It's time to kill the ghost of Barog

Barog tunnel on the Kalka-Shimla railway counts among India’s most haunted places. A British officer’s ghost is said to dwell in it. But the legend of this officer is suspiciously short on detail


Barog in Himachal Pradesh is famous for the longest tunnel on the Kalka-Shimla railway, but of late youtubers and trekkers have been descending on it to see an abandoned tunnel and the grave of the British engineer after whom the town is supposedly named.

It’s said that Col Barog – nobody seems to know his first name – was in charge of building tunnel 33. Because it is a very long tunnel – 3,752 feet long – he started digging it from both ends, but his alignment was wrong and the two parts didn’t meet.

Barog, the story says, was censured and fined a rupee. Humiliated, he walked up to the mouth of the flawed tunnel with his dog, and shot himself. Oddly, he was buried there, not in Dagshai, or Solan, or Kasauli, or Subathu. While the story is short on detail, even Barog’s “grave” has ghosted. Nobody has seen it in the past 15 years, at least. A team of Unesco observers that tried to find it in 2007 returned disappointed.

But the story doesn’t end there. While the place was named Barog in the colonel’s memory, and he took up residence there as a ghost, an Indian diviner named Baba Bhalku “helped” the British railway engineers find the right alignment of the tunnel. Full of gratitude for his service, the viceroy is said to have honoured him. Shimla city even has a railway museum named after Bhalku.

Barog before Barog

It’s a fantastic story waiting to be made into a movie, but there is a problem – Barog was called Barog even before work on the tunnel started. This excerpt from The Bombay Gazette of August 14, 1899 is proof:

“A detailed and final reconnaissance for the Simla-Kalka railway has now been completed by Mr Harrington (the chief engineer)….The proposed alignment will necessitate the construction of three important tunnels, viz. Koti spur...Barogh...and Tara Devi.”

Construction of the Kalka-Simla line didn’t start until the summer of 1900. And Barog figures again in a report from The Engineer of May 25, 1900:

“The first sod of the mountain railway from Kalka to Simla has just been turned….The heaviest parts of the undertaking are two large tunnels which have to be made….The second is the Barog tunnel, under the Solon Hill, about halfway to Simla.”

No mention of mistake, or delay

The same report in The Engineer says, “the tunnels are being taken in hand first as they will require upwards of two years to complete…” So, if tunnelling started in May 1900, the earliest it could have finished was in May-June 1902.

A report in The Railway Engineer of December 1902 says the two “headings” of the Barog tunnel were to have met on October 24, 1902 – comfortably close to the original estimate. Yes, the project missed the date, but even in December 1902 there was no sense of alarm or panic over the “delay”.

The report explains that work on the Barog tunnel was taking long because of natural obstacles. For example, its course lay through sandstone punctuated with springs: “The miners having had to work at times under deluges of water.”

Now, if the delay had been on account of a wrong alignment, would the press have glossed over it? Especially the railway and engineering journals? Wrong alignment would have meant a loss of many months, if not years, of effort.

Bhalku or compressed air?

In the legend, Bhalku pulls the tunnel project together with his sixth sense, but news reports from that time show it was a technologically advanced operation. In its May 11, 1901 issue, Indian Engineering talks about a “powerful compressed-air plant now being started” at the Barog tunnel.

Nineteen months later, The Railway Engineer of December 1902 confirms: “The work has been carried through with the aid of heavy air-compressing machinery got out expressly from England.”

Tunneling was only half the work. The tunnel also had to be lined with masonry, a slow job. Three years after work started on the tunnel, The Bombay Gazette of June 15, 1903 said, “The masonry lining of the great Barog tunnel is completed throughout all but 500 feet of its length.”

Not once does the name of Bhalku appear in these reports. It’s unlikely the press would have denied him credit just because he wasn’t white. It’s too good a story – a native diviner deciding the alignment of a railway tunnel – to suppress for racial prejudice.

