Durgapur is not Kota. Different DNA, different stories.

Born of the Second Five Year Plan — chief minister of West Bengal Bidhan Roy had pushed for the creation of this industrial complex in West Bengal, 180 kilometres from Calcutta, at the time of the First Plan — its heart was essentially steel. The Durgapur Steel Plant attracted a slew of manufacturing industries between 1955 and the early 1970s.

There were ancillary companies too, Hindustan Fertiliser Corporation Limited, Mining and Allied Machinery Corporation, ACC-Vickers-Babcock Limited, Durgapur Chemicals Limited, Bharat Ophthalmic Glass Limited, Phillips Carbon Black, Graphite India Limited...

With the industries came the people, in pursuit of new dreams of a new India.

Like the population of most company towns, it was a diverse lot that nested in Durgapur. Both of Souvik Modak’s grandfathers were in the employ of the steel plants. They had come from Kaliganj village near Plassey and Gopi-ballavpur near Jhargram, respectively. Modak, who is a young researcher, talks about how the city was meant to be a “counter magnet” to a Calcutta already saturated by waves of migration.

The Chandas did not move to Durgapur from Calcutta but Hijli. In 1962, when the
Regional Engineering College here — present day NIT, Durgapur — was spanking new, the young and strapping S.M. Chanda made the move from IIT Kharagpur, where he had served the last 10 years as a lecturer of English. The Gangulys came from Germany. N.C. Dasgupta came from BE College in Shibpur. The children of these families went to A Zone Multipurpose School, B Zone Multipurpose School for Girls, RE College Model School, St Xavier’s...

Even in those early years, there was no dearth of schools in the city. And when the state board results were announced, it was common to have students from Durgapur feature in the merit list. Between A Zone and B Zone alone there were 10 schools in the 1960s. Every sector had a primary school. There were schools beyond the steel town as well.

When Mita Mukherjee, a government schoolteacher, moved from Serampore to Durgapur in 2002, things were still much the same. There was an “interest in studies”, almost every other parent wanted to make his or her ward a doctor or an engineer, and the schools too churned out “good students”.

And then the winds changed. The coaching centres made inroads. Covid cemented the trend. No, Durgapur is not Kota yet, but it may well be headed in that direction.