Underdevelopment is a term often used to refer to economic under-development, symptoms of which include lack of access to job opportunities, health care, potable water, food, education and housing. Underdevelopment takes place when resources are not used to their full socio-economic potential, with the result that local or regional development is slower in most cases than it should be. Under-development is not only lack of or insufficient development, as many people tend to think. It can also be seen as a product as well as by-product of development. Underdevelopment in the Indian subcontinent during the British rule derived inevitably from the colonial forms of economic exploitation. What I intend to focus upon in this paper is that the colonial rulers decidedly developed colonial (modern) infrastructure, with a view to extracting the resources of Rarh Bengal for colonial purposes. This in turn created an environment, affecting public health, which was in a bad shape during the colonial rule and this can be seen as a mark of underdevelopment. The colonial rulers seemed to have been very reluctant to take proper measures for the improvement of public health and development of health care services. The question, therefore, arise as to why did they do so? This paper addresses this issue. My intention in selecting Rarh Bengal as a case study lies in the fact that this productive region of Bengal allowed the British to extract agricultural and mineral resources for colonial purpose. This area, which paid the colonial rulers huge dividend, called for amenities for health protection and other allied facilities, but this was also the area which demonstrated a shameful picture of public health, being worst affected by some lethal communicable diseases.
Rarh has a unique geographical identity and cultural significance.1 But here I will restrain myself from going into its details. Rarh is situated on the south-western part of Bengal. Its eastern side is surrounded by the Ganga-Bhagirathi while the Chhotanagpur plateau extends on the west. According to the present administrative division, the region consists of Birbhum, Burdwan, Bankura and the western part of Midnapore district. The borders of the Rarh region has been stretched both geographically and politically. In a wider sense, Rarh comprises the entire south-western Bengal, excluding only the eastern part of Midnapore district.2 It is difficult to mark the geographical location of Rarh owing to a raging debate on it.3 In this context, it is not necessary to deal with that debate. The present essay is confined to the discussion on the districts of Birbhum, Bankura and Burdwan of southern Rarh or south-western Bengal.
Colonialism and Outbreak of Diseases
The colonial government concerned itself mainly with the maintenance of law and order, and collection of revenue and extraction of agricultural and mineral wealth, and showed little interest in resolving public health issues. While modern infrastructure developed, public health suffered. A network of modern means of communication spread over the districts of Rarh Bengalâmainly Burdwan, Birbhum and Bankura. Railways were introduced and expanded, metalled roads were laid and bridges were constructed. But these were chiefly built for their economic importance, the motive was to connect this region to the metropolis or the port with a view to tapping its resources. New railway lines of the East Indian Railway were opened in the 1850s and extended subsequently through the districts of Rarh Bengal. In fact, all sub-divisional headquarters, rich agricultural tracts and principal centres of trade were connected to the port by a wide network of railways. Coal and rice were the two main items of export from the districts of Rarh Bengal. Most of the important marts enjoyed ample facilities for export of surplus crop and import of European goods by rail, road or river. An official report on public health of Bengal reveals that the intention of the development works was to give full facilities for trade and transit by railways and roads.4
Similarly, colonial and modern administrative network, consisting of land revenue, judicial and police administration was set up. With the development of communication facilities and extension of administrative network, the colonial rulers got an easy access to the resources of this region and multiplied the quantum of extraction. Railways further influenced industrialization and urbanization in this region, and this can also be seen as the symbol of development.
The other side of the story was that, Rarh Bengal districts witnessed the prevalence of several lethal diseases which occurred epidemically and continued to act upon as endemic during the colonial rule. Diseases like malaria, kala-azar, cholera, smallpox, leprosy, tuberculosis, and influenza broke out repeatedly in epidemic form, causing devastation to peopleâs life. Public health in this area was in a bad shape. Colonial intervention was held responsible for this situation. Colonialism itself was regarded as a major health hazard for indigenous people and responsible for the outbreak of epidemics. It is argued that European commercial and political penetration in the nineteenth century, and the creation of colonial infrastructure, viz., roads, railways and system of labour migration, facilitated the spread of disease vectorsâthe mosquitoes, flees and lice by which epidemics were communicatedâand dissemination of diseases.5 Blaming the common people for their ignorance of sanitary considerations is pointless when it was the apathy and negligence of the government that need to be underlined. There seems no doubt that the nature of colonial infrastructure established mainly for economic exploitation and the consequent ecological changes it brought about have had far-reaching and enduring effects on public health. For instance, the expansion of irrigation canals and the construction of railway embankments created favourable habitats for malaria carrying mosquitoes in India.6
Railway Network, Diseases and Public Health
The indiscriminate embanking of vast tracts in lower Bengal for protecting railways and roads from the ravages of the floods had caused serious damage to agriculture and public health.7 Scholars have identified it as a primary factor behind the economic degeneration and declining status of public health of lower Bengal for about six decades since the 1860s, delineating the fact that obstruction to drainage owing to embankment and culverts was responsible for the malarial environment that prevailed over this region between 1850 and 1874.8 Before the advent of railways, there were few roads and although river embankments existed in certain districts they were rarely efficient in preventing inundation, because breaches were common and more often than not the embankments were deliberately cut to let river water into the bils and on to the fields. As there were few roads to impede the free passage of the floods across the surface of the country, the water flowed from field to field, choosing the natural lines of drainage and eventually, made its escape through the network of khals and channels that existed in every part of the delta. But this natural process of flood and flush was destroyed by the advent of railways, which required embankments for their tracks and a system of feeder roads to convey passengers and produce to their stations.9 The periodic inundation of the country naturally tended on occasions to destroy the continuity of road and railway communications and it became necessary, therefore, to make the river embankments secure against breaching; and as a consequence flood water was shut out, the natural system of deltaic irrigation was interrupted, drainage was impeded and the network of channels, which used formerly to be fed by the spill water from the great rivers, became silted up and in many cases entirely destroyed, rendering boat traffic difficult and in many cases impossible. The embanking of the country and the shutting out of river water from the surface of the delta was further marked by the simultaneous occurrence of appalling epidemics of malaria, a serious decline of agriculture and the progressive depopulation of the affected areas.10
The advance of railway network led to the proliferation of âBurdwan Feverâ which devastated numerous promising villages and struck a hard blow to the agricultural potential and public health in south-west Bengal. The embankments for railway tracks and bridges shut out the flood-water of the Damodar, the Ajay and other minor rivers which acted as spill channels for the distribution of silt-laden red water. These were the impediments to the natural irrigation and drainage, and caused the silting up of channels, including the streams and rivers.11 William Willcocks, an irrigation engineer, has also pointed out that the embankment on the east bank of the Damodar for protecting railways from flood entirely destroyed the already declining system of natural irrigation, and caused famines and fever, because it had deprived Burdwan and Hooghly districts of their natural overflow irrigation and choked many tanks, artificial lakes and even streams.12 Medical men like Dr French and Lt. Col. Campbell, and engineers of Public Works Department like Mr Adley were also of the opinion that it was the fundamental cause of the epidemic fever and the calamity that had devastated those localities.13 Willcocks believed that the rivers flowing south from the Ganges through Bengal were originally artificial canals dug by ancient Indians to provide for the adequate irrigation and drainage of the province, and that in allowing these to become silted up, the province had been turned in the course of hundred years from a place then considered to be a health resort to a hotbed of the worst diseases in the world.14 Above all, embankments creating water-logging condition facilitated the germination of anopheles mosquitoes and these were followed by disastrous consequences to health and agricult...
