A bridge over the Damodar

When one reads old district gazetteers, one marvels at the wealth of material and at the reading habits of the authors

The journey was fraught with fatigue and peril, and its incidents contrast strangely with the prosaic features of railway travel now universal throughout India. The Hunters journeyed by road in their own Victoria drawn by a pair, their third horse being sent forward at alternate stages... On arriving at the bank of the river Damodar the luckless travelers found it a raging torrent.” This quote is from “Life of Sir William Wilson Hunter”. Most people will remember William Wilson Hunter for “Imperial Gazetteer of India”, Bengalis may remember him for “Annals of Rural Bengal”, published in 1868. The journey just mentioned was undertaken from Suri (Siuri in Birbhum) to Midnapore (Medinipur) in 1866. Today, the distance by road is around 245 km and you will have to cross the Damodar. Despite it being NH 39 (the new NH 14), it will still take you around 6 hours. In 1866, Hunter was Assistant Magistrate and Collector of Birbhum and was probably collecting material for “Annals of Rural Bengal”. In 1901, Francis Henry Skrine published a biography of Hunter, which is there that quote is from. A district gazetteer for Bankura was published in 1905. When I read those old district gazetteers, I marvel at the wealth of material and at the reading habits of the authors.

The author(s) of the 1905 Bankura District Gazetteer had read Skrine’s biography of Hunter and had aptly plugged in this bit about Hunter’s travel or travail into a chapter on means of communication. To quote from the gazetteer now, “Until the year 1902 there was no railway in the district, and the easiest way of reaching it was to travel by rail to Raniganj and thence by road. The journey was not only expensive, but tedious. First, the Damodar had to be crossed… The railway now runs through the district from east to west, but internal communication is rendered difficult by the many unbridged rivers which intersect the district… Except for the deficiency of bridges, however, the road of the district are, on the whole, excellent, and practically every part is well-proved with them except the south-west corner around Raipur.” Why were there roads, but no bridges? This isn’t something one normally thinks about. One assumes a road would also have bridges over rivers, when required.

Until recently, we had no clear handle on how many bridges there are on national highways and what state they are in. Thanks to IBMS (Indian Bridge Management System), we have had a “health of the bridges” survey and we know around 6000 bridges are structurally distressed, out of an inventory of more than 172,517 bridges/structures

Let’s turn to the 1908 Imperial Gazetteer for an answer. “The level plains of India, scoured by streams which, for eight months or more in each year, are passable without difficulty by the conveyances generally used in the country, offer so small an obstacle to intercourse between different localities that, up to the end of the eighteenth century, there was no demand for prepared tracks even for military purposes, transport being chiefly effected by pack animals travelling along the village pathways, while travellers could ride or be conveyed in palanquins… About the same time the construction of railways began to have a considerable influence on the function and character of new roads. With the extension of the railway system, it has become more and more necessary to build roads in a direction which will enable them to feed rather than compete with the newer means of communication; and greater demand for metalled roads has also been aroused. In 1823, Mr Malony, when advocating an improvement in that portion of the Great Deccan Road which lies between Nagpur and Jubbulpore, represented that ‘the actual amount of local produce was in excess of the consumption,’ and that ‘for the prosperity of the country cheap and easy communication for the exportation of the excess of produce was indispensable.’

This remark states shortly the chief object with which roads were generally constructed in the first half of the nineteenth century; and as the harvest season coincided with the drying up of the rivers, there was not much need for bridges except on the great trunk roads, while even on these permanent bridges have not to this day been provided over many of the larger rivers, ferries or floating bridges doing duty in their place. The majority of early roads were, therefore, merely embankments across low-lying places, with easily graded approaches to river banks, and cleared and levelled surfaces elsewhere. With the introduction of railways the circumstances altered, and there arose a demand for bridged and metalled communications which would give access to the railway line at all times of the year.” There weren’t any bridges because there was no perceived need for them. The advent of the railways changed this perception.

There are bridges now, but perception needs to change yet again. Until recently, we had no clear handle on how many bridges there are on national highways and what state they are in. Thanks to IBMS (Indian Bridge Management System), we have had a “health of the bridges” survey and we know around 6000 bridges are structurally distressed, out of an inventory of more than 172,517 bridges/structures. More specifically, there are 134,229 culverts, 32,806 minor bridges, 3,647 major and 1,835 extra-long bridges. Many bridges were constructed decades ago, when commercial vehicles carried smaller loads. Indeed, the survey found 23 bridges on national highways are more than one hundred years old.   Those co-exist with the likes of Dhola Sadiya Bridge. While we are on Bankura and the Damodar, I have read reports about several villages in Bankura’s Saltora Block connected to Asansol through a bridge over the Damodar. But that bridge happens to be made of bamboo.

The author is chairman, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. 

Views are personal.