Saturday, April 23, 2005 Snipped from http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050423/asp/calcutta/story_4641845.asp In early 20th century, although Bengali merchants outnumbered Marwari or Gujarati tradespeople, Bengali capital was highly fragmented, and was in the kindergarten stage as it still is now. Bengalis of that period did not lack enterprise but were not blessed with the capacity to sustain their endeavours. Impulsive as they were they threw themselves headlong into the swadeshi movement, without sparing much thought for practical considerations. The Marwaris hardly carried similar ideological baggage (the likes of Ghanashyam Das Birla, notwithstanding), and had by 19th-century end, appropriated the indigenous banking system as well as those of cotton and jute. With the decline of imperial power and the consequent enervation of British managing agencies, they transformed from traders and moneylenders to entrepreneurs. The industriousness, business acumen and diligence of this close-knit community for whom loyalty to one's kin was like a religion certainly helped. By 1930, Marwaris headed the majority of jute mill companies and almost half of collieries. By 1948, their shares increased. By the 1960s, they had become the new economic elite of this region. Anthony Hayward, the last British burrasaab of Shaw Wallace, who lived in Raja Santosh Road in the early Seventies and who visits the city every winter, had written about the entry of Marwari millionaires in Alipore in an e-mail: The Marwaris came to live in Alipore by virtue of the fact that they bought up all the managing agency houses in Calcutta over the period between 1947 and 1967; and with them the big houses which belonged to those companies. Development continued apace, and by the time I left in 1978 I dare say that 20 or more houses had been demolished and highrises built. It was started perhaps by ICI and Imperial Tobacco, and Mackinnon Mackenzie who knocked down their big houses, and built half a dozen or more perfectly large and adequate houses for their directors, not highrises. =========================== --- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Nagpur, India