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Nov 5, 2026
Agents of Inertia
Business, Urban Crisis, and Economic Decline in Twentieth-Century Calcutta
Summary
In the first half of the twentieth century, Asia's colonial trade, commerce, and enterprise pivoted on five cities- Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Calcutta, and Bombay. Today, among these, only Calcutta no longer plays a significant role in the Asian or global economy. Why? Agents of Inertia: Business, Urban Crisis, and Economic Decline in Twentieth-Century Calcutta (Cambridge UP, 2026) answers this question by investigating how Calcutta's British and Indian businesses have engaged with the city's infrastructural and economic challenges. It throws up a startling result: through the first seven decades of twentieth century, Calcutta's businesses, in contrast to their counterparts elsewhere, staunchly resisted several measures that intended to update and improve the city's infrastructure. It is this resistance, Agents of Inertia argues, that led to Calcutta's postcolonial urban crisis and contributed to capital- flight and economic decline. One of the first full-length monographs on Calcutta's postcolonial urban-economic decline, it shows how big businesses not only make but can also break a city's fortunes.
Gaurav C. Garg is a historian of modern South Asia, cities, mountains, and international development at Ashoka University, Delhi NCR.
Soumyadeep Guha is a fifth-year PhD student in the History Department at Binghamton University, New York. He is interested in historical research focusing on themes such as Agrarian/Environmental History, History of Science and Tech, Global History, and their intersections. His prospective dissertation questions are on the pre-history of the ‘Green Revolution’ in Eastern India.
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