Kolkata

Kolkata, long known by its colonial appellation Calcutta until the turn of the millennium, occupies a distinctive place on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River, some 80 kilometres west of today’s Bangladesh. As the capital of West Bengal, it stands as the principal financial and commercial nexus for India’s eastern and north‑eastern regions. Its city proper accommodates roughly 4.5 million inhabitants, while the sprawling Kolkata Metropolitan Area encompasses over 15 million souls, making it India’s third‑most populous metro region and its seventh‑largest city in isolation. Often lauded as the nation’s cultural capital, Kolkata combines a rich historical legacy with contemporary dynamism, its layers of empire‑era grandeur and grassroots energy coexisting in every narrow lane and open thoroughfare.

Before the East India Company arrived, the territory comprised three modest Bengali villages—Gobindapur, Sutanuti and Kalikata—under the Nawab of Bengal’s suzerainty. In 1690, the Company secured a trading licence and soon transformed the area around Sutanuti into Fort William, a fortified bastion against rival powers. The fort’s capture by Nawab Siraj ud‑Daulah in 1756 precipitated a swift response: Robert Clive’s defeat of the Nawab at Plassey in June 1757 reshaped the subcontinent’s destiny. Thereafter, Calcutta evolved into the Company’s administrative centre, formally becoming the de facto capital of British India until the shift to New Delhi in 1911. By the late nineteenth century, it was second only to London in the Empire’s urban hierarchy, hosting government offices, courts, universities and scientific societies. The city’s intellectual ferment—best exemplified by figures of the Bengali Renaissance—fed both artistic innovation and political agitation, making Calcutta the crucible of early Indian nationalism.

The 1947 division of Bengal severed economic hinterlands and uprooted communities, thrusting Kolkata into a period of dislocation. Swelled by Hindu refugees from East Bengal, the city grappled with overcrowding, communal strife and an economy in retreat. In 1971, it provided sanctuary to the provisional government of Bangladesh, reaffirming its regional importance. Yet until the liberalisation waves of the 1990s, decades of trade‑union militancy and capital flight earned it the sobriquet “dying city.” Since then, policy reforms and private investment have begun to reverse the slide, lifting Kolkata into the ranks of India’s top three metropolitan economies, with estimated PPP GDP between $150 billion and $250 billion.

Set within the lower Ganges Delta, Kolkata lies barely five metres above mean sea level in places, its original wetlands gradually reclaimed to host housing and commerce. The remaining East Kolkata Wetlands, designated a Ramsar site in 1975, function as a natural sewage treatment system and fishery. Beneath the surface, thick alluvial deposits—some 7,500 metres deep—rest atop a tertiary basin whose faulted hinge zone underlies the city. Classified in seismic zone III, Kolkata must balance its low‑lying topography with the region’s tropical savanna climate, marked by scorching summers, monsoon downpours and cyclonic risk among the highest in India.

Within the Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s 206 square kilometres, the city stretches some ten kilometres from riverbank to bypass and nearly double that north to south. Four broad sectors—North, Central, South and East—reflect distinct phases of growth:

• North Kolkata retains the patina of the nineteenth century. Its labyrinthine lanes in neighbourhoods such as Jorasanko, Shyambazar and Bagbazar reveal crumbling mansions and vermilion temple spires side by side.
• Central Kolkata encompasses the original business district, centred on B.B.D. Bagh (formerly Dalhousie Square) and the adjoining Esplanade. Here, the Secretariat, High Court, Reserve Bank and colonial‑era post office converge along Rajiv Gandhi Sarani and Jawaharlal Nehru Road.
• South Kolkata emerged after independence, its wider streets and newer residential enclaves—Alipore, Ballygunge, Tollygunge—framing the Maidan, a vast expanse of green known as the city’s lungs. Landmarks like the Victoria Memorial and Kolkata Race Course lie at its southern edge.
• East Kolkata, beyond the formal boundary, gives way to Salt Lake (Bidhannagar) and New Town (Rajarhat), two planned satellites that have absorbed information‑technology parks, convention centres and modern housing complexes.

Across the wider metropolitan area—nearly 1,900 square kilometres in extent—72 cities, 527 towns and dozens of municipalities straddle parts of five districts: North and South 24 Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly and Nadia.

Kolkata’s status as the commercial heart of eastern India is underpinned by the Calcutta Stock Exchange, one of the country’s oldest. The Port of Kolkata, opened in 1870 and managed by the Kolkata Port Trust, remains the nation’s sole major river port, handling passenger ferries to Port Blair and freighters bound worldwide. The city’s airport at Dum Dum, upgraded in 2013, links it to domestic destinations and select international gateways. Yet from the 1960s through the 1990s, burgeoning trade‑union power and labour strikes prompted factory closures and capital withdrawal, overshadowing Kolkata’s industrial foundations. The economic liberalisation of the 1990s, combined with state‑level policy shifts, has since fostered a gradual resurgence.