Radio silence on colonel

The deadline for the Kalka-Simla railway was October 1903, and passenger services started on November 9, 1903. There was no delay. The Barog tunnel was completed within the overall project schedule. Coming back to Col Barog, is it possible that his “mistake” didn’t upset the project at all?

Also, why is there no report about his suicide in the papers from that time? A British colonel killing himself in India would have been a big deal. It would have been reported in not only India but also the UK and Australia. Yet, you find no mention of a Col Barog anywhere. He does not figure even in the project plans. Other people are listed in charge of work at Barog, Dharampur and Solan throughout.

Hence the question: how real is the ghost of Barog?

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The ghost of Col Barog wants some answers

Legend has it that the engineer tasked with building the Barog tunnel on the Kalka-Shimla railway line shot himself after he got the alignment wrong. With frequent repetition, the story has passed into history. But where are the sources to prove it?

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There’s a town called Barog in Wales, and there’s another Barog on the road to Shimla in Himachal Pradesh. The Indian Barog is known for the longest railway tunnel on the Kalka-Shimla route, but in recent years it has become famous for a ghost – the ghost of a British officer named Col Barog.

The story is so good, you wonder why a film hasn’t been made on it. If you haven’t heard the story already, here’s a summary:

When the British started work on the Kalka-Shimla railway, the job of building the longest tunnel fell to Col Barog. Because it was a very long tunnel – more than a kilometre in length – he commenced digging it from both sides. But his alignment was off, the two arms didn’t meet.

The officer was embarrassed, and the government humiliated him some more by fining him a rupee for doing a shoddy job. What did the colonel do? He went up to the mouth of the flawed tunnel on the Shimla side, with his dog, and shot himself.

Thus far, the story has an engineering challenge, failure, humiliation and tragedy. But it gets better. It is said that Barog was buried at the mouth of his tunnel, and the place was named Barog in his memory. Redemption.

Next, an Indian diviner named Baba Bhalku/Balkoo from a village near Chail steps into the picture. He helps the British railway engineers find the right alignment through the weak rock of the hills. Without him, the tunnel could not have been built. The viceroy honours Bhalku. Shimla city now has a railway museum named after him. So, there’s national pride too.

And finally, when all the others who worked on the tunnel have passed, the good colonel decides to stay on in Barog as a ghost. He haunts the tunnel. In a good way, though. He is said to be a friendly ghost. Affable. Causes no trouble.

Tunnel fever

The Barog story has been told for many years. I found it online 20 years ago after I saw the railway tunnel (the one in use) for the first time. And I believed it. Not the bit about the ghost, but the failure and suicide didn’t seem doubtful.

Judged by the increase in YouTube videos on the subject, many others believe it too. Weekend trekkers have been making trips to see Barog’s abandoned tunnel and his grave. Oddly, everybody reports the grave has now disappeared. In 2007, a team of Unesco observers returned after failing to find Barog’s grave.

Was there a body?

In 2021, the internet makes it easy for you to search old books, newspapers, and government papers. I have devoted many hours over the past month searching for Col Barog. My quest began out of curiosity. I wanted to know more about this interesting officer’s case, but today I doubt there was a Col Barog in Barog, and that he killed himself.

The main problem with the story is that Barog was called Barog before work on the tunnel started. So, it could not have been named after an officer who shot himself on failing to complete the tunnel. Here’s an excerpt from The Bombay Gazette of August 14, 1899:

“A detailed and final reconnaissance for the Simla-Kalka railway has now been completed by Mr Harrington (the chief engineer)….The proposed alignment will necessitate the construction of three important tunnels, viz. Koti spur...Barogh...and Tara Devi.” In reports of that time Barog, Solan and Harrington are often spelt as Barogh, Solon and Harington. Shimla is uniformly ‘Simla’.

