The Business Towns

Lumding Town, Assam, was once the starting point of one of India’s slowest express trains. After 1992, the Barak Valley Express took about 12 hours 30 minutes to cover 213…

Hojai Town, Assam, gives its name to a district it doesn’t actually govern. The district headquarters, with the Deputy Commissioner’s office, courts and police administration, is at Sankardev Nagar, about…

Dibrugarh Town, Dibrugarh, has the oldest railway station in Northeast India, and it may be close to closing. Dibrugarh Town station (DBRT) dates back to the line opened from the…

Nelamangala Town, Bengaluru, is the point on the city’s north-western edge where the highway to Mumbai and the highway to Mangaluru split. Anyone who has driven out of Bengaluru towards…

Rajpura Town, Rajpura, was never meant to be a permanent town. In 1947, when refugees from the princely state of Bahawalpur arrived, the site was a thinly populated railway stop…

Khurda Town, Khurda, is one of those places where the railway station named after it isn’t actually in the town. Khurda Road Junction, the headquarters of an entire East Coast…

White Town, Puducherry, got its name from segregation, not from the colour of its buildings. The French built the city on either side of a canal: Europeans lived on the…

Lake Town, Kolkata, has a scaled-down Big Ben on its main road. The Kolkata Time Zone Tower on VIP Road is a one-third-size replica of the famous London clock tower,…

Yelahanka New Town, Bengaluru, began as a government housing project. The Karnataka Housing Board laid it out as a planned township in the early 1980s, north of the city. Four…