Belgaum/ Belagavi Town
This article has been extracted from THE IMPERIAL GAZETTEER OF INDIA , 1908. OXFORD, AT THE CLARENDON PRESS. |
Note: National, provincial and district boundaries have changed considerably since 1908. Typically, old states, ‘divisions’ and districts have been broken into smaller units, and many tahsils upgraded to districts. Some units have since been renamed. Therefore, this article is being posted mainly for its historical value.
Belgaum Town
Head-quarters of the District of the same name in the Southern Division of the Bombay Presidency, situated in 15° 51' N. and 74° 31' E., at an elevation of nearly 2,500 feet above sea- level, on the northern slope of the basin of a watercourse called the Bellary nullah, and on the Southern Mahratta Railway. Population (1901), 36,878, including the cantonment (10,641) and suburbs (3,803). The municipality was established in 1851. During the ten years ending 1901 the income averaged about Rs. 50,000. In 1903-4 the income was Rs. 51,500, chiefly derived from octroi (Rs. 22,000), conservancy rates (Rs. 9,100), and taxes on houses and land (Rs. 4,600). The expenditure amounted to Rs. 50,000, including general administration (Rs. 6,400), public safety (Rs. 2,300), conservancy (Rs. 15,900), public works (Rs. 4,000), and public instruction (Rs. 9,900). The average receipts of the cantonment funds are Rs. 25,000.
The native town lies between the fort on the east and the canton- ment, which extends along its western front, separated from it by a watercourse. It forms an irregular ellipse, approximating to a circle, of which the shorter axis is about 1,300 yards. The rock on which the town is built consists of laterite, lying upon Deccan trap. The site is well wooded. Bamboos, from which Venugrama, the ancient name of the town, is said to be derived, are plentiful, and mangoes, tamarinds, and banyans also abound. The fort, about 1,000 yards in length and 700 yards in breadth and occupying an area of about 100 acres, is surrounded by a broad and deep wet ditch, cut in hard ground. It appears to have been built in 15 19 and contains two Jain temples of great interest. The dargdh of Asad Khan and the Safa Masjid will also repay a visit. Belgaum was the chief town of a district known as the Belgaum 'seventy' in 1160. About 1205 the Rattas captured it from the Goa Kadambas and made it their capital. In 1250 it passed from the Rattas to the Yadavas. In 1375 the fortress of Belgaum was included in Vijayanagar territory. After being held by Muhammadan rulers the fort passed to the Peshwas about 1754. In 181 8, after the overthrow of the Peshwa, the place was invested by a British force. It held out for twenty-one days, after which the garrison of 1,600 men capitulated, having lost 20 killed and 50 wounded, while the British loss amounted to 11 killed and 12 wounded.
Belgaum, since its acquisition by the British, has increased greatly in size and wealth. It was chosen as the civil head-quarters of the District in 1838. It is a military station of the Poona division of the Western Command, and is usually garrisoned by British and Native infantry and a battery of artillery. Of recent years it has suffered severely from recurring epidemics of plague, which have driven many of the residents to remove from the town site and to erect houses in the vicinity. The principal articles of trade are salt, dried fish, dates, coco-nuts, and coir, imported from the sea-coast, chiefly from the port of Vengurla. Grain of all kinds, sugar, and molasses are also brought from the country round. The city contains more than 300 hand-looms for the manufacture of cotton cloth. The water-supply is derived entirely from wells. Besides 9 municipal boys' schools with 980 pupils and 4 girls' schools with 323 pupils, there are two high schools with about 500 pupils, one a Government institution, the other belonging to the Methodist Episcopal Mission. There are also two schools for European and Eurasian boys and a Roman Catholic convent for girls. Belgaum is the residence of the Commissioner of the Southern Division. Besides the ordinary revenue and judicial offices, the town contains a cantonment magis- trate's court and a Subordinate Judge's court, a civil hospital, and a railway dispensary.
Belagavi in the 21st century
British-era wells revived/ 2018
In Belagavi, citizens have solved their water problems by uncovering old wells buried under debris
There’s a well beneath all that debris,” insists Rajkumar Kalghatagi, 53, pointing towards a parking lot in Kelkar Lane Market in Karnataka’s Belagavi city. To a person new to the city, it looks like nothing more than a vacant plot that necessity and overcrowding have turned into parking space.
Kalghatagi isn’t mistaken. In the past few years, citizens and municipal corporation officials of this north Karnataka city have worked together to clean and rejuvenate more than 100 British-era wells, often removing parking lots, decades of debris, garbage and silt from a network of open wells that were used before piped water was introduced in the 1960s.
“We don’t need parking lots, we need water,” says Kalghatagi, who has no municipal water connection and uses water from a well built by his forefathers. “Our mission is to find and revive all wells buried under debris and concrete parking lots.”
In 1995, a delayed monsoon led to the drying of reservoir providing water to the city and a ferocious drought. Senior citizens, who’d lived in the city all their lives, told the municipal authorities about a network of old wells that had sustained the city through drought in the decades before the 1960s. “They told us that the open well network must be revived. This was beginning of the mission,” says Belagavi corporation executive engineer R S Nayak. “Many of them remembered the locations of these wells.”
The corporation began making a list with the help of senior citizens as well as relied on documents in their archives which said that 700 open wells were constructed before and during the British era.
“We started with the wells that were easier to clean and when we saw good results, cleaned more,” he says. In 23 years, they’ve cleaned about 100 wells, and continue to identify and revive more.
Garbage and debris are the main problem in small wells, while many of the larger ones were covered with concrete by the corporation itself in a bid to accommodate the needs of the city’s growing vehicle population. It takes the teams a few months to a year to rejuvenate a well. The wells are then covered with iron nets to keep people from dirtying them again, and the corporation monitors them. “We’ve provided separate tanks for activities like idol immersion. The people themselves led this effort because they are worried about water scarcity,” says Nayak.
Filtration plants are installed at all the wells, and the water from most wells is used for drinking as they’re fed by perennial aquifers and streams. After testing, if water from a well is found to be contaminated, it is used for non-drinking purposes.
“Many people, especially in market areas, opposed the revival mission,” says corporator Maya Kodalkar. “They were using these covered wells as parking lots, but we were determined to bring the wells back to life. Women — who bear the brunt of water shortage as they have to fetch it — played a major role in bringing them around. Now, when there is no dam water, the civic body releases clean well water through the pipeline,” she says. She added that drilling of borewells and dependence on water tankers in the summer is on the decline too.
Apart from finding a sustainable solution to the city’s water woes, the municipal corporation is also saving money on its water bills. “Bringing water from the reservoir costs us Rs 12.5 per kiloliter, while well water costs 76 paise. Even if dams go dry or rains are delayed, we can sustain ourselves for a substantial period,” says Nayak. The National Institute of Hydrology has certified the sustainability of these wells for 50 years, he says.
Belagavi is one of the rare cities to have successfully implemented such a project. The wells cover the water needs of 1.9 lakh of its total population of 5 lakh people, almost 38% of its population. Other Indian cities — including Karnataka’s capital of Bengaluru — that are staring at a dry future, could look to Belagavi for a sustainable solution to their water needs.
