Durgapur

West Bengal, India

DURGAPUR is located in the district of Burdwan, in the state West Bengal, India, 168 km to the north of Calcutta. It is a well-planned industrial city on the banks of the river Damodar, with a population of about 250,000.

It was founded by in the late fifties, by the then Chief Minister of West Bengal, Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy. A close confidant and personal physician of India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, B.C.Roy was the visionary who changed the face of post independence West Bengal. After the partition and the refuge influx of 1947, West Bengal was in a economically bad shape. Dr. Roy took to improve the condition, by founding a series of industrial satellite towns. The most prominent among them are Durgapur(steel and ancillary industries), Haldia (port and petrochemicals), Dankuni (oil refineries), Haringhata (dairy), Burnpur (steel), Chittaranjan (locomotive works), Kharagpur (IIT).

Location of Durgapur

Durgapur is located, as mentioned above, in the district of Burdwan. It lies on the main railway line connecting Calcutta and New Delhi, thus being extremely well connected to both of the above cities. It takes about 2.5 hours by express train to reach Calcutta and an overnight journey to reach Delhi. The G.T.Road (National Highway #2) passes through the middle of the city. One airport is under construction near Steel City, B-zone.

It is located very close to India's biggest coalfields in the Ranigunj-Dhanbad area. The Durgapur Barrage over the river Damodar provides the water necessary for the many industries and also for drinking. Its surrounding area is very fertile and is one of the biggest producers of rice in the country.

Industries in Durgapur

Durgapur has a whole gamut of manufacturing industries. Among them, Durgapur Steel Plant (DSP) and Alloy Steel Plant (ASP) are the 2 biggest and the ones around which the city and the other industries came up. Both operate under the Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL). DSP, with about 30,000 employees, is an integrated steel plant with 4 blast furnaces, producing about 1 million tonnes annually of pig iron and ingots. It is also the only steel plant in India manufacturing railway wheels. ASP (where my dad worked), with about 7000 employees, is an alloy and special steels plant. It was the only one of its kind in the country until the mid-80's when another one came up in Salem, Kerala. Its main raw material is ferrous scrap, mostly from junked cars from the United States. Its rated capacity is about 0.3 million tonnes per annum. It produces only on order, moslty for the defence, space and other special needs industries. DSP and ASP share a common township for its employees (about 10kmx10km). It has a whole lot of schools run by the company, an 800 bed hospital for the employees and their families and other sports and recreational facilities.

Among the other major industries in Durgapur are: The Mining and Allied Machinery Corporation (MAMC), Durgapur Projects Limited (DPL), Durgapur Chemicals Limited (DCL), Bharat Ophthalmic Glass Limited (BOGL), Phillips Carbon Black Limited (PCBL), ACC Babcock Limited (ABL), Durgapur Thermal Power Station (DTPS), etc. Of them, DPL and DTPS are Durgapur's main source of power. DTPS is in fact a part of the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC), which is a string of 5 dams and 2 power plants located along the river Damodar. They were built to tame the mighty river, once known as the "river of sorrow", for the havoc it created during the floods in the rainy season. BOGL is the only public sector company in the country which manufactures glass for prescription lenses.

Places of interest in and around Durgapur

Being an industrial city, Durgapur as such, has very little to offer to the casual tourist. The main tourist attraction is the Durgapur Barrage over the Damodar. It is most beautiful during the monsoons, when the river is swollen. The gardens around it are a good place to picnic. The Kumarmangalam Park in the Steel township with its artificial lakes and small hills is another attraction for picnickers and joggers. There is very little else you can see in Durgapur.

About 100 km to the north of Durgapur is Shantiniketan (district Bolpur), the university town founded by the Nobel Laureate (1913) Rabindranath Tagore (1860-1940). It is home to the famous Vishwabharati University, renowned for its fine arts departments. It also houses the great poet's works, where he spent the last 2 decades of his life. Among other places nearby, good for spending a day, are Mayapur (headquaters of ISKCON), Maithon, Tilaiya.