KGF: The history of the rise of a dream city

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1 year ago

Land of gold! The place where ‘gold’ results. Not a crop of gold, real gold. Rare metal with less corrosion of dazzling golden color. Twenty years ago, the KGF or Kolar Gold Field was the gold mine.

KGF is now a well-known name in Kannada language box office storms. But after 2001, no one remembered KGF for the last 21 years. Those who are watching KGF now have named the city 'Ghost City'

Kannada cinema KGFO has been seen repeatedly referring to the area as 'hell'. However, the central government of India was not proud of this KGF. Former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru took a loan from the World Bank to show KGF.

Kolar Gold Field aka KGF in Karnataka was once a village called Kolar. After all, everyone knew and believed that gold was mixed in the dust of this village. It is from this belief that the rulers have probably occupied Kolar all the time since the reign of the Chola-Chalukyas. One reign lasted from 800 to more than a thousand years. Due to the policy of the ruler, the state has expanded and sometimes decreased. Yet no one allowed Kola to be lost. However, it is not known whether the Chola and Chalukya kings used to dig gold at that time, even though they took possession of Kolar. According to the official documents of India, that work started in 1875.

LoveleMichael Fitzgerald Lovell, a retired British soldier, began extracting gold from underground in the first collar. A British historian has written a book on the history of Kolar's gold, which is rich in various facts. That book falls into the hands of Lovele.

Knowing the old history of the collar, he decides to start looking for gold in the collar's soil. Lavel was initially successful. However, extracting gold from the mine required a lot of money. Michael did not have that ability. He sold the Kolar gold mine to a British company called John Taylor & Sons.

The growth of KGF started in 1880 with the help of that British company. At that time Bangalore was the capital of Karnataka. But a village that suddenly became a city 100 km away from there became the heart of the southern state. This is the pleasant weather of Karnataka. There was no end to the modern facilities on his collar. The British staff living there started calling Kolar 'Mini England'.

Kolar was the first city in India to get electricity connection. Not only in India, Kolar was the second city in Asia after Tokyo in Japan to have access to electricity. The British government built a hydroelectric project on the nearby Kaveri River for mining. A huge lake was also dug in Kolar to supply water to the mine.

What was not KGF! It had its own golf course, hospital, English medium school-college, convent school for boys and girls, clubs, various entertainment facilities. Even large bungalows of British architecture were built for British and Indian officials living in the KGF. Although the miners did not have access to this ‘mini England’, the miners did not have access to it. They lived outside the bright light of the collar. In a small hut-like room. Those areas were called Coolie Lane. The houses are called Shanti. The miners used to suffer there. However, people from different parts of India, including Bangalore, used to come to work in Kolar.

By 1902, 95 per cent of India's total gold production came from coal. Until the beginning of this century, gold was extracted from KGF. The last time gold was extracted from KGF was in 2001. However, from the middle of the last century, the situation began to change gradually.