Actual construction of the Kalka-Simla line started in the summer of 1900. And Barog figures again in a report from The Engineer of May 25, 1900:

“The first sod of the mountain railway from Kalka to Simla has just been turned….The heaviest parts of the undertaking are two large tunnels which have to be made….The second is the Barog tunnel, under the Solon Hill, about halfway to Simla. The tunnels are being taken in hand first as they will require upwards of two years to complete…”

No mention of mistake

Let’s say work on the Barog tunnel started in May 1900. From the beginning, it was known that it would take more than two years to build. The earliest it could have been finished was in May-June 1902. Now, if Col Barog had dug in the wrong direction and realised his mistake only when the tunnel’s two parts didn’t meet, the project would have been delayed by many months, if not years.

Instead, The Railway Engineer of December 1902 reports the two “headings” of the Barog tunnel were to have met on October 24, 1902 – comfortably close to the original estimate. So, right up to September or October, or even December 1902, there was no sense of alarm. No panic. Nor any reports of a “mistake” leading to delay.

The same report explains that work on the Barog tunnel was taking long because of natural obstacles. For example, its course lay through sandstone punctuated with springs: “The miners having had to work at times under deluges of water.”

By then, the rate of advance (of the two halves together) had increased to 50-70 feet every week. The officers and workers were paid a weekly bonus to speed up work, and they toiled “day and night”.

“Tons of dynamite have been used,” the report adds.

Is Baba Bhalku real?

Legend has it that after Col Barog’s suicide, Baba Bhalku pulled the project together and told the railway engineers where to dig. But reports from that time show it was quite a technologically advanced operation. In its May 11, 1901 issue, Indian Engineering talks about a “powerful compressed-air plant now being started” at the Barog tunnel.

The Railway Engineer of December 1902 also says, “The work has been carried through with the aid of heavy air-compressing machinery got out expressly from England.”

And tunneling was only half the work. The tunnels also had to be lined with masonry, which cost considerable time and money. Three years after work started on the tunnel, it was nearing completion. The Bombay Gazette of June 15, 1903 says, “The masonry lining of the great Barog tunnel is completed throughout all but 500 feet of its length.” The entire tunnel is 3,752 feet long.

Not once does the name of Bhalku appear in these reports. It’s unlikely that the press would deny him credit just because he wasn’t white. It’s too good a story – a native diviner deciding the alignment of a railway tunnel – to suppress out of racial prejudice.

Other questions

The original deadline for the Kalka-Simla railway was October 1903, and it opened in November that year. There was no delay at all. The Barog tunnel was completed within the overall project deadline. It took longer than originally anticipated, but that was because of the unexpected difficulties encountered.

Coming back to Col Barog, if he did shoot himself at the mouth of his wrongly aligned tunnel, why was he buried there? Why not in Subathu or Dagshai or Kasauli? There were Christian cemeteries all around.

Also, why is there no report about his suicide in the papers from that time? A colonel killing himself would have been a big deal. It would have been reported not only in India but also the UK and Australia. Yet, you find no mention of a Col Barog anywhere. Besides, he’s not mentioned even in the project plans. Other people are listed in charge of work at Barog, Dharampur and Solan throughout.

Finally, if you have visited the other tunnel, rather cave, you would have noticed it’s not big enough for a train to pass. It’s quite low in fact, somewhat like the mouth of a coal mine. And maybe that’s what it was, for as the Punjab State Gazetteer for 1904 says, “In tunnelling the Barog hill section of the Kalka-Simla railway a coal seam was also seen.”

Trains those days ran on coal, and a coal mine halfway to Simla would have been very useful. But that’s just conjecture. I don’t know what the other tunnel was for, but I find it hard to believe it had anything to do with the Barog railway tunnel.

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When summer meant a ban on mithai

In the 1970s, Uttar Pradesh had a law that gave a police officer the power to “enter and search any place or premises where he has reason to believe that…”

It wasn’t about curbing gunrunning, or bootlegging, or prostitution. The ‘UP Milk and Milk Products Control Order’ was all about preventing the diversion of milk to other states, and for other uses, such as the production of paneer and mithai in the summer months.

