Impact of Colonial Railways on Urbanisation in India: A Study of Select Colonial Towns

Abstract

It is indeed a prevalent fact that the inception of the rail transport system in the nineteenth century apparently reoriented the fate of numerous urban places of varying size classes. Towns which relished the visible regional prevalence for decades found themselves neglected when railways bypassed them. On the contrary, small market centres of purely local interest suddenly attained unprecedented gravity of importance as the railway lines rerouted the anterior business of the coaches towards them. Thus, on the one hand, the inception of railways and a consequent change in the former trade routes gave birth to a considerable number of new towns, on the other hand, it facilitated an urbanisation process in most of the existing important urban centres. This article aims to shed light on the traits of urbanisation and urban development in India, stimulated by the inception of railways and expansion of the network during the British period with a special focus on some select colonial cities and towns. Several archival and gazetteer sources have been consulted to establish a relationship between rail transportation and urbanisation in India during the colonial period. This study, after a careful analysis of the available information in the public domain, pertaining to the relationship between railways and urbanisation on both the Indian and worldwide scale, has inferred that railways undoubtedly induced some growth effects on the urban centres of India, but those effects were highly peculiar to the people and the places. The growth effect was magnificent in the principal chairs of colonial power, that is, the port cities, in the inland cities where trunk railway routes got converged upon the existing settlement and, finally, in the new towns which were cradled around some newly built railway stations and workshops.