Hooghly River Jute Mill Industry Bengal History West Bengal

The Hooghly River corridor in West Bengal — particularly the districts of Hooghly, Howrah, and North 24 Parganas — was the world's jute manufacturing capital from the 1850s to the 1960s, with over 100 jute mills employing more than 350,000 workers in a continuous industrial belt from Barrackpore to Bhadreswar that produced gunny bags, hessian cloth, and rope for global commodity packaging. Jute cultivation in Bengal feeds the mill sector through smallholder farmers in Nadia, Murshidabad, Hooghly, Cooch Behar, and North Bengal who grow Corchorus capsularis in monsoon paddyfields for fibre retting and sale to licensed jute dealers. The industry went into structural decline after the partition of Bengal (1947) which separated jute cultivation areas in East Bengal (now Bangladesh) from the mills in West Bengal. Contemporary jute diversification — promoted by the National Jute Board — includes jute composite materials, geotextiles for soil erosion control, jute shopping bags replacing plastic, and jute furniture in a sector employing approximately 250,000 organised workers. Mandaous (jute bale markets) at Naihati and Jagaddal remain active raw jute trading centres along the Hooghly.