Nor was UP alone in this. In August 1965, West Bengal had banned the manufacture of dairy sweets in Kolkata through the West Bengal Channa Sweets Control Order. Punjab’s milk products control order had come into force in June 1966. The Centre had issued ‘Delhi, Meerut and Bulandshahr Milk and Milk Products Control Order’ in 1969. And in Delhi, wedding hosts weren’t allowed to serve sweets made of “khoya, chhana, rabri and khurchan to more than 25 persons at a time at social functions,” following an order passed in 1965.

All of these orders were meant to fight the severe shortage of milk in the summer months when fodder and water for milch animals were scarce. Even otherwise, India was a milk-starved country in the first few decades after Independence. During 1952-55, hardly half a cup of milk (126g) was available per person, per day. In some states, the average daily availability was just 30-50 grams per person.

A large part of the country’s milk requirement was fulfilled with imported – often donated – milk powder. On March 29, 1967, this discussion occurred in the Rajya Sabha:

Niren Ghosh, MP from West Bengal: “There is dearth of milk powder supply in West Bengal. As a result, the entire milk supply scheme is going to collapse next month, and the children and the mothers are not going to get milk.”

S Chandrasekhar, minister of health and family planning: “I know, sir…all the available supplies are being directed to Bihar because of the drought situation…even in Bihar, since the supplies are limited, they are being directed for the use of vulnerable groups of population like nursing mothers and infants and young children.”

So, the policymakers of that era had a reason to ban the diversion of milk for all “non-essential” uses, including mithai. “Government are aware that manufacturers of milk sweets will be adversely affected. But milk sweets are a luxury product…” minister of state for agriculture Annasaheb Shinde said in May 1969.

Happily, Operation Flood was successful, and at the start of the 1990s you find minister of state for agriculture K C Lenka telling Lok Sabha: “now the ban is on conversion of milk into milk powder and condensed milk only.”

Three more decades have passed, and few remember those summers of milk shortage. Now, if a cop knocks at your door, you know he won’t say, “Got milk?”.

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From AIR to Doordarshan, how India got hooked on TV

For about a decade before cable TV caught on in the 1990s, city roofs had turned into a forest of aluminium fronds. Each house in every building had its own ‘tree’ on the roof. You needed them to receive Doordarshan (DD) signals, although if you lived close enough to a TV station an aluminium clothes hanger worked fine.

Those old antennas were veritable lightning rods. You were supposed to unplug the telly in a storm. They were also directional. A strong wind or even the burden of perched pigeons could disorient them, leaving you staring at an eruption of white and grey dots – colours, if you had a colour TV. The accompanying noise was unbearable. You ran upstairs, leaving someone in the room as a guide.

“Now?”
“No.”
“Now?”
“No.”
“Now?”
“A little more… That’s it. Stop, stop, stop.”

The whole building knew you had set your antenna right. You could go back to your Sunday evening movie, or Wimbledon final, or Chitrahar, or Rajani, or whatever else you had been watching. But there was nothing you could do if a big leader died. Days of national mourning followed during which DD shut shop and went home, or opened it only to drown you in sorrow with gloomy shastriya sangeet.

Not that DD was exciting otherwise. Children nodded off in the middle of the evening news. Grown-ups stayed up in the hope of catching an episode of Buniyaad, or Jeremy Brett in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, or Satyajit Ray Presents, or Lucy, or whatever came afterwards. It was not unusual for DD to repeat episodes, but viewers watched them anyway out of habit.

Children had only Sunday mornings to look forward to (Johnny Soko and his Flying Robot was a rare evening show). Mickey Mouse, Spiderman, He Man, Street Hawk, Appu aur Pappu, Knight Rider and a few others walked the 80s’ generation to maturity. But Ramayan, Mahabharat, Chanakya, Bharat Ek Khoj and other shows had started encroaching on their time. The children twitched impatiently as Ramayan’s arrows took longer than intercontinental missiles to collide. When cable came, they happily jumped ship to sing, “I want my MTV.”

