Author Paramita Sen on What Batanagar Tells Us About the India We Lost

For generations of residents, Batanagar was more than the home of a shoe factory. It was a self-contained world of schools, clubs, sport, gardens, housing and shared spaces, shaped by the unusual ambition of a multinational company to build not just a workplace but a community. Paramita Sen grew up inside that world, the daughter of a Bata executive, and returned to it decades later as a writer determined to understand the place beyond her childhood memories. Her research revealed a more complicated history—of racial segregation alongside deliberate community-building, of labour conflict and social change, and of a Czech company gradually becoming an Indian institution. Today, much of Batanagar’s physical heritage has disappeared. In this conversation with Reader’s Digest India, Sen reflects on memory, history and the people who made the township what it was.

Reader’s Digest India: You grew up believing that Bata was essentially Indian, only to discover much later that its origins lay in a small Czech town. Why do you think Bata succeeded in becoming Indian in a way that most foreign brands never quite manage?

Paramita Sen: Actually, I always knew Bata had Czech origins, as did most people who lived in Batanagar. It was folks outside the township who thought Bata was Indian, and it is easy to understand why.

Bata’s pioneering blueprint through which it expanded its business in India included localized production, pricing and complete assimilation with the local population. Batanagar was designed to bring people together and foster community among its diverse group of employees and residents. PM Nehru encouraged Thomas Jr. to replace top leadership at the company with Indian employees which Bata agreed to readily. Unlike other multinational corporations that favoured a centralized management style, Bata designated Indians to manage the Indian firm. Then there were the shoes—starting with Jan Marka and Susta Juta during the pre-war years to Keds, Naughty Boy, Hawai, Marie Claire—all well-loved brands that were manufactured to cater to needs of different segments of the population. By the time, the company went public in 1973, and changed its name to Bata India, it had cemented itself in the public imagination as an Indian brand.

The first Bata factory in India, at Konnagar. Photo Credit: Reproduced from Milan Balaban, Jan Herman and Zdeněk Pokluda, Bata Across Continents (Zlín: Tomas Bata University, 2022).

Your memories of Batanagar are deeply personal—the Hooghly, the gardens, school buses, clubs, neighbours and the rhythms of colony life. At what point did nostalgia become an unreliable narrator, and did the historical research ever force you to revise your own memories of the place?

Great question, thanks for asking! I was writing about the bus ride back home the day Mrs. Gandhi was assassinated, when I thought I’d call my sister. I was 100 per cent sure she was among the group of children picked up from school that day and taken to Bata Head Office and later to the Managing Director’s home where they spent the night. When I asked her about her recollections of the day she said, "Don’t you remember? I skipped school. I had a cold!" Clearly I didn’t, but thankfully I had the opportunity to revise that part of the manuscript. Unreliability, as we know, is part of the landscape of memoir writing, so I’d invite readers to seek out emotional truth in the memoir chapters.

I would not say historical research nudged me to revise my memories, but it did add depth to my understanding of the place. The discovery that racial factors lay at the root of spatial segregation was revealing, though not entirely surprising. Another seemingly paradoxical finding was that cohesion was an integral part of the Bata blueprint, not simply an incidental by-product of our shared living experience. That opened my eyes to the possibilities of creating urban spaces with intent and design to promote community.

Batanagar was designed around a factory, but it eventually became much more than a workplace—with schools, clubs, sport, housing and an extraordinary sense of community. Do you think that model worked because Bata was unusually progressive, or because companies in that era were willing to take on responsibilities that businesses today would consider outside their remit?

Both. Bata was unique in that it was one of the first multinational corporations to adopt the company township model in India. Indian companies like Tata and Kirloskar were already doing it. The nature of the footwear industry in India also encouraged Bata to be singularly progressive. Historically, the industry employed Dalits who worked with animal hides while the cottage industry in shoemaking was predominantly Muslim. Both were disadvantaged groups that colonial rulers and domestic investors had little interest in, which made Bata’s entry into this market easier.

