In 1984, when the country's first underground train chugged off in Kolkata (then Calcutta), one late Left leader had expressed fear that the tunnels could get waterlogged during monsoon, leading to disaster. Nothing of that sort has happened though and several other cities have subsequently set up their own metro rail projects to better the public transportation in the days of increasing congestion.
Kolkata Metro, however, was gradually being seen as the outdated pioneer as the infrastructure had not kept with pace with time in the last three decades of its operation. In the meantime, more state-of-the-art metro projects have come up in other cities and now even smaller cities are planning to have their own urban rapid transport systems in place. But now, Kolkata is at the threshold of another first in the country -- running metro rail underneath Hooghly River. This is one way West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's dream of turning her state's capital into London, where the tube rail runs underneath Thames River, is surely going to materialise.
The work on expanding the East-West corridor of the metro rail in Kolkata has met several obstacles and it overcame them all to approach Hooghly.
The work is now underway below (120 foot) Howrah railway station. The river is now another 120 feet away and if the German-made tunnel boring machine advances as per plan, work under water is expected to begin by the end of March.
But how is it inside the tunnel at the moment?
The authorities and engineers have ensured that workers are always at the peak of their health and energy during the high-pressure job being carried out amid heat and humidity. There is no dearth of full vigilance on the workers' safety and even the boring machine will be serviced before the mission under water begins.
From the top executive to the ground staff, all are excited about the upcoming phase of laying the route under Hooghly River. For old-timers, the excitement is akin to what it was in 1984 when they started entering beneath Earth and become witness to history.