Radio with images

Still, DD in the early-90s was a much-improved avatar of its original. From the beginning, television in India had been intended to educate, not entertain. It started when All India Radio (AIR) approached the United States Information Service (USIS) in 1958 for help to start television services. USIS loaned AIR some cameras and other equipment, and Unesco gave 20 TV sets and portable generators to set up tele-clubs in Delhi.

And so, with a puny, 500-watt Philips transmitter, Delhi got India’s first TV service on September 15, 1959. For some years, there were just two shows of one hour each over the week. And they were only available in a radius of 24km. Parts of Ghaziabad and Gurgaon districts had no signals till July 1971, when a more powerful transmitter increased the range to 60km.

Nobody missed the signals, though. Even in 1973, Delhi had only 75,000 TV sets. Entire India bought 97,000 sets in 1975. The government kept a count because, back then, you needed a licence to own a TV or even a radio, for that matter. The annual licence fee was Rs 30. So, you had to be rich to have your private telly. In 1974, a 19-inch B/W TV cost about Rs 2,100 in India, while in the US it was worth $150, or Rs 1,200 at the prevailing exchange rate of roughly Rs 8 to a dollar.

While Delhi experimented with television as an educational tool through the 1960s, other metros didn’t get their stations until the early 1970s. Mumbai station was commissioned on October 2, 1972.

The main Delhi experiment in those years was called ‘Delhi School Television Project’. It started in 1960, and by 1964-65, 62% of the city’s 367 higher secondary schools had a TV set to show students 20-minute lessons.

‘Agricultural Television Pilot Project’ was the next big thing. On January 26, 1967, it started Krishi Darshan, the longest running show on Indian TV. But the audience for it shrank rapidly. A survey found the main reason farmers didn’t watch it was because they came home tired after working in the field and weren’t in a mood for ‘education’ about crops. The show had no entertainment component.

When AIR started daily telecasts from August 1, 1965, it wedged in some entertainment in its schedule. West Germany had helped Delhi build a modern studio. Once a month, it showed a feature film edited to fit a 90-minute slot. Then came Chitrahar, a Bollywood music show, but the guiding principle for both the movie and the songs was “suitability for viewing in a family setting.” Content for TV had to be “free from sex, nudity, violence and crime.” Each Chitrahar show was previewed by AIR’s senior programme officer and an assistant station director.

Despite the ‘sanskari’ philosophy, a 1972 survey showed Chitrahar was the favourite show in Delhi, closely followed by the Hindi news and the Hindi feature film. Krishi Darshan came last.

Doordarshan is born

Through the 1960s, the government neglected TV. Making shows was difficult because import controls kept 16mm cameras, film and processing labs scarce. A committee pointed out that studios were forced to erase old interviews and other programmes from tapes to reuse them. As a result, the BBC had more footage of Indian leaders than AIR.

It was the government’s policy then to not allow commercials on TV. An AIR director general said, “If TV is able to sell advertising time, then we will have to say goodbye to the present philosophy of TV.” But the 70s brought the realisation that Indian TV needed a new direction. More entertainment, if anything. More money too. “The newscaster should become secondary to visuals,” was a wise but ignored view of that time.

Between 1969 and 1973, the daily telecast duration had doubled from 2 hours to 4 hours, but the big change happened on April 1, 1976 when Indian radio and television were separated. The TV arm became Doordarshan (a literal translation of ‘television’) that day, with a revolving logo that looked like the rounded aperture blades of a camera lens. It was also the day Indian TV went commercial. All those memorable ads – Liril, Bajaj, Nirma, Rasna, Garden Vareli, Luna, to name a few – wouldn’t have become part of our collective memory otherwise. Of course, we could still have exchanged notes about Ek Chidiya, Anek Chidiya, and Mile Sur Mera Tumhara today.

