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It took Rs 13.07 crore to build India's capital
Updated On: 13 August, 2009 09:18 AM IST | | Lindsay Pereira
If you've ever wondered how india's capital city was born, here's a book that has the answers, including why two boys sit fishing atop a chandelier in the children's nursery at Rashtrapati Bhavan
If you've ever wondered how india's capital city was born, here's a book that has the answers, including why two boys sit fishing atop a chandelier in the children's nursery at Rashtrapati Bhavan
Rs 13.07 crore: That, apparently, is what the making of New Delhi cost. It took the British a while to arrive at the figure, starting with a mere Rs 9.17 crore when they first decided on the project. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
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Supervisors and workers atop the almost complete war memorial that marks a tribute to over 60,000 Indian soldiers who died defending the Empire in the Great War |
It all began at approximately 2 pm on December 12, 1911, when King George V proclaimed the city to be India's new capital. A decade after that formal declaration, critics in Britain were still upset with the decision. What was wrong with Calcutta continuing as India's capital, they wanted to know. How did the need for such a grand project so soon after World War I arise? Had the planners recovered from the Great Depression so quickly?
At the eye of that storm, with the vitriol flying back and forth, stood the men behind the re-design architects Herbert Baker and Edwin Lutyens. They didn't see eye to eye either, attacking each other's ideas, accusing each other of a number of ploys, yet magically transforming the face of what Lord Curzon once described as a bunch of deserted cities of "disconsolate tombs". The city they built lasted; their relationship didn't.
Ninety eight years after this story began, editor Malvika Singh, historian Rudrangshu Mukherjee and collector Pramod Kapoor have pieced together all the possible pieces that went into its creation. The result is clearly the result of painstaking labour a visually stunning document of our historical capital's reincarnation.
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The stone yard for the construction sat over twenty-two acres and was reputed to be the largest in the world. The stone-cutters often came from Agra, Bharatpur and Mirzapur. The prepared material was conveyed to the site by railway carriages specifically deployed for the purpose How do you like the new new mid-day.com experience? Share your feedback and help us improve. Read Next Story Trending StoriesLatest Photos |
