llowed with the Durgapur Thermal Power Station.
There was a massive follow up – Durgapur Steel Plant (commissioned 1960), Alloy Steels Plant (commissioned 1965), Durgapur Projects Ltd. (established 1961), Mining and Allied Machinery Corporation, ACC-Vickers Babcock (later ACC-Babcock and now Alstom Power Boilers Ltd.), Hindustan Fertiliser Corporation, Philips Carbon Black Ltd., Sankey Wheels (a unit of GKW), Bharat Ophathalmic Glass Ltd, Durgapur Cement Ltd. (now Birla Cement) (established 1975), Graphite India Ltd. (established 1967), Durgapur Chemicals Ltd. (DCL) was incorporated on 31 July 1963, Ispat Forgings and many others, large and small. A great new industrial city was bubbling with enthusiasm.
Durgapur Steel Plant was a showpiece of Indo-British cooperation in independent India. Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the first president of India, came for the inauguration of the first blast furnace. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was a regular visitor. He called these plants temples of new India. Many senior leaders and important foreign leaders visited Durgapur to see and to cheer. Displaying a rare gesture of solidarity, Queen Elizabeth came on a state visit.
As the numerous chimneys merrily belched out black, white and reddish brown smoke as pollution control norms were still some way off (for the past few years all the 65 chimneys of Durgapur Steel Plant are pollution free), the townships grew and prospered.
Regional Engineering College (established 1960) (now renamed National Institute of Technology) and Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute (CMERI, CSIR) (established 1958) added to the stature of the new township. Schools, hospitals, parks, and playgrounds all came up. It was new life in new India.
Revival
As the British industrialists left India after independence, many of the industrial empires they left behind were taken over by the Indian
