Termination of Tram Detriment to Calcutta

“So called development should not come at the cost of preserving one’s history. This is yet another change that comes at the expense of the city’s unique and wonderful character.” – Calcutta Tram commuter.

SB Veda <Calcutta>

I once conducted an informal survey in an historic restaurant in Calcutta, asking patrons to recall iconic aspects of Calcutta. They responded nearly unanimously: Victoria Memorial, The Howrah Bridge and the Tram. These seemed to automatically come to mind to those who have lived in the city for most all of their lives.

Indeed, the trams have been an integral fixture on its roads since 1873. The service was not only the oldest in Asia, but also the last surviving one in India. However, with the announcement by the West Bengal Government that it is doing away with the trams, this will no longer be true.

For long there was a school of thought in the circles of power dating back as far back to the legacy government of the CPM in Kolkata, that the trams, poorly maintained and perennially breaking-down as well as occupying a full lane of highly trafficked roadways, should be ended to make more room for private vehicles.

Despite, eating cake to celebrate 150 years of the Tram in the city, last year, Transport Minister Snehasis Chakraborty appears to have morphed into one of these ‘terminate the tram’ proponents, stating they are a slow mode of transportation, and commuters require faster options, adding that Tram services in Kolkata being ended due to traffic issues, except for one route from Esplanade to Maidan.

Many commuters noted that traffic jams are not isolated to roads in which the trams run. There are just too many vehicles on the street, and jams occur even on modern flyovers, which have spread across the city to alleviate traffic congestion.

So, instead of a slow halting ride on a tram, many will face bumper-to-bumper traffic in a taxi or on a bus.

Indeed, the CPM hired a professor from Cardiff University in the 1990s to study the tram system. As we were both staying at the same guest house, over dinner he told me that, in the experience of other cities in Asia, which did away with the tram has demonstrated that terminating the trams to get traffic moving is an notion has been proven totally false. Cities such as Shanghai that have done away with their tram systems have become more congested over the decades that have past, and become significantly more polluted, causing an increase in respiratory health problems and cancer in the local populations. Since then, other academic analyses of such systems have only confirmed this conclusion.

Running on electricity, the Tramways are a zero-emission form public transport and were operating long before electric buses hit the streets.

The movement to preserve the tram, advanced the notion that the form of transport is very beneficial due to affordability, lack of pollution, as well as being a fixture in the history of the city.

The tram can be seen in iconic Bengali films by such stalwarts as Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, and Mrinal Sen as noted by the publication, The Hindu. Indeed, Ray’s, Mahanagar, begins with the tram featuring in its title card. Sen’s film Interview, also has prominent visuals of the tram on celluloid.

The tram’s connection with literature is well-established. Historian, Sabyasachi Chatterjee, who wrote an article, which was essentially an ode to the tram in the reputed Bengali literary magazine Krittibas in July 2023, which was widely shared on social media was quoted in one of India’s national dailies saying, “Rabindranath Tagore had written a poem called Swapna (dream), in which he had described a scene from a dream. The dream was about Kolkata. He wrote how the roads of Kolkata had become like a snake on which the tram carriage was hurtling. This features in Sahaj Path, meant for children. Thus, for generations, childhood in Bengal has been associated with the tram of Kolkata”

He added, “Sunil Gangopadhyay, the celebrated novelist and a romantic poet of Bengal, had created a fictional muse called Neera. In one of his poems, he likens Neera’s moods to the movement of a tram: she gets highly disturbed when a tram is forced to halt…In Kalbela, the second part of a noted trilogy by Samaresh Majumdar, the hero, Animesh, arrives in Kolkata to the sight of a tram set on fire. So you see, tram is omnipresent in Bengali literature.”

Recognising this, in September, 2020, the government had opened the first tram library, marrying literature with the epochal Calcutta fixture. It was a move considered so noteworthy that Condé Nast Traveller, the prominent international travel magazine covered it in a piece called “Why booklovers will love this Kolkata Tram. ”Literature and trams—the two things Kolkata prides itself on—have now come together. The city just got its first library on wheels, and it cuts through College Street , rolling from Esplanade to Shyambazar, one of the oldest tram routes in Kolkata.”

The enthusiasm for the tram, it appears has waned, and the school of thought that it creates traffic problems, disproven as it has been, in city over city all across Asia, seems to have one out.

Sukanta Mondal, a resident of the city, who commutes regularly to and from his home to his place of work, lamented the decision, saying it would dramatically affect his life. “The streets are cleared by police for the people in their private luxury cars who are making such decisions. They may say that they are for the people but they do not face what we average Kolkatans face. With inflation increasing the cost of essential goods so much, and with the availability of Uber and bus prices going up, the tram was the only low-cost mode of travel enabled a remarkably affordable commute even if it was slow at times. Now, I that will have to rely on buses and maybe taxis, this will leave less money for my household to run. It will be a repeated drain on my limited resources.”

Another tram commuter who requested not to be named said that the government’s ideas of development were wrong. “These Netas (sic) say that it (terminating the trams) will through jams but it will only encourage more,” he said, adding: “Also, so called development should not come at the cost of preserving one’s history. This is yet another change that comes at the expense of the city’s unique and wonderful character. I am saddened by the news.”

Calcutta’s Trams, RIP.