Residents—whether Calcuttans or Kolkatans—reflect a composite society. The 2011 census reported 4.49 million within the municipal district, a slight decline since 2001, and an urban agglomeration exceeding 14 million. A literacy rate of 87 percent surpasses the national average, even as the sex ratio remains skewed by male in‑migration for work. Bengali predominates, supplemented by English, Hindi and Urdu among significant minorities. Religiously, Hindus constitute roughly three‑quarters of the population, with Muslims, Christians, Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists composing the remainder.

Kolkata’s earliest rapid‑transit system—the tram—survives in three routes, a vestige of colonial street‑railways now operated by the West Bengal Transport Corporation. The Kolkata Suburban Railway, among the world’s largest by station count, and the Kolkata Metro, India’s first underground line (1984), form the backbone of daily commutes. The north–south Blue Line bisects the city, and since 2020 an east–west Green Line links Salt Lake to Howrah. Purple and Orange Lines are also operational. At ground level, an extensive road network—1,850 kilometres within the city and over 4,000 kilometres metro‑wide—bears the heaviest car density in India, with more than 2,400 vehicles per kilometre. Congestion spawns air pollution and intermittent water‑logging during monsoons. Auto‑rickshaws, yellow Ambassador taxis, cycle‑rickshaws and hand‑pulled carts provide last‑mile options. Long‑distance rail services radiate from five principal stations—Howrah (the busiest complex), Sealdah, Kolkata, Shalimar and Santragachi—while highways including the Golden Quadrilateral and National Highway 12 begin at the outskirts. Expressways such as Belghoria and Kona are fully operational, with Kalyani under construction and future links to Patna and Varanasi planned. International road corridors connect to Bangladesh via Jessore Road, to Thailand and Myanmar through the Trilateral Highway, and toward Nepal and Bhutan overland.

Kolkata’s intellectual pedigree spans centuries. The University of Calcutta, founded in 1857 as South Asia’s first modern university, and its affiliated colleges have produced jurists, scholars and political leaders. The Asiatic Society (est. 1784) and the Academy of Fine Arts preserve rare manuscripts and fine‑art collections. The Indian Museum (1814) and the National Library maintain nation‑defining archives, while Science City on the riverfront hosts interactive exhibits. Scientific research flourishes at the Geological and Botanical Surveys of India, the Zoological Survey, the Calcutta Mathematical Society, the Anthropological Survey and bodies dedicated to horticulture, engineering and public health. Four Nobel laureates and two recipients of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences have ties to Kolkata, a testament to its scholarly vigor. The city’s film industry—Tollywood—continues to shape Bengali language cinema.

Architectural echoes of Mughal, Indo‑Saracenic and colonial design dot the urban fabric: the granite expanse of Howrah Bridge, the white marble grandeur of Victoria Memorial, and the art‑nouveau façade of the Grand Hotel. Only here does India’s lone Chinatown endure, alongside vestiges of Jewish, Armenian, Greek and Anglo‑Indian quarters. Within each para—tightly knit neighbourhood—residents convene at clubs or fields, fostering a communal identity grown from generations. Adda, or unstructured conversation, permeates cafés, verandahs and tea stalls, where debate ranges from politics to poetry. Political graffiti adds a layer of street‑level commentary, its satirical stencils and limericks inscribed on walls across the city.

Annually, Durga Puja transforms Kolkata. For ten days each autumn, thousands of elaborate pandals, each backed by local committees, honour the goddess with sculpted effigies, music and ritual, an event inscribed by UNESCO for its intangible cultural value. So prominent is this festival that Kolkata has been christened the “City of Joy,” a sobriquet popularized by novel and film but rooted in the city’s collective spirit.

Since the early 2000s, the city’s footprint has advanced southward and eastward. High‑rise condominiums—once limited to low‑rise colonial blocks—now reach up to twenty floors, especially in South Kolkata. The Eastern Metropolitan Bypass corridor bears luxury hotels, malls, hospitals and multiplexes. New Town, conceived as one of India’s largest planned developments, and Bidhannagar’s Sector 5 host burgeoning IT and telecommunications firms. Yet these gains coexist with entrenched urban poverty: slums shelter more than a quarter of residents, often in prime locations. Redevelopment initiatives encounter resistance from communities whose social networks and livelihoods are anchored in place.

Through centuries of change—colonial conquest and nationalist fervour, partition trauma and economic renewal—Kolkata has retained an unmistakable character. It is a city of layered histories, in which monuments and shanties, boardrooms and back‑street bazaars form a single, complex whole. Above all, it stands as a testament to adaptation: land wrested from marshes, institutions built from the confluence of ideas, communities woven together by dialogue that refuses to cease. In Kolkata’s soundscape of tram bells, temple chants and impassioned adda, one hears not only a metropolis in motion but the living pulse of a place that has long been—and remains—both resilient and alive.