West Bengal has a unusual configuration; its breadth varies from two hundred miles (320 km) at one factor to rarely 10 miles (sixteen km) at any other. Its kind of 1,350-mile (2,two hundred-km) frontier with Bangladesh, neither natural nor nicely defined, is of strategic significance. Although in area West Bengal ranks as one of the smaller states of India, it's far one of the most important in population. The capital is Kolkata (Calcutta). Area 34,267 rectangular miles (88,752 square km). Pop. (2011) 91,347,736.
Land.
Relief and drainage
West Bengal may be widely divided into two herbal geographic divisions—the Gangetic Plain in the south and the sub-Himalayan and Himalayan region in the north. The Gangetic Plain consists of fertile alluvial soil deposited via the Ganges (Ganga) River and its tributaries and distributaries. It also features severa marshes and shallow lakes formed out of dead river courses. Indeed, the Ganges, which now runs through the slender center phase of the state earlier than entering Bangladesh, has been transferring progressively eastward for centuries; most effective a small amount of its water now goes to the sea thru the western distributaries, of which the main one is the Hugli (Hooghly). The state capital, Kolkata, is located on the Hugli inside the southern portion of West Bengal. Another essential river, the Damodar, joins the Hugli southwest of Kolkata. The elevation of the plain will increase slowly towards the west; the upward push is maximum marked close to the Chota Nagpur plateau of neighbouring Jharkhand.
The sub-Himalayan tract, referred to as the West Bengal Duars, or Western Duars, is part of the Tarai lowland belt among the Himalayas and the plain. Once infested with malaria, the vicinity is now properly drained and cultivated. Some of the finest tea plantations of India are situated there. North of the Duars, the Himalayan mountain stages upward push suddenly along the northern boundary of the nation. Mount Kanchenjunga, clearly located in adjacent Sikkim, dominates the panorama of the vicinity, in particular in Darjiling (Darjeeling). On a clean day, Mount Everest additionally can be seen in the distance.
Climate.
West Bengal’s weather is transitional among tropical wet-dry within the southern quantities and humid subtropical inside the north. Throughout West Bengal there is a reported seasonal disparity in rainfall. For example, Kolkata averages about sixty four inches (1,625 mm) in step with yr, of which a mean of 13 inches (330 mm) falls in August and less than 1 inch (25 mm) in December. The kingdom also is issue to full-size variability from year to year. In the sub-Himalayan vicinity, rainfall is considerably greater.
The 12 months can be broadly divided into three marked seasons—the recent and dry season (March to early June), with dry sultry days and common thunderstorms; the hot and moist season (mid-June to September), while rain-bearing monsoon winds blow from the southwest; and the cold (cool) season (October to February), when days are dry and clean and stable atmospheric situations be triumphant. Average excessive temperatures at Kolkata variety from about 80 °F (27 °C) in December and January to nearly 100 °F (38 °C) in April and May.
Plant and animal life
Forests occupy multiple-10th of the full land region of the country, and the place as a whole has a wealthy and varied flora. In the sub-Himalayan plains the primary forest timber encompass sal (Shorea robusta) and shisham, or Indian rosewood (Dalbergia sissoo); the forests are interspersed with reeds and tall grasses. On the Himalayan heights flora varies consistent with the elevation, with coniferous belts happening at better ranges. The delta of the Hugli constitutes the western stop of the dense coastal mangrove wooded area called the Sundarbans. A huge part of that unreclaimed and moderately populated location bordering Bangladesh and the Bay of Bengal has been set aside as a national park and also (in conjunction with the element in Bangladesh) as a UNESCO World Heritage website (particular 1987).
The forests are inhabited through tigers, leopards, elephants, gaurs (wild cattle), and rhinoceroses, as well as with the aid of other animals of the Indian simple, big and small. Reptiles and birds encompass the identical species as are not unusual throughout the Indian subcontinent. In addition to the Sundarbans park, the state has several other protected herbal regions, consisting of Jaldapara Wildlife Sanctuary and a tiger reserve.
People.
The majority of West Bengal’s humans live in rural villages. Of the ones living in urban areas, extra than half are living in greater Kolkata.
Of the specific religions, Hinduism claims the adherence of more than 3-fourths of the population. Most of the the rest is Muslim. Throughout the country, Buddhists, Christians, Jains, and Sikhs represent small minority groups.
Bengali, the primary language of the nation, is spoken through much of the population. Other languages encompass Hindi, Santali, Urdu (typically the language of Muslims), and Nepali (spoken in large part within the region of Darjiling). A small wide variety of humans communicate Kurukh, the language of the Oraon indigenous organization. English, collectively with Bengali, is the language of management, and English and Hindi function lingua francas at the national degree.
