The “Calcutta Talks” are a specially designed lecture series on Kolkata, in the backdrop of our “Calcutta Gallery”. It is instituted to awaken our collective consciousness about our very own Kolkata and also to bring all facets, snippets and a window to our beloved Kolkata, capturing the city’s unique tryst with its destiny as one of the world’s leading metropolises.

The inaugural edition of the Talk, which took place on 4th November 2016 at the Chamber premises, was marked by eminent speakers and a very decorous audience which possessed enormous knowledge and interest about the grand old metropolis called Calcutta. Shri Alapan Bandyopadhyay, IAS, Principal Secretary, Transport, Government of West Bengal was the keynote speaker. Mr. Bandyopadhyay mesmerized the audience with his astonishing orating skill. His keynote speech was on “Municipal Heritage of Kolkata”. Shri Bandyopadhyay who was the Municipal Commissioner of Kolkata Corporation for four years, possesses profound knowledge of the city’s heritage and history. His keynote speech interestingly focused on the underground history of our grand city.

He said, “When we talk about municipal heritage, my central hypothesis or my central contention is that, particularly in the second half of the late nineteenth century, Calcutta’s municipalization was characterized by certain global concerns relating to public health, mingled with certain local concerns also, which were related to imperial racism. The global and the local both together gave birth to some activities and systems and works and institutions, which have their signatures on many of our premises, installations, utilities, pipes, sewers, which we have inherited, which continue to exist as our heritage, but whom we don’t describe as our heritage. Seldom do we realize that our heritage often lies in our water pipelines also. It was our myopia which did not allow us to see the global in our local. But now that the global is being rediscovered in our locals, we will be profitably noting that the global concerns which gave birth to Calcutta’s municipal heritage were indeed universal concerns of the whole nineteenth-century world. The concern was for the community to protect its health. The problem of public health was inherent in the new industrial civilization. The same process that created the market economy, the factory, and the modern urban environment also brought into being the health problems that made necessary new means of disease prevention and health protection. The Fever Committee of Calcutta Municipal Corporation had engineered a lot of municipal measures in nineteenth-century Calcutta. Calcutta was not unique – a series of epidemic fevers, globally, had brought into being several things. What I am trying to say is, the concerns of the City Fathers of Calcutta for municipal experiments with public health, in a manner of speaking, arrows largely out of a global concern, of the industrializing West in the nineteenth century, with sanitary movement and public health.”

Renowned Advocate Shri Anindya Mitra, President Ananya Onnomon, the programme partners of the Chamber, shared his vivid and thrilling memories of grand old Calcutta in his speech. Mr Indrajit Sen, Senior Vice President, The Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry welcomed the intellectuals of the city and also appealed to the august gathering for active participation in the Chamber’s initiative to work on the City’s grand heritage. Mr Ambarish Dasgupta, Immediate Past President, The Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry explained how such a talk series on Kolkata was ideated and its significance for building the future. Mr Subhodip Ghosh, Director General, The Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry spoke both on the Calcutta Gallery and Calcutta Talks and especially why the Chamber felt the need for such initiatives.

During the interactive session at the end, the erudite audience suggested interesting areas on which “Calcutta Talks” could be premised in the future. Mr. Subhodip Ghosh, Director General of The Bengal Chamber of Commerce announced that the Chamber would organize talks on all suggested topics under the “Calcutta Talks” series and finally a book would be published with the keynote speeches.