The Electrification of Colonial Calcutta: Role of the Innovators, Bureaucrats and Foreign Business Organization, 1880–1940

Abstract

From as early as the 1880s until today, electrical power has served as a useful medium for ushering an urban industrial era throughout the world. This article examines the process of electrification in a colonial setting—Calcutta, the capital of British India till 1911. Access to electricity depended upon economics and technological advances, as well as a combination of local community and regional characteristics such as location, landscape, demographics, politics and culture. Western techno-scientific discourse occupied an extremely important place in the colonization of India. It is known that Western technology and ideas manipulated various technological projects in the colony, including electrification. Was there something unique about Calcutta and its plan that led to the electrification of a colonial metropolis almost simultaneously with other Western industrial nations? By the middle of the twentieth century, electricity, with its elaborate infrastructure of wires, generation stations and poles, emerged as the industrial era’s most prominent symbol of progress in Calcutta. The Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation Ltd (CESC), with its head office in London, played the most vital role, debating and resolving various technical questions, such as load factor, fuel sources, operating generation stations and electricity supply to industry, traction and population centres. This article, based on extensive archival research, shows how, despite colonial derivatives, the resulting electrical systems were locally initiated and customized to the needs and characteristics of the region.