Gradually, Indian TV became less preachy and more friendly with a little foreign help. Star Trek found an Indian following. The usually dry weekday evenings were sometimes brightened by English detectives in Target, and Shoestring. There was also the German detective show Derrick, and our own Byomkesh Bakshi. Didi’s Comedy Show, also from Germany, raised many laughs. Oshin from Japan was a lesson in grace.

There was no English pop on DD, but once a year you got to watch the Grammy highlights. Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Alannah Myles, REM – the singers who stared at you from cassette covers came alive for an hour. And sanskari DD could do nothing when Robert Palmer left parents red-faced before kids with Simply Irresistible.

In 1982, DD had switched to colour telecasts in preparation for the Asian Games, and in April 1984 the country saw its only cosmonaut, Rakesh Sharma, tell PM Indira Gandhi India looked ‘Sare Jahan Se Achha’ from space.

While DD was scoring popularity points, it needed a blockbuster, which arrived in July 1984 in the form of Hum Log. A family drama with social issues at its core and veteran actor Ashok Kumar’s thoughtful epilogues after each episode, it prodded thousands of families to buy a TV. There was an explosion of TV brands – Crown, Weston, Uptron, Nelco, Texla, Salora...down to Oscar, Onida and Binatone.

Hum Log became so popular, by one account DD received 2 lakh letters from viewers over its 18-month run, and the cast got an equal number. Other shows replicated Hum Log’s success in the decade ahead, and the Indian viewer resigned herself to a life with DD, accepting it would be mostly dull but also interesting in parts. Then cable arrived and cleared the forest of antennas.

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There’s a little bit of China, Australia and New Zealand in Gujarat’s Somnath temple

The Somnath temple in Gujarat is quite a cosmopolitan building. Its foundations have absorbed waters from the “Hoang Ho, the Yangtse and the Pearl rivers” in China, the Murray river in Australia, and the Auckland Harbour in New Zealand, among others.

This story is set in 1951, the year when the temple was reconsecrated. Several months before the installation of the lingam at the temple on May 11, 1951, the chief of the temple trustees started sending letters to India’s embassies abroad for contributions of water and twigs from all corners of the world.

Digvijaysinghji, the temple trust’s chairman, was also the Jam Saheb of Navanagar and Rajpramukh (titular head) of Saurashtra state. His quasi-official designation left Indian diplomats in a quandary. Prime Minister Nehru, a staunch secularist, repeatedly expressed his displeasure over such demands being made upon embassy officials, but he was unable to stop the flow of waters to India “from all seven oceans of the world.”

On April 17, Nehru wrote a letter to K M Munshi, the man who had been steering the temple’s reconstruction after Sardar Patel’s death.

“My dear Munshi, our ambassador in Peking writes to me that he has received a letter from the trustees of the Somnath temple asking the Embassy to collect and send waters from the Hoang Ho, the Yangtse and the Pearl rivers and also some twigs from the Tien Shan mountains. It was stated that this was necessary for the reconsecration of the Somnath temple…”

The Mercury, published from Hobart, reported on March 7, 1951:

“A request from India for 12 ounces of water from the Southern Ocean at Hobart Town has been received by the Tasmanian branch president of the United Nations Association (Mr J B Piggott). The water — sealed in a special container — was airmailed from Hobart yesterday.

Well, that’s how much 12 ounces is: 

“Other things needed for the ceremony are: 12 oz of water from the Murray river, 1/4 pound of a few twigs of any species of vegetation from the Australian Alps, and 1/4 pound of soil from Canberra,” The Mercury said.


From New Zealand came “water from Auckland Harbour, twigs from the Southern Alps, and soil from Wellington… for this ceremony water, flora and soil were required not only from the sacred places in India, but also water from the seven traditional oceans of the world, and soil and flora from distant lands.”

