A few days back I saw a TV listing of National Geographic channel which was advertising a small documentary about the amazing Delhi Metro project. It suddenly reminded me about my own City of Birth, "Calcutta", now called "Kolkata". In the mid-80s when I used to visit Kolkata, I used to see terrific construction activity going on for the Kolkata Metro. By late-80s many sections of the Kolkata Metro Railway had also started functioning. Then why was no documentary made on India's first successful unground Metro Railway service ? A service which till date is flawless & well managed. I guess probably because the Central Government only tries to sponsor, portray & hype all happenings in the vicinity of Delhi. This attitude was evident from the fact that when the coaches were ordered for the Kolkata Metro, it was manufactured locally from Perambur, Tamil Nadu & were non-AC. When it came to Delhi, the AC coaches were imported from Korea. And we all know how the unruly crowd started pressing all sorts of buttons within the coach, which ultimately saw them disabled.....ha ha ha. No such thing ever happened with Kolkata Metro Railway.
Prowd to be a Bengali !!!!!
4 comments:
Hi. Well All that i would like to say is that Delhi is the capital o your country too. How about drawing some pride from that? I completely agree with you that Calcutta is infinitely superior to Delhi on the cultural front but the Kolkata metro is hardly worth a mention. A project which commenced in 1972 and was commissioned in 1995 and thus took 23 years to generate 8 Kms of track at 3 years per km is hardly a professional one!! No offence
Hey Man, they did feature the Cal Metro in the 'Mile sur mera tumhara' video, which is very popular to date, on YouTube!
Hi Suvid... I guess you are unaware about the entire project details of the Calcutta Metro. Please go through the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolkata_Metro for more details. Its totally incorrect that it took 23 years for a 8 Kms line to be commissioned. The entire project was commissioned in various stages out of which around 4 Kms was operational with 12 years itself i.e. 1984. Being the first of its kind project in entire India & 5th in Asia, its a commendable achievement in those days, considering the kind of technology & logistical support available. Moreover the maximum stretch of the Calcutta Metro is underground. Any pilot project is bound to have teething problems which then becomes Lessons Learnt for similar projects in future. Thats what happened with Calcutta Metro.
It is much easier to construct Bridges rather than going beneath the soil to setup a massive Infrastructure. Calcutta had a Metro 20 long years before any other city could imagine :)
Anyways, I definitely love the Delhi Metro also & no offences meant against any Delhi-ite. I was just highlighting the kind of bias that has been shown towards Delhi Metro. Paisa fekoge to sab kuch achha hi milega na !!!!!
Hi..I think Delhi has one big advantage which unfortunately cannot be replicated in any other city in the country due to political reasons. That advantage is the fact that it is a city state where the entire population is urban and hence there is no rural resistance to urban developments. For example, any development in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai or Kolkata will not go the same way simply because it does not affect the rural voters who obviously form a bigger base for our politicians. The remark about "paisa phenkna" was hilarious but I must say that India's corruption ensures that even after paisa phenk - you dont usually get the result, which is why its good to see the Delhi metro the way its coming up. By 2010 India will have a city which will have the 10th largest metro network in the world on the basis of length of track.I completely understand the issues faced by Kolkata metro when it was being built and the problems faced. Read somewhere that somebody goofed up on the amount of raw material it would require to construct and the project was delayed a few years due to lack of raw material!! Real sad. Lets hope thats never repeated. In any part of our country...
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