Subcontinental Drift: Bad Old Days

Tuesday, September 4, 2001

I was back in Calcutta recently, after a four-year gap. I lived there in the late '80s, when the city was a complete mess: no electricity, no roads, no jobs. Since then, every time I returned the city seemed improved. First the completion of the underground railway freed up roads on the surface and eased the gridlock. Then better management of the power plants resulted in -- gasp! -- an electricity surplus. The nationwide IT boom created jobs in Calcutta; not a lot, but enough to put money in the pockets of young people and, in turn, spawn a boomlet in restaurants and real estate.

My most recent trip, however, was an exception: things seem to have gotten a lot worse. The construction of a few overpasses, delayed by bureaucracy and general slothfulness, has choked the streets again. There were daily power brownouts; I was told these were the result of faulty or outdated power supply equipment, not a shortfall in generation, but that wasn't particularly reassuring. And the dotcom bust has claimed the only sector that was creating new jobs.

So it's easy to understand why many Calcuttans are distressed by their city's present plight and are pessimistic about its future. When that happens, people seek solace in the distant past, a time when, they tell themselves, things were all peaches and cream. An old friend was obviously wallowing in the Good Old Days Syndrome when he told me, over lunch: "Calcutta was much better off under the British." His reasoning: the city was less polluted, had fewer slums and no traffic jams in the days of the Raj.

I nearly choked on my Chicken biriyani. This sort of talk always drove me up the wall. In my book, Indians (and Pakistanis) who wax nostalgic about the Raj are in the same category as the idiots who claim the Holocaust never took place: they both ignore the larger realities and get lost in small points of detail.

Things were NOT better under the British; for most Indians, they were much, much worse. Calcutta was a more genteel place, that's true, but mainly for the rulers, not their subjects. Only a tiny minority of compliant, collaborationist businessmen were allowed any of the things Calcuttans take for granted today: education, travel, ownership of property and businesses. And even they were essentially favored slaves, at the mercy of the smallest British bureaucrat.

Yes, there were fewer slums back then, because people were forced to live in their villages, even if they starved in the famines. Yes, there were no traffic jams, because most Indians were never allowed the opportunity to improve their economic status enough to buy cars.

In other words, Calcutta may have been better off under the British: Calcuttans were not.

What do you think: Was your country/city better off under colonial rule? Write in with your thoughts, and we'll publish the best letters in this space.