Abstract
This chapter exposes readers to the more complex evolution of the urban, comprising tangled interactions between urban-environmental and technical-social dimensions. Applying D’Souza’s concept of “colonial hydrology” to Kolkata, it reveals how urban hydraulic projects were geared towards profits on investments through a series of tamed interventions facilitating the evolution of networked infrastructures that performed parallel functions of trade-transportation and drainage-sewerage-sanitation. Using the perspective of urban political ecology of networked infrastructures to better understand colonial urban environmental history, this chapter explores debates and discussions surrounding various plans and designs relating to canal excavation and marsh reclamation among the different wings of the government, including the Military Board, the Corporation, the Irrigation and Waterways Department, the Public Works Department, and different committees appointed by the government. Consulting administrative and revenue records between the 1770 s and 1920 s, the chapter weaves the complex web of city, nature, and technological history, reflecting on the colonial encounter with nature and native in a volatile, vulnerable, uncertain, “unhygienic,” and “unruly” fluid scape.
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Notes
- 1.
The revenue acts (like the Permanent Settlement Act of 1794 implemented in the Bengal Province, i.e., Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa) introduced in India transformed the flexible revenue collection mechanism tuned to environmental fluctuations into a rigid rent regime. To ensure steady flow of extraction of agrarian surpluses, big hydraulic structures like embankments were constructed to regulate floods and floodwaters. Embankments, by confining floods within the narrow stretch of the river channel, did not allow the silt to be deposited uniformly over the floodplains, resulting instead in the deposit of silt in the riverbed itself, depriving floodplains of nutrient deposits essential for continued fertility. This was a complete departure from the pre-colonial agrarian relationships to flood, floodwaters, and sediment in the region, which drew the attention of British civil engineers such as William Willcocks who wrote extensively about the beneficial side of what he understood and categorized as “overflow irrigation” (Willcocks 1930). It was a system by which the nutrient-rich, silt-laden monsoon floodwaters from the upper regions of various rivers flowing into Bengal were distributed evenly over the delta, watering and more importantly fertilizing fields, spreading fish over the countryside, and sweeping away mosquito populations that spread malaria (Willcocks 1930; Klingensmith 2007).
- 2.
- 3.
Ecological Marxists like John B. Foster have elaborated on the Marxian environmental paradigm by focusing on the “metabolic rift” that establishes the connections between the two greatest contradictions of the planet: the contradiction between labor and capital and that between human beings and nature (Foster 1999, 2000).
- 4.
In his study of the Mahanadi Delta, D’Souza (2002, 2006a) discusses the tussle between wings of the government—the revenue authorities and the military engineers. “While the former was keen on merely securing revenue interests by insulating as much rent paying lands as possible, the latter had to grapple with the hydraulic complications that had resulted from restraining rivers within embankments” (D’Souza 2002, p. 1266). Singh’s (2008, 2011) studies of the Kosi River in Bihar demonstrate how, weaving complex arrangements with sections of the prosperous peasantry, railway officials, irrigation engineers, district administrators, and colonial zamindars crafted an embankment-driven flood control regime.
- 5.
The history of port cities shows how rivers have connected cities to hinterlands of global scale for centuries (Poussou 2014). In his study on Québec during the 19th and twentieth centuries, Castonguay (2017) highlights the “production of hinterlands” through the mediation of rivers. He unfolds the role of the river as a fundamental form of communication and integration and exhibits how hinterlands are shaped and defined across these processes.
- 6.
“Navigation is treacherous, plagued not only by shifting sandbanks and tidal currents, but by continual and often very rapid change in the stream pattern” (Murphey 1964, p. 246).
- 7.
Founded in 1833, the Calcutta Chamber of Commerce paid attention to the maintenance and improvement of the harbor and its approaches, port facilities, and pilot service.
- 8.
Maund is a unit of weight equivalent to 37 kg (approximately).
- 9.
Proceeding 24 dated June 8, 1804, which includes an extract from the Proceedings of the Governor General in Council in the Public Department dated October 23, 1786. The deed recites the former grant to the late Colonel William Tolley, the Will of the Deceased, and that Mrs Tolley had proved the same in the prerogative Court of the Archbishop of Canterbury and taken upon herself the sole executor thereof (WBSA, Kolkata).
- 10.
Proceeding 16 dated July 6, 1804 (letter to D. Macnabb, Attorney to the Executors of the late Anna Maria Tolley) (WBSA, Kolkata). Proceedings 1 and 2 dated July 24, 1804 (WBSA, Kolkata). Proceeding 35 and 36 dated February 18, 1806 (WBSA, Kolkata) specifically talk about the deputation of Seroo Ghose as the Suzawul (toll collector) for the collection of tolls from Tolly’s Nullah.
- 11.
Chitak is the unit of land measurement prevalent in Bengal. One chitak is 45 square feet.
- 12.
