Nivedita Setu

Nivedita Setu (also called Second Vivekananda Setu) is a cable-stayed bridge over Hooghly River in Kolkata, West Bengal. It runs parallel to and around 50 m downstream of the old Vivekananda Setu opened in 1932. The bridge is named after Sister Nivedita, the social worker-disciple of Swami Vivekananda.Belghoria Expressway that connects the meeting point of NH 2 with NH 6 at Dankuni to NH 34, NH 35, Dum Dum Airport and northern parts of Kolkata passes over the bridge. The bridge is designed to carry 48,000 vehicles per day.

Technological wonder

Vivekananda Setu had become weak as a result of ageing and with heavy traffic even repairs became difficult. There was need for a second bridge.

The main challenge was to design and construct a new bridge that did not mar the view of the old Vivekananda Setu, did not dwarf the historically important Dakshineswar Kali Temple which is located well within visible distance, and carry substantially higher levels of fast traffic for around half a century.

Vivekananda Setu

Vivekananda Setu (also called Willingdon Bridge and Bally Bridge) is a bridge over the Hooghly River in West Bengal, India. It links the city of Howrah, at Bally, to its twin city of Kolkata, at Dakshineswar. Completed in December 1932, it is a multispan steel bridge and was built to provide road and rail link between the Calcutta Port and its hinterland. It is 2,887 feet (880 m) long.

The construction of bridge was done by famous Kutchi-Mistri contractor and Industrialist Rai Bahadur Jagmal Raja Chauhan. His nameplate can still be seen on each girder of the bridge. The construction of bridge started in year 1926 and was completed in year 1932. The fabrication of the bridge was done at works of Braithwate & Company, Calcutta. The Bally Bridge was named Willingdon Bridge after Viceroy of India, Freeman Freeman-Thomas, 1st Marquess of Willingdon, who inaugurated it. The first train that ran across the bridge was named Jagmal Raja Howrah Express by the British, acknowledging the feat of Rai Bahadur Jagmal Raja. It is said that bridge cost over ₹1 crore (US$150,000) in those years.

Seto dialect

Seto (seto kiil´;Estonian: setu keel) is a dialect of the South Estonian or Võro language (although the Setos generally do not identify as Võro speakers), spoken by 12,549 people. The speakers, Seto people, mostly inhabit the area near Estonia's southeastern border with Russia, in the county of Setomaa.

Language sample

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

West Bengal

West Bengal (/wɛst bɛŋˈɡɔːl/; Bengali pronunciation: [pɔʃtʃimbɔŋɡɔ]) is a state in eastern India and is the nation's fourth-most populous state, with over 91 million inhabitants. Spread over 34,267 sq mi (88,750 km²), it is bordered by the countries of Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan, and the Indian states of Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar, Sikkim, and Assam. The state capital is Kolkata. Together with the neighboring nation of Bangladesh, it makes up the ethno-linguistic region of Bengal.

Ancient Bengal was the site of several major janapadas (kingdoms). It was also part of large empires such as the Maurya Empire (second century BC) and Gupta Empire (fourth century AD); and part of the regional Buddhist Pala Empire (8th to 11th century) and Sena dynasty (11th–12th century). From the 13th century onward, the region was controlled by the Bengal Sultanate, Hindu kings and Baro-Bhuyan landlords under the suzerainty of the Mughal Empire, until the British East India company took control of the region from the Mughals in the late 18th century. The company consolidated their hold on the region following the Battle of Plassey in 1757 and Battle of Buxar in 1764 and by 1793 took complete control of the region. Kolkata (or Calcutta) served for many years as the capital of British controlled territories in India. The early and prolonged exposure to British administration resulted in the expansion of Western education, culminating in development of science, institutional education, and social reforms in the region, including what became known as the Bengali renaissance. A hotbed of the Indian independence movement through the early 20th century, Bengal was divided during India's independence in 1947 along religious lines into two separate entities: West Bengal—a state of India—and East Bengal—a part of the newly created Dominion of Pakistan that later became the independent nation of Bangladesh in 1971.

Bengal

Bengal /bɛŋˈɡɔːl/ (Bengali: বাংলা  Bangla  /baŋla/ or বঙ্গ Bônggo /bɔŋɡo/) is a geographical and ethno-linguistic region in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent, at the apex of the Bay of Bengal and dominated by the fertile Ganges delta. The Bengal region was politically divided in the 1947 Partition of India based on religion: predominantly Hindu West Bengal became a province (now a state) of India, while predominantly Muslim East Bengal became a province of Pakistan and later gained independence as Bangladesh. Some regions of the historical kingdoms of Bengal are now part of Nepal and the neighbouring Indian states of Assam, Tripura, Bihar, Meghalaya, Manipur, Jharkhand, and Odisha. The Bengali people (বাঙালি Bangali), who speak the Bengali language (বাংলা Bangla), which is Indo-Aryan, natively inhabit the region, alongside dozens of indigenous ethnic groups who speak minority languages of the Tibeto-Burman, Austroasiatic, and Dravidian families.

Bengal is one of the most densely populated regions on Earth, with an estimated population of 250 million people and a population density exceeding 900 people per square kilometre. Most of the Bengal region lies in the low-lying Ganges Delta, the world's largest river delta. In the southern part of the delta lies the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest and home of the Bengal tiger. In the coastal southeast lies Cox's Bazar, the world's longest beach with a length of more than 100 km (62 mi). While most of the region is rural and agrarian, it includes two megacities: Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) and Dhaka (formerly Dacca).