Economy
Agriculture
Agriculture dominates both the landscape and the economic system of West Bengal. Its proportion of agricultural land is among the highest of all of the Indian states. Rice, which requires tremendous irrigation, is the main crop in nearly each vicinity. Indeed, no matter its relatively small length, West Bengal produces a widespread percentage of India’s rice harvest. Other main crops are sugarcane and oilseeds. Jute is in particular distinguished alongside the border with Bangladesh and south of the Ganges River. Mangoes, jackfruit, and bananas are widely produced in the southern and central portions of the country. Wheat and potatoes are produced as iciness crops at some stage in the south. The northern regions round Darjiling and Jalpaiguri have lengthy been recognised for his or her manufacturing of fantastic tea. The Darjiling vicinity also produces oranges, apples, pineapples, ginger, and cardamom.
Industry
The state’s maximum important business belt is a corridor extending for a distance north and south of Kolkata, along the Hugli River. Another sizable commercial location is located alongside the Damodar River. There are metallic plants at Durgapur and Burnpur and a locomotive plant at Chittaranjan. Haldia, the terminus of an oil pipeline from Assam and the website online of a huge oil refinery, additionally has a petrochemical industry. Other critical manufactures encompass ships, motors, chemical compounds and fertilizers, wagons, electronics, paper, jute, and cotton textiles. The nation has a massive number of small-scale and cottage industries as properly. In the past due 20th and early 21st centuries, the most effective mineral resources of West Bengal that sustained nationally large exploitation had been coal and clay for brickmaking.
Services
The provider area has accounted for an increasing share of the kingdom’s economy. Trade, finance, coverage, and associated sports have grown extensively, and tourism has emerge as increasingly more essential. Also experiencing boom has been the data generation region. Kolkata is the monetary centre for both the nation and eastern India.
Transportation
Local river transportation changed into augmented by means of steam navigation within the 19th century—first brought among Kolkata, Allahabad (Uttar Pradesh), and Guwahati (Assam). The division of Bengal in 1947 and the continued deterioration of river channels have disrupted river delivery. Nevertheless, Kolkata and its sister port of Haldia, farther south, nevertheless cope with global change. West Bengal saw the inauguration of the railway machine in japanese India in 1854, and local railway headquarters are now placed in the country. Kolkata turned into the primary Indian city to open an underground railway device. National highways hyperlink West Bengal with the rest of India, even as country highways provide internal connections. There is an global airport at Kolkata in addition to numerous smaller airfields in the state.
Government And Society
Constitutional framework
The shape of the government of West Bengal, like that of most Indian states, is decided by the country wide constitution of 1950. The head of kingdom is the governor, who is appointed through the president of India. The elected Council of Ministers, with a prime minister at its head, aids and advises the governor. The chief minister is appointed by the governor, and the other ministers are appointed with the aid of the governor on the advice of the leader minister. The Council of Ministers is together accountable to the nation legislature, which consists of a unmarried house, the Legislative Assembly (Vidhan Sabha). The constitution affords for a High Court; its chief justice and judges are appointed by using the president of India. Other judges are appointed by way of the governor.
The country is split administratively into a number of districts. Each district, except that of Kolkata, is run by a collector, who's additionally the district Justice of the Peace. Districts, in flip, are divided into subdivisions, every administered by a subdivisional officer. Units of police jurisdiction range in place consistent with populace. Most encompass numerous mawzas (villages).
With the item of growing rural self-authorities, mawzas were grouped collectively underneath elected local government referred to as panchayats. Established under the West Bengal Panchayat Act of 1956, panchayats are entrusted with sanitary and conservation offerings and with the supervision of the village police and the improvement of cottage industries. A three-tiered panchayat machine, comprising numerous thousand village-level panchayats, several hundred intermediate-level panchayats, and greater than a dozen district-degree panchayats, covers the agricultural location.
Health and welfare
Medical facilities consist of hospitals, clinics, fitness centres, and dispensaries. Family-planning offerings are available in district bureaus, in addition to in city and rural centres. An employees’ state coverage scheme affords manufacturing facility workers with fitness, employment, protection, and maternity coverage and additionally presents a loose medical provider.
A social welfare directorate coordinates various welfare offerings handling orphans, human beings with intellectual and physical disabilities, and the underprivileged. The authorities’s social-welfare organizations are supplemented with the aid of private groups, of which the maximum outstanding are the Ramakrishna Mission, based with the aid of the Hindu reformer and trainer Vivekananda in 1897, and the Order of the Missionaries of Charity (1948), based by using Mother Teresa, recipient of the 1979 Nobel Prize for Peace.