The proposal was to connect the docks with Tolly’s Nullah by a boat canal terminating in a lock at the docks, for which canalization of the Nullah was essential to ensure “constant and pure supply of water” to pump into the docks (Inglis 1909, p. 97).
- 13.
Selections from Records of Bengal Government relating to Calcutta and Eastern Canals, 1865–1904.
- 14.
The Central Lake Channel ran through the salt water lakes for a distance of 6 miles (approx.) from Dhapa to Bamanghata, where it merged with the Bidyadhari and flowed for 15 miles (approx.) to meet Tolly’s Nullah at Samukpota, establishing a roundabout link between the Circular Canal and Tolly’s Nullah. Between 1863 and 1864, of the 145,778 boats that entered the Circular Canal, 111,396 passed through the Central Lake Channel (Bandopadhyay 2018).
- 15.
For details on these debates and various proposals that came up between the 1920s and early 1940s, see Report of the Committee to Enquire into the Drainage Condition of Calcutta and Adjoining Areas 1945 (I&WD 1947) and Index Corporation of Calcutta Selection of Records on Dr. Dey’s Kulti Outfall Scheme 1930–1945 (Calcutta Corporation 1946).
- 16.
This implied the widening and deepening of the existing SWF and DWF with excess sluice capacity.
- 17.
To Strong, draining the marshes was necessary to ensure the healthiness of the city and its suburbs, “when we know from well authenticated records that the mortality was frightfully great, and we find the Salt-water Lake recorded as the most prominent of the causes. Should cleanliness ever obtain in these eastern suburbs and the Salt Lake become drained and cultivated, I entertain no doubt whatever of great healthiness being the result; and one great advantage attending the drainage of the lake would be, that the country between it and the city would immediately improve, become more valuable, and be the resort of a more respectable population” (Strong 1837, p. 9).
- 18.
Bhattacharyya (2018, p. 145) argues that using epidemiology as the only lens is problematic as it fails to capture “market-driven aspects of infrastructure, and how they in turn created forms of market governance.” Bhattacharyya’s work establishes the distinct link between the “hydrological urbanization” of Kolkata and economizing urban spaces, even prior to the consolidation of the British rule in 1857. Pande’s (2010) work on British Bengal also addresses the intersections across colonial commercial, civilizing, and epidemiological interests that came together in the production of a sanitary city.
- 19.
Selections from Records of Bengal Government relating to Calcutta and Eastern Canals, 1865–1904, p. 5.
- 20.
“The proper draining of these areas should be taken up by the Government with the least possible delay if Calcutta is to be saved from malarial epidemic” (I&WD I1947, p. 42).
- 21.
The company’s original scheme contemplated two distinct concessions on the part of the government and the Calcutta Corporation: a grant of the government space to be reclaimed and a free grant in perpetuity of all the sewage of Kolkata. There were doubts about whether the application of the sewage to the reclaimed land would prove injurious to health or would be great in terms of generating exemplary pecuniary value.
- 22.
There is a minor controversy about the exact date of acquisition. While an administrative report of the Calcutta Corporation mentions 1865 as the year of acquisition, records available in the land acquisition collector’s office consider it as 1864 (Chattopadhyay 1990).
- 23.
Letter to the Superintending Engineer, South-Western Circle (letter no. 24T.-I, dated April 20, 1902).
- 24.
This will be covered in detail in Chap. 4, “Untamed Practices”.
- 25.
The committee emphasized that the topographical surveys available till date were obsolete; for the appropriate plotting of contours, an accurate and up-to-date survey was necessary, as during the last few decades, changes in this area had been considerable.
- 26.
The idea of “calculus of rule” has been borrowed from D’Souza (2002).
- 27.
Proceeding 31 dated April 25, 1826 (WBSA, Kolkata).
- 28.
Chowkey in the local dialect means toll collection center.
- 29.
Proceeding 58 dated January 6, 1826 (WBSA, Kolkata).
- 30.
Proceeding 30–32 dated July 26, 1831 (WBSA, Kolkata), provides statements and petitions regarding the revision of toll rates levied on Tolly’s Nullah.
- 31.
The information between 1815 and 1817 could not be traced. Proceeding 15–17 dated March 1, 1816 (WBSA, Kolkata), is a letter to R. Rocke, Acting President & Member of the Board of Revenue from C. Doyly, Acting Collector, that discusses a petition by Mohischunder Ghose, Tasildar of the New (Beleghata) Canal, requesting the deepening of a part of the canal, near Bytuckanna, which had become unnavigable for 600 yards, as a result of increasing deposition of sediments. The vast utility of the duct serving the purpose of clearing the town of filth, detrimental to the health and comfort of the inhabitants, finds mention in the petition.
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Mukherjee, J. (2020). Tamed Interventions. In: Blue Infrastructures. Exploring Urban Change in South Asia. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3951-0_3
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