Oxford Street, Kolkata
There is a meme template that is quite popular in Bengali circles. People post videos of flooded roads with sarcastic captions like “London today.” There is a history behind that. It dates back to 2011, when the then CM announced she wanted to make Kolkata like London.
The ghost of the London dream is back once again, as the new Urban Development minister has hinted at creating an “Oxford Street” like area around College Street. The plan is rather interesting: no honking zone, no cars, wider footpath. But they also made sure to use the label. Oxford Street.
If you go to any new, and apparently “modern,” tech park of a mega Indian city, you’d notice tall glass buildings, heavily influenced by US/EU style skyscrapers. The ones you generally notice in TV series and movies when they show the Manhattan skyline. They signal affluence. But a glass tower is a strange thing to import into India.1 The all-glass facade was built for cold, grey climates where you want to trap whatever sun you get. Drop the same building into Hyderabad or Chennai, and you've built a greenhouse, then spent a fortune air-conditioning your way out of a problem you designed in. We copied the skyline and skipped the reason it looked that way.
Beverly Hills is not only an affluent city in California. It is also a gated society roughly 1km away from my place. Roughly 12 kms north of this Beverly Hills, there is a busy lane, and a “modern” stylish office space around Hitech City. If you suddenly see the name of the road or building on your map, you might get surprised. It’s called Dallas Center.
Recently, Hyderabad added another jewel to its US crown: Donald Trump Avenue.
Why does this keep happening?
Both come down to status. The mechanism, though, is straight out of development economics. Kolkata's version is nostalgia for a status it once had. Hyderabad's is aspiration for a status it wants next.
For Kolkata, the root cause of this is quite straightforward. Colonial hangover. The previous CM highlighted it herself in a press briefing: how influential the city used to be under the British. She wanted it to regain its “former glory.” The route she opted for was beautification2. The new minister for urban development seems to be following the same footsteps.
For Hyderabad, it’s a bit more economical, I feel. Human beings, for centuries, want to move from lower per-capita areas to higher ones. For better opportunities, for a better life. Hyderabad’s state, Andhra Pradesh initially and now Telangana, has been one of the richest states in India by per capita income for the last 20+ years. So the question becomes: where do you go from the top of your own league? You go to the country everyone in your league is trying to reach. And what do you do when you can’t go there but want to signal the aspiration anyway? Name your cities, areas and buildings like that.3
The irony is the city’s public transport infra is mostly non-existent, like in many US states.
There's a name for this in development economics: isomorphic mimicry. It's borrowed from biology, where a harmless species evolves to look like a venomous one without ever growing the venom. Institutions do the same. They copy the visible shape of something that works elsewhere. The Manhattan skyline, the Oxford Street label, because they are cheaper and easy to see. The part that made it work is expensive, slow, and often photographs very badly, so it never arrives. Copy the skyline, skip the reason. Or better, don’t even think about the reason.
The tram plan for College Street is the part I can actually support. No cars, no honking, a cleaner street you can walk and do your book shopping. That sounds great on paper. And that's the unglamorous and boring stuff that usually never gets copied. But it comes bundled with cobblestones and matching shopfronts, because the point was never just to fix the street. It was to make it look like somewhere else. The status signalling core is still there.
College Street is already the largest second-hand book market in the world. It doesn't need to resemble Oxford Street. Oxford Street should be so lucky.
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If you found this interesting, I would love to hear your thoughts.
Though honestly, the Eastern side of the city looks way nicer now.
Hyderabad is not the only city to have that. But it might be the only one where the government is naming a road after a US president. Pune, Bangalore, etc. have a few Malibu, Manhattan & other ultra-luxury residential projects.