Cyclone and Storm Surge - Iczmpwb.org

3.3
vicinity … And it is believed, that the level of the country inclines towards the salt-water lake, and
consequently that the principal channel of the Public Drains and water-courses ought to be
conducted in that direction".
Lord Wellesley's Improvement Committee better known as the Lottery Committee (1814-1836), as it
drew its sustenance from Lottery Receipts, with a view to improving the situation, undertook
extensive urban development works, by constructing roads and drains, filling up filthy tanks and
excavating new ones. Beliaghata canal still remains a useful contribution of the committee towards
Kolkata's drainage system. The Lottery Committee was disbanded in 1836 by recoil of the British
public opinion, The Fever Hospital and Municipal Improvement Committee, which succeeded the
Lottery Committee, was formed by Lord Auckland in 1836. The duty of this committee was to
deliberate on public health problems and to suggest remedial measures. The committee identified
decrepit condition and inadequacy of drainage facilities as the primary reason for the widespread
incidence of various severe diseases. From then onwards the drainage system of the city was
modified or extended to meet the emerging requirements of the fast expanding city. The rapid rise in
population brought with it fresh built up areas to contend with and to observe and take into account
important changes talking place in the natural outfall system into which the drainage of the city would
ultimately drain.
3.3. Establishment and expansion of the city
The name Kalikata had been mentioned in the rent-roll of the Mughal emperor Akbar (reigned 1556-
1605) and also in the Manasa-mangal of the Bengali poet Bipradas (1495). The history of Calcutta as
a British settlement dates from the establishment of a trading post there by Job Charnock, an agent
of the English East India Company, in 1690. Charnock had previously had disputes with officials of
the Mughal Empire at the river port of Hooghly and had been obliged to leave, after which he
attempted unsuccessfully to establish himself at other places down the river. When the Mughal
officials, not wishing to lose what they had gained from the English company's commerce, permitted
Charnock to return once more, he chose Calcutta as the seat of his operations. The river Hooghly at
this point was also wide and deep; the only disadvantage being the marshes to the east and swamps
within the area which made the spot unhealthy. Moreover, before the coming of the English, three
local villages Sutanati, Kalikata (or Kolkata), and Gobindapur, which were later to become parts of
Calcutta (mentioned at the beginning of this section) had been chosen as places to settle by Indian
merchants who had migrated from the silted-up port of Satgaon, farther upstream. The presence of