A week after the ceremony, The Chronicle of Adelaide reported that more than 100,000 pilgrims from all over India had come to see it. “Astrologers marked out 9.47am on May 11, 1951, as the most auspicious time in the calendar for the ceremony… At that precise moment a linga or column of black marble was lowered through the roof into the centre of the inner sanctum round which the new temple is being built.” It must have been quite a spectacle.

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Peas and rhythms: How India lost its population battle in the 1950s

Back in my school days the social studies textbooks said India’s population was 700 million. Thirty years later, it has doubled and we are worried. But worrying about population growth is an old Indian ritual by now. On December 20, 1956, India’s then health minister Rajkumari Amrit Kaur said this in Parliament:

“The increase of population in India constitutes a big national problem.”

The country’s population at the time was a third of what it is now, but growing fast. In 1951, we were a country of 361 million. In just a decade, we increased by 21% to 439 million. With that population and today’s GDP we could have been reasonably well-off. But if our leadership was alert to the population explosion all those years ago, how did we continue multiplying for the next 60 years?

Neither urgency nor direction

Did government of India not try hard enough to check population growth, or did it stray in the wrong direction? Both. India’s ‘family planning’ or birth-control effort started soon after Independence, but it lacked urgency and direction.

“While government are not unaware of the problem, it is not possible for them to initiate any countrywide scheme of control on a matter like this without a very careful study of all factors involved,” Kaur had told Parliament on July 29, 1952.

It was a reasonable approach, but was the government really making “a very careful study”? All it had done until then was set up three experimental centres for pilot studies on a birth-control measure that both scientists and planners did not find feasible. Steamrolling all opposition, the government wasted several years on this measure.

The rhythm folly

The government’s pet birth control measure was called ‘rhythm method’. Instead of contraceptives it required knowledge of a woman’s menstrual cycle. Couples who took the course were advised to have intercourse on days when ovulation was least likely to occur.

Even in 1952 doctors spoke against the method. Kaur admitted: “Some of the women’s organisations have given their opinion. They are in favour of the use of mechanical contraceptives.”

The pill was not available then but condoms and foam tablets were. Did the government try to popularize these? Asked whether the government intended to subsidise contraceptives for the poor, on September 13, 1954, Kaur replied: “No, government is not supplying contraceptives to anybody.”

What about grants to institutions and experts for research in family planning? The government did not distribute any funds to them. Its focus was on the complicated rhythm method that required careful training.

There were only three centres  –  two in New Delhi and one in Ramanagaram, Mysore  –  to train married couples in the method, and here’s the government’s own statement about Ramanagaram from August 24, 1953.

The centre covered 14 villages with a total population of 8,000. Training was reserved for couples among whom the wife was aged under 40 years. The area had 941 such couples, and 712 signed up.

The programme started in September-October 1952, but “by the end of June 1953, only 385 menstruating women had been actively followed for various lengths of time. Tentative advice on the rhythm method is given after the examination of three menstrual cycles. Final rhythm is worked out on the basis of six menstrual cycles.”

How was such a slow and complicated scheme expected to cover entire India?

To know their safe dates couples had to use aids like beads and calendar cards, and many were not happy using them. Women also did not like the invasion of their privacy for drawing up rhythm charts.

Headstrong course

The government ignored all advice. These are some questions and answers from the September 13, 1954 debate in Parliament:

Mrs Violet Alva: “Dr V K R Rao, who was the delegate at the Population Control Conference, had stated that the rhythm method was not acceptable to the countryside and that some other method had to be thought of…”

Rajkumari Amrit Kaur: “Many people say many things. The government should consider them all and see what is feasible for the country.”

Dr Mrs Seeta Parmanand: “What is the percentage of people, both doctors and social workers, who are in favour of the rhythm method?”

Rajkumari Amrit Kaur: “Government has no information as to what proportion favours which method.”

Dr D H Variava: “May I know if there are any statistics about lowering of births after the adoption of this family planning for about 2 or 3 years?”

