This article is about the capital city of
West Bengal, India. For the namesake district, see
Kolkata district.
"
Calcutta" redirects here. For other uses, see Calcutta (disambiguation).
Kolkata
কলকাতা
Calcutta
Metropolis
Clockwise from top:
Victoria Memorial,
St. Paul's Cathedral, central business district,
Howrah Bridge, city tram line,
Vidyasagar Bridge
Nickname(s):
City of Joy
Cultural
Capital of India
Kolkata
Location of Kolkata in
West Bengal
Coordinates: 22.567°
N 88.367°ECoordinates: 22.567°N 88.367°E
Country India
State West Bengal
Division Presidency
District Kolkata[A]
Government
•
Type Mayor--Council
•
Body KMC
• Mayor
Sovan Chatterjee[1]
•
Sheriff Indrajit Ray[2]
•
Police commissioner Surajit Kar Purakayastha[3]
Area
• Metropolis 185 km2 (71 sq mi)
•
Metro 1,
886.67 km2 (728
.45 sq mi)
Elevation 9 m (30 ft)
Population (
2011)[4]
• Metropolis 4,
486,
679
•
Rank 7th
•
Density 24,
000/km2 (63,000/sq mi)
• Metro[5] 14,
112,536
• Metro rank 3rd
•
Metropolitan 14,617,882 (3rd)
Demonym Calcuttan
Time zone
IST (
UTC+05:30)
ZIP code(s) 700 001 to 700 157
Area code(s) +91-33
Vehicle registration WB 01 to WB 10
UN/
LOCODE IN
CCU
Official languages Bengali and
English
Website www.kmcgov.in
Jump up ^ The
Kolkata metropolitan area also includes portions of
North 24 Parganas,
South 24 Parganas,
Howrah,
Nadia, and
Hooghly districts. See:
Urban structure.
You may need rendering support to display the Bengali (
Bangla) text in this article correctly.
Kolkata /koʊlˈkɑːtɑː/ (Bengali: কলকাতা, কোলকাতা) (also known as Calcutta /kælˈkʌtə/) is the capital of the
Indian state of West Bengal. Located on the east bank of the
Hooghly river, it is the principal commercial, cultural, and educational centre of
East India, while the
Port of Kolkata is India's oldest operating port as well as its sole major riverine port.
As of 2011, the city had
4.5 million residents; the urban agglomeration, which comprises the city and its suburbs, was home to approximately
14.1 million, making it the third-most populous metropolitan area in
India. As of 2008, its economic output as measured by gross domestic product ranked third among
South Asian cities, behind
Mumbai and
Delhi.[6] As a growing metropolitan city in a developing country, Kolkata confronts substantial urban pollution, traffic congestion, poverty, overpopulation, and other logistic and socioeconomic problems
.
In the late
17th century, the three villages that predated Kolkata were ruled by the
Nawab of Bengal under
Mughal suzerainty. After the Nawab granted the
East India Company a trading license in 1690,[7] the area was developed by the
Company into an increasingly fortified mercantile base. Nawab
Siraj ud-Daulah occupied Kolkata in 1756, and the East India Company retook it in the following year and by 1772 assumed full sovereignty. Under East India Company and later under the
British Raj, Kolkata served as the capital of India until
1911, when its perceived geographical disadvantages, combined with growing nationalism in
Bengal, led to a shift of the capital to
New Delhi. The city was a centre of the
Indian independence movement; it remains a hotbed of contemporary state politics.
Following Indian independence in
1947, Kolkata—which was once the centre of modern
Indian education, science, culture, and politics—witnessed several decades of relative economic stagnation. Since the early
2000s, an economic rejuvenation has led to accelerated growth.
As a nucleus of the 19th- and early
20th-century Bengal Renaissance and a religiously and ethnically diverse centre of culture in Bengal and India, Kolkata has established local traditions in drama, art, film, theatre, and literature that have gained wide audiences. Many people from Kolkata—among them several
Nobel laureates—have contributed to the arts, the sciences, and other areas, while
Kolkata culture features idiosyncrasies that include distinctively close-knit neighbourhoods (paras) and freestyle intellectual exchanges (adda). West Bengal's share of the
Bengali film industry is based in the city, which also hosts venerable cultural institutions of national importance, such as the
Academy of Fine Arts, the Victoria Memorial, the
Asiatic Society, the
Indian Museum, and the
National Library of India. Though home to major cricketing venues and franchises, Kolkata differs from other
Indian cities by giving importance to association football and other sports.
- published: 02 Jan 2014
- views: 259