Education
West Bengal has extra than 10 degree-granting universities, as well as engineering and medical schools and plenty of technical institutes. The University of Calcutta (1857) and Jadavpur (1955) and Rabindra Bharati (1962) universities are all positioned in Kolkata. The science laboratories of the University of Calcutta, the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, and the Bose Institute have made super contributions to technology. The Asiatic Society of Bengal, a scholarly business enterprise founded in 1784, is based in Kolkata. Vishva-Bharati University, in Shantiniketan (now part of Bolpur), is a global-famous centre for the study of Indology and international cultural relations.
The kingdom has a critical library, together with some of district, area, and rural libraries. More than five,000 adult training centres aid in literacy education. The state’s literacy price, which exceeded 75 percentage within the early twenty first century, is one of the maximum in India, and the disparity inside the fee among men and women is lower than the national average.
Cultural Life
Bengalis have lengthy fostered art, literature, track, and drama. The visible arts have, by using lifestyle, been based particularly on clay modeling, terra-cotta work, and ornamental painting. Bengali literature dates to before the twelfth century. The Chaitanya movement, an intensely emotional shape of Hinduism stimulated by using the medieval saint Chaitanya (1485–1533), fashioned the subsequent development of Bengali poetry till the early 19th century, when contact with the West sparked a full of life innovative synthesis. The modern period has produced, amongst others, the Nobel Prize-winning poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), whose contribution nonetheless dominates the Indian literary scene.
Traditional tune takes the shape of devotional and cultural songs. Rabindra Sangeet, songs written and composed by way of Tagore, draw at the natural Indian classical as well as traditional folks-track resources, along with the Baul singing style. They exert a effective have an impact on in Bengali cultural existence.
History
The call of Bengal, or Bangla, is derived from the historic kingdom of Vanga, or Banga. References to it occur in early Sanskrit literature, but its early records is difficult to understand until the third century BCE, when it fashioned a part of the big Mauryan empire inherited through the emperor Ashoka. With the decline of Mauryan electricity, anarchy once more supervened. In the 4th century CE the area turned into absorbed into the Gupta empire of Samudra Gupta. Later it came beneath manipulate of the Pala dynasty. From the start of the thirteenth century to the mid-18th century, whilst the British gained ascendancy, Bengal turned into underneath Muslim rule—at instances below governors acknowledging the suzerainty of the Delhi sultanate but specially under unbiased rulers.
In 1757 British forces beneath Robert Clive defeated those of the nawab (ruler) of Bengal, Sirāj al-Dawlah, inside the Battle of Plassey near present-day Palashi. In 1765 the nominal Mughal emperor of northern India, Shah ʿĀlam II, granted to the British East India Company the dīwānī of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa (now Odisha)—that is, the right to gather and administer the revenues of these areas. By the Regulating Act of 1773, Warren Hastings became the first British governor-general of Bengal. The British-managed government, centred at Calcutta (now Kolkata), became declared to be best: essentially, the governor-trendy of Bengal become the chief executive of British India. Thus, the Bengal Presidency, as the province become known, had powers of superintendence over the alternative British presidencies, the ones of Madras (now Chennai) and Bombay (now Mumbai).
Britain became not, however, the best European presence in Bengal. The metropolis of Hugli, north of Calcutta, changed into the location of a Portuguese factory (buying and selling put up) until 1632; Hugli-Chinsura (Chunchura), the subsequent town south, was the Dutch put up till 1825; the subsequent metropolis, Shrirampur (Serampore), changed into the Danish post until 1845; and Chandernagore (Chandannagar) remained in French hands until 1949.
From 1834 Bengal’s governor-fashionable bore the identify “governor-fashionable of India,” but in 1854 the post changed into relieved of the direct management of Bengal, which become located below a lieutenant governor. Thenceforward, the authorities of British India have become distinct from that of Bengal. In 1874 Assam was transferred from the charge of the lieutenant governor and positioned beneath a separate chief commissioner. In 1905 the British determined that Bengal had grow to be too unwieldy a fee for a unmarried management, and, despite violent Hindu protests, it became partitioned into two provinces, each beneath its very own lieutenant governor: one comprised western Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa; the other protected eastern Bengal and Assam. In 1911, due to persisted opposition to partition, Bengal turned into reunited under one governor, Bihar and Orissa below a lieutenant governor, and Assam over again under a primary commissioner. At the same time, Delhi became the capital of India in area of Calcutta.
The Indian National Congress (Congress Party) dominated the West Bengal government at some point of almost all of the state’s first three decades. In 1977, but, the Communist Party of India (Marxist; CPI-M) received a majority of seats within the nation legislative elections and became the ruling celebration. The CPI-M remained in power as the sector’s longest-serving democratically elected communist authorities till it became voted out of office in 2011. The winner of the legislative elections that yr, the All India Trinamool (or Trinamul) Congress (AITC), have been an best friend in what turned into then the Congress Party’s countrywide ruling coalition government. The AITC’s founder and chief, Mamata Banerjee, became the country’s first girl leader minister (head of presidency).
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