Rajkumari Amrit Kaur: “No statistics can be arrived at after one year.”

Peas, not pills

Instead of pushing straightforward birth control measures, the government also wasted time and money on ideas like developing oral contraceptives from field peas.

In 1955–56 one Mumbai-based scientist, Dr Khanolkar, carried out research on the subject, and later work was continued by two doctors at All India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health. Tests on animals showed that pea extract caused abortions when taken in very high doses, but it did not find use as a human contraceptive.

Government also released a movie, ‘Planned Parenthood’, in English and six other languages, and started a free magazine, ‘Family Planning News’, with a circulation of 10,000 copies, but neither campaign had an impact.

End of rhythm

For six years, the government stubbornly shrugged off criticism of the rhythm method and then just as it had sprung the scheme on India, it gave it a quiet burial.

On September 16, 1958, Dr Mrs Seeta Parmanand asked this question in Parliament: “Whether the experiment on rhythmic method of family planning has been stopped?”

The new health minister, D P Karmakar, replied: “Experiments exclusively on rhythmic method have been stopped.”

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BVO: Modern India’s first big food scare

In 2016, bread briefly became a dubious food article in India after reports said it contains potassium bromate, but it was not the first time a bromine food additive had become controversial in the country. In the late 1980s, when we were a far less health-conscious nation, a food additive called BVO (brominated vegetable oil) made newspaper headlines, and figured in parliamentary debates and school tiffin talk alike.

BVO was an emulsifier/stabiliser used in orange- and lemon-flavoured sodas like Gold Spot and Limca those days. An emulsion is a mixture of two or more liquids that normally do not mix with each other. For instance, fat floats on water, but milk is a stable blend of the two. Added to soft drinks, BVO kept the water and flavouring substances in Limca, for instance, from separating.

But there were doubts about BVO’s safety. Some researchers said it could cause cancer, others linked it to memory loss, and skin and nerve disorders. The United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization had recommended long-term studies on the chemical to establish its adverse effects.

In 1988, the developed world was divided over BVO’s safety. The US, Canada and Australia allowed its use while West Germany (the Wall was still standing), Japan and the UK had banned it. The irrepressible Subramanian Swamy raised a question about BVO in the parliament on August 8, 1989: “Whether government are aware that citrus-flavoured aerated cold drinks contain carcinogenic brominated vegetable oil?”

India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had already removed BVO from the list of permitted food emulsifiers and stabilisers on April 15, 1988, but as the industry was not ready for the change it was decided to defer the ban by two years.

So April 15, 1990 was the last day when BVO was legally added to soft drinks in India. Of course, its use did not stop immediately. When officers from the Delhi administration’s Department of Prevention of Food Adulteration raided four bottling factories on April 17, 19 and 30, they found BVO in two samples of Gold Spot (the zing thing) and (lime ’n’ lemony) Limca  —  both brands owned by Parle (Exports) Private Limited. The foul samples were found at Delhi Bottling Co on Shivaji Marg and Pearl Drinks, Lawrence Road, in the capital.

Parle denied it was still using BVO, and published newspaper advertisements claiming Limca and Gold Spot were clean. The matter reached Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission. On May 22, 1990, MRTPC told Parle to stop using BVO and ordered an investigation into the conduct of soft drink makers.

A headline in the July 7, 1990 edition of The Hindustan Times announced the verdict: “Limca ad false, says MRTPC”. A day earlier, MRTPC had ordered Parle to stop the false and misleading advertisements. Still, Limca ads continued on the national broadcaster Doordarshan.

Asked about it, the government came up with a typically hogwash reply: MRTPC had not issued any instructions to Doordarshan and “advertisements of soft drinks, including Limca, are being telecast on Doordarshan only after obtaining a written undertaking supported with documentary proof from the clients that these do not contain BVO.”

Parle’s rival firm Campa Beverages/Pure Drinks escaped flak after the ban as MRTPC observed: “the products of the respondents do not contain any BVO.”


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