John Lawrence and the railways

The Odisha famine of 1866-67 gave an impulse to Lawrence's policy of constructing railways and canals across the country

John Lawrence was viceroy and governor general between 1864 and 1869. Recently, I came across a book published in 1882, titled Men and Events of My Time in India and authored by Richard Temple. Since Temple was private secretary to Lawrence for a few years, he wrote other books/monographs on Lawrence too. In Men and Events, Temple mentions a connection between Lawrence, railways and Odisha. “John Lawrence’s next trouble (after Bhutan) was the famine in Orissa, which probably caused him more grief than any other event during his rule…This misfortune gave an impulse to the policy which John Lawrence had desired from the outset to pursue, namely, that of hastening the construction of railways and canals. If the Government was to assume the responsibility, never fully assumed during former times in India, for saving the lives of a large population threatened with death from famine, there must be railways to carry the surplus grain from productive tracts, for replenishing the gaps which drought might cause in the supplies of other tracts.” This Odisha Famine of 1866-67 was severe and it has been estimated that one-third of the population died. The positive impact railway networks can have on distributing food in scarcity conditions was endorsed by later Famine Codes and Famine Commissions. 
 
There is another link between Lawrence and Odisha. Let me quote from a Ph.D. dissertation submitted by Debadatta Pradhan to Pondicherry University. Lawrence died in 1879 and it isn’t surprising that a steamship was named after him. “In 1887, the campaign for an Odisha railway reached a new pitch when the Sir John Lawrence, a seagoing steamer that had left Calcutta for Puri with over eight hundred passengers, sank on 25 May due to the shipmaster’s irresponsible navigation and overloading of passengers. Hundreds of predominantly female pilgrims were drowned, many of whom were from well to do Calcutta bhadralok families. It was now that more widely distributed Bengal newspapers took the lead in the campaign and that the tone became more insistent.” The pilgrims were headed for Puri, with the steamship from Chotulal Ghat (Kolkata) to Chandbali. There is still a plaque in Chotulal Ghat (also known as Chotelal Ki Ghat) dedicated to those pilgrims. In addition to Indians, some Englishmen (crew) and Englishwomen (wives of officials) died. This explain why that plaque was erected by “English women”. From Chandbali (Chandabali) pilgrims went to Puri via Cuttack. Chandbali to Cuttack meant palanquins and bullock carts.
 
There was pressure (and petitions) for rail links between Calcutta and Madras through Odisha, with side lines to Puri.  The wreck of “John Lawrence” reinforced this.  Everything has a flip side. Once railways were built, Chandbali declined in importance. Bay of Bengal Pilot: Bay of Bengal and the Coasts of India and Siam, including the Nicobar and Andaman Islands, published by the US Hydrographic Office in 1916, said, “Chandbali, on the north bank of the Baitarani River, 20 miles from its mouth, has decreased in importance owing to the opening of the Bengal-Nagpur Railway, but still possesses a large trade; it is considered within the port of Dhamra.”
 

Change of track With Lawrence, the focus subtly shifted to the government from private players when it came to building rail links

During Dalhousie, there was emphasis on private sector building railways.  With Lawrence and Mayo, the focus subtly shifted to government, perhaps more with Lawrence than Mayo, since Mayo was fiscally cautious. Consider Lawrence’s testimony to the Parliamentary Committee in 1873. “I think it is notorious in India among almost every class that I ever heard talk on the subject, that the Railways have been extravagantly made; that they cost a great deal more than they are worth, or ought to have cost.” This was condemnation of high cost of private construction, courtesy the guarantee system, something that Lawrence also mentioned in his 1869 minute. Both metre gauge expansion and hill railways were driven by Lawrence. There was also a 30-year expansion plan Lawrence proposed in 1868, broken into five-year segments and building on Dalhousie’s trunk routes. With Mayo, construction was slower than contemplated in this plan.  There is something strange about Lawrence’s 30-year plan though. There are stray references to it, but no one seems to have discussed it, at least not railway historians I know about. Which lines did he propose? Which were built and which were not? That seems to be an interesting question to ask. The 30-year plan doesn’t find a mention in Bosworth Smith’s (1901) detailed biography of Lord Lawrence.
 
Lawrence’s statues (in bronze) have had a habit of moving around. There were three. One has been in London, Waterloo Place, since 1882. A second was in London, but was moved to Lahore in 1887. This is the one Gurcharan Das mentions in his childhood memories of Lahore, the statue of Lawrence in Lawrence Garden. It was destroyed in the 1940s. Lawrence studied in Foyle College, Derry. A Foyle alumnus found it in a scrap heap in Lahore, without a hand and a sword. Rehabilitated, it was installed in Lawrence Hill in Foyle College in 1963. But in 2017, Foyle College moved to a new building and the statue moved again. The third statue is in the grounds of Flagstaff House, Kolkata, having moved there when all the colonial statues moved in 1969. It used to be in front of Raj Bhavan. If there is indeed a statue park in Kolkata, as has been proposed, it will move again.

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The author is chairman, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. Views are personal