The book spans the Bengal Famine, Independence, the Naxalite movement and economic liberalization, yet Batanagar often seems to exist in a world of its own. Was that sense of insulation real, or is it partly the privilege of childhood memory?

It was partly the privilege of childhood memory, but the insulation you bring up was very real. I grew up within a gated community inside a company town and as children, we led sheltered lives. But that was not the case for everyone who lived in Batanagar. The Naxal movement, for instance, severely impacted the township. Hetalkhali, on the outskirts of the factory, was a Naxal stronghold and several young men from our town were exposed to the violence that was widespread during that time.

The original front gate of Batanagar, with its first dwelling in the background. Photo Credit Courtesy Olek Plesek.

You write about people who might otherwise never appear in a corporate history—the domestic workers, factory workers, teachers, neighbours and the unnamed employee whose warning helped you escape Batanagar during your board examinations. Why was it important for you to tell the history through these individual relationships rather than through Bata’s corporate milestones?

As a former resident, I knew these people were integral to the warp and weft of Batanagar. They provided the structure and stability upon which we, the children, built our lives. As a writer, I’m drawn to stories of human interest and connection, and it was important for me to tell the story of Batanagar through individuals who were vital to the functioning of the town.

One of the most fascinating relationships in the book is between Batanagar and the wider idea of India. The township was conceived by a Czech company, attracted the attention of figures such as Nehru and Tagore, and eventually produced things as recognisably Indian as the hawai chappal. When did Batanagar stop being a foreign experiment and become an Indian institution?

I’d say the transformation started soon after the 1939 strike in Batanagar. The strike and the violence that followed led to a complete overhaul and reset of labour-management relations, which in turn spearheaded a long-term partnership between company and township across social, economic and technological areas. During the next 40 years, Bata built on its many successes, establishing its position as an Indian institution.

Your father’s career is an important thread through the book, but so are the lives of the people around him. Was there a particularly surprising discovery you made that fundamentally changed your view of him or anyone else?

Hmm, don’t think so, not about my father. But since reading the book, friends have come forward with additional material about some of the people mentioned in my book. For instance, I learnt my Bengali tutor spent years in Burma, and one of the first Bata employees was under constant surveillance by the communist government when he returned to the Czech Republic. Filing this material away for a possible second edition.

An early Bata shop in India, 1939 Photo Credit: Reproduced from Milan Balaban, Jan Herman and Zdeněk Pokluda, Bata Across Continents (Zlín: Tomas Bata University, 2022).

The book’s later history raises an uncomfortable question: Bata India eventually adapted to liberalization and reinvented itself, while Batanagar itself declined and much of its physical heritage disappeared. Was the company successful at adapting precisely because it was willing to abandon the model that had made Batanagar special?

The short answer is yes. Facing headwinds from liberalization, Bata India had no choice but to abandon the old model, become leaner and reinvent itself. Subsequently, prolonged labour troubles forced the company to move headquarters to Gurgaon in 2004. Eventually, after rounds of restructuring the company got back on its feet, and became profitable again in 2010. But what was lost was a distinctive company town with a strong culture of connection and cosmopolitanism, and a social welfare infrastructure that sustained its residents for decades.

There is a larger irony at the heart of Batanagar: the company town was built around the idea that work could create community, but modern economic life increasingly separates the workplace from the places and people that give life meaning. Do you think the disappearance of Batanagar represents progress—or a particular kind of inevitable loss?

I understand there was an economic argument to be made in this case, but I’d still land on loss. For many, it was a loss of livelihood as well as a physical sense of home, community and identity. As for inevitability, I believe things could have been done differently. Batanagar did not have to be demolished—it could have been restored and given a new lease of life as a profitable undertaking much like the old industrial townships in the United States.

If you returned to Batanagar today not as its former resident but as the author who has spent years investigating its history, what would you look at differently—and what would you hope never changes in your memory of it?

I would look at the township’s spatial segregation through a different lens. What I hope never changes, is my memory of our shared spaces of childhood.

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