, it will cover 90 kilometres. In the next 3 years, it will run 130 kilometres in and around the city.
No wonder that The Statesman, on 30 December 1972, quoted Indira Gandhi as she said, “Calcutta, which had once been a city of precession, is now a city of development and progress.”
The writer is a freelance contributor (Photographs sourced from The Statesman archives and the writer)