KGF - Little England and The Hell Next Door

 

But more than a miner, Lavelle was the poster boy of the gold rush. Lavelle was not rich, which limited his capabilities to explore the gold reserves. But his vision of creating fields of gold and the dangerous gambles of mining, soon became the premise of a novel – ‘Living Dangerously’ by FE Penny. This made him a popular man, even though his savings were depleting.

But by 1877, the young entrepreneur was unable to scale his business further and was desperate to raise funds. But due to his popularity, support came from another armyman – Maj Gen Beresford of the Madras staff corps in Bangalore. He along with three others – McKenzie, Sir William and Col William Arbuthnot –formed a syndicate with several other army officers called ‘The Colar Concessionaries Company Limited’, which took over the mining operations.

Mining engineers were invited from across the world to dig shafts in Kolar to further the explorations.

But things changed, when the syndicate, under pressure from their investors, approached John Taylor and Sons, a company that brought state-of-the-art mining engineering to India. The arrival of these engineers from Norwich, England started the golden era of KGF.

As Operations in the KGF surged ahead, British planned Asia’s second and India’s first power plant in Kolar. Officers of the Royal Engineers approached the Mysore Maharaja with a proposal to build a hydroelectric plant in the Cauvery river, in 1900. Central Electric Company from New York and Eicher Wyss from Switzerland were given the task of establishing the power plant and 148 km of transmission lines, the longest in the world. Machinery imported from Britain, America and Germany were transported in carts pulled by elephants and horses.

Soon, the candles and kerosene lamps in KGF were replaced by bulbs, even before Bangalore or Mysore were electrified. While in 2018, several parts of the state experienced power cuts, by 1902, KGF had an uninterrupted power supply.

For British engineers and others from across the globe, Kolar was ‘Little England’. Weather like England, bungalows, and clubs made KGF an ideal home. Being a British mining colony, life in KGF was greatly influenced by British culture.

This was in sharp contrast to ‘coolie lines’, the name given to the makeshift homes occupied by miners, a majority of whom were Tamil migrants. Life was hard on the other side, with more than one family often occupying one such shed. It was famous for its rat invasion, where workers killed over 50,000 rats a year.

Workspaces were no different. Despite the constant supply of dehumidified air into the underground tunnels, temperatures in the tunnels shot up to 55 degrees Celsius and accidents were commonplace.