Bibek Debroy: Arthur Cotton's furlough

I mentioned Arthur Cotton in the last column, but he is worth probing a bit more. One of the villages in Madras Presidency was called Chintadripet, Chinna Thari Pettai to use the original name. Chintadripet means a "village of small looms". This was established in 1735, when the governor of Fort St George was George Morton Pitt. Red Hill Railroad (RHR) is associated with the name of Chintadripet. Red Hill Railroad was built in 1836, two decades before the famous Bori Bunder-Thane run in 1853, celebrated as the start of railways in India. The best account of this relatively neglected railway line is in a piece written by Simon Darvill. From this piece, we learn the following. First, it wasn't quite an experimental line. There was probably an initial three-mile-long line from Red Hills to stone quarries around Little Mount, but this eventually merged with RHR's permanent line. Second, it was built to carry granite for road-building work, leading to an estimated annual saving of Rs 28,000 (the total annual Budget was Rs 60,000) on building roads in the Presidency. It was a freight railway, but passengers also travelled on it. Third, though animals were supposed to pull the train, two or three steam locomotives (one of which was built by Madras Corps of Engineers) were also used. Fourth, the rolling stock was possibly road-carts on railway wheels. Fifth, the rails were produced in Parangipettai (Cuddalore district). Sixth, it cost Rs 50,000 crores to build.

The driving force behind RHR was Cotton (1803-99). He is identified more with the construction of irrigation and navigational canals, especially in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. But Cotton is not just about Dowleswaram Barrage (known as Cotton Barrage) on the Godavari and Cotton Museum in Rajahmundry, it is also about the Chintadripet railway line, temporary though it might have been. At that time, in 1836, he also thought of a railway line connecting Madras with Bombay via a route of about 862 miles through Wallajahnagore, Arcot, Nellore, Banglore, Bellary and Poona. Cotton was the one who proposed that experimental line in Chintadripet. Those cost figures were also his estimates. To the extent there was an irrigation/canals versus railways debate, Cotton was on the irrigation/canals side of the debate, as evidenced by his 1854 monograph, "Public works in India, their importance". "If India is to advance in anything, it must have cheap transit, really cheap transit, at one-tenth or one-twentieth of the present rates. In planning the great railways, the real points to be attended to have been entirely lost sight of, this first one especially. When the projectors talk of charging 1 d to 3 d per ton per mile, they do not consider the fact, that a good common road will carry at 1.5 d; and that the imperfect unimproved natural water transit where it exists, costs only 0.5 d." For that day and age, this was a legitimate relative cost argument.

But this was in 1854 and I don't think historians have given a clear answer about what happened between 1836 and 1854. RHR closed in 1845. One reason given is that RHR depended on a canal and that went dry. With no water for barges, trains weren't needed either. That might well be true. However, it is also true that all experiments with railways ended when Cotton fell ill. He fell ill more than once and went to Tasmania. Indeed, he went to Tasmania thrice, between 1838 and 1843. Having gone there, he developed an interest in irrigation and also got the government of that country interested in irrigation. The word "furlough" means leave of absence. The East India Company had furlough rules. These 1796 rules were liberalised in 1854 and again in 1868. A letter of complaint, printed in The Spectator on September 11, 1852, explains the problem with the 1796 furlough rules. "By the present furlough regulations, an officer is entitled after 10 years' actual service in India to a furlough of three years, on very reduced allowances. He forfeits any appointment he may hold by going to England, and the period of his furlough is deducted from the term of service which entitles him to a retiring pension. After he has once taken his furlough, there is no second one open to him. By a strange anomaly, he is permitted to take his furlough to New South Wales, or any place east of the Cape of Good Hope, without incurring any of these penalties except the last. His allowances are not reduced, or in a much slighter degree; he does not forfeit his appointment if he holds one; and the time that he is absent 'counts for service'. The regulations are, in fact, as you may perceive, a very high protective duty on the East Indies and Oriental residence." This applied to sick leave, too.

Thus, when he fell fill, Cotton preferred to go to Tasmania and not to London. Naturally, "furlough" was not valid in India. But for the furlough rules, he might not have gone to Tasmania and got interested in irrigation. RHR might have survived.

The writer is a member of the National Institution for Transforming India Aayog. The views are personal