Although the name Kalikata had been mentioned in the rent-roll of the Great Mughal emperor Akbar and also in Manasa-Mangal, to explore the history of Calcutta, we have to go back to the 17 th. century. It was in 1690....Job Charnock came to the bank of the river Hooghly (it's the part of the Ganges) and took the lease of the three villages- Sutanuti, Govindapur and Kolikata(Calcutta) as a trading post of British East India Company.

The city became famous in 1756, when Siraj-Ud-Dawlah, the last independent nawab of Bengal, captured the city . But the British regained their power in 1757 and the city was recaptured under Robert Clive. Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of India, made it the seat of the supreme courts of justice and the supreme revenue administration, and Calcutta became the capital of British India in 1772. By 1800 Calcutta had become a busy and flourishing town, the center of the cultural as well as the political and economic life of Bengal.

Area: City - 40 square miles (100 square km), Metropolitan - 533 square miles (1,380 square km)
Population: City - 3,305,006, Metropolitan - 11,100,000
Language Spoken: Bengali (Vernacular), Hindi, English, and Urdu.

Primary education is supervised by the government of West Bengal and is free in schools run by the municipal corporation. A large number of children, however, attend recognized schools that are under private management. Calcutta has three major universities: the University of Calcutta, Jadavpur University, and Rabindra Bharati University. The Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, is pretty close to Calcutta. Calcutta also hosts one of the Indian Institutes of Management. Highly recognised Research institutions include the Indian Statistical Institute, the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, the Bose Institute (natural science), and the All-India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health, which is a constituent college of the University of Calcutta.

Business

Calcutta is the world's largest processor of jute; also important are food processing, hosiery and footwear production, the manufacture of textiles, and the making of iron and steel goods. The coal mines, tea gardens, and industrial concerns of West Bengal and neighbouring states are managed and financed from Calcutta. Chief exports through the city's port are crude steel, pig iron, coal, machinery, gunnies (jute sacking), sugar, and tea. Engineering constitutes the city's other major industry. In addition, city factories produce and distribute numerous consumer goods--notably foodstuffs, beverages, tobacco, and textiles and chemicals. It is also a major centre for printing, publishing, and newspaper circulation, as well as for recreation and entertainment. Also the Calcutta stock exchange plays an important part in the organized financial market of the country.

Climate

Calcutta is mostly humid. The temperature in Calcutta reaches a maximum of about 108 F (42 C) and a minimum of about 44 F (7 C). The average annual rainfall is about 64 inches (1,625 mm). Most of this is between June and September, the rainy season. The winter is short, from November till February.