Calcutta is the largest city in India and by now may be ahead of London as the largest city in the British Common-wealth. It's an often ugly and desperate place that to many people sums up the worst of India yet it's also one of the more fascinating centres in India and has some scenes of rare beauty. At the beginning of this century Calcutta was the capital of British India but, unlike Delhi, Calcutta is not an ancient city with a long history and many impressive relics of its past. In fact Calcutta is really a British invention dating only 300 years.

In 1686 the British abandoned Hooghly, their trading post 38 km up the Hooghly river from present day Calcutta, and moved down river to three small villages Sutanati, Govind-pur and Kalikata. Calcutta takes its name from the last of those three tiny settlements. Job Charnock, an English merchant who later married a Brahmin's widow whom he dissuaded from becoming a sati, was the leader of the British merchants who made this move. At first the post was not a great success and was abandoned on a number of occasions but in 1696 a fort was laid out near present day BBD Bag (Dalhousie Square) and in 1698 Aurangzeb's grandson gave the British official permission to occupy the villages.

Calcutta then grew steadily until 1756 when Suraj-ud-daula, the Nawab of Murshidabad, attacked the town. Most of the British inhabitants escaped but those captured were packed into an underground cellar where, during the night most of them suffocated In what became known as 'the black hole of Calcutta'. Early in 1757 the British, under Clive, retook Calcutta and made peace with the Nawab. Later the same year, however, Suraj-ud-daula, aided with the French and in the battle of Plassey, a turning point in British Indian history, was killed. A much stronger fort was built in Calcutta and the town became the capital of British India. Much of Calcutta's most enduring development took place between 1780 and 1820. Later in the 19th century, however, Bengal became a spark point in the struggle for Indian Independence and this was a major reason for the decision to transfer the capital In New Delhi in 1911. Loss of political power did not alter Calcutta's economic control and the city continued to prosper until after WW II.

Partition affected Callcutta more than any other major Indian city. Bengal and the Punjab were the two areas of India which were both mixed in their Hindu-Moslem populations and positioned so that the dividing line would have to be drawn through them. The result in Bengal was that Calcutta, the jute producing and export centre of India, became a city without a hinterland while across the border in East Pakistan (Bangladesh today) the jute (a plant fibre used in making sacking and mats) was grown without anywhere to process or export it. Furthermore West Bengal and Calcutta were disrupted by tens of thousands of refugees fleeing from East Bengal, although fortunately without the communal violence and bloodshed that partition brought to the Punjab.

The massive influx of refugees, combined with India's own post war population explosion, led to Calcutta becoming an international urban horror story. The mere word Calcutta was enough to conjure up visions of squalor, starvation, disease and death. The work of Mother Teresa's Calcutta mission also focussed worldwide attention on Calcutta's festering problems. In 1971 the India-Pakistan conflict and the creation of Bangladesh led to another flood of refugees and Calcutta's already chaotic condition further deteriorated. Economically Calcutta suffered further setbacks, the port has been silting up making navigation from Calcutta down to the sea steadily more difficult and limiting the size of ship which can use the port. The Farakka Barrage, 250 km north of Calcutta, is designed to improve the river flow through Calcutta but has been a subject of considerable dispute between India and Bangladesh since it will also effect the flow of the Ganges through the latter country. eaming into the city as in the past.

Furthermore Calcutta has been plagued by chronic labour unrest and resulting declines in productivity. The situation is summed up in Calcutta's hopeless power generation system. Electrical power in Calcutta has become such an on-again, off-again condition that virtually every hotel, restaurant, shop or small business has to have some sort of stand by power generator or battery lighting system. The workers are blamed, the technicians are blamed, the power plants are blamed, the coal miners are blamed, even Indian railways are blamed for not delivering the coal on time but it's widely pointed out that Bombay certainly doesn't suffer the fre quency and extent of power cuts that are simply a way of life in Calcutta.