Howrah Engineering Industry Fulia Handloom Cotton Bengal

Howrah district across the Hooghly from Kolkata contains India's largest concentration of small engineering workshops — the Howrah engineering cluster of lathes, forges, and foundries — as well as the Howrah Bridge (now Rabindra Setu) and Howrah Station, the colonial-era landmarks that made the district the gateway to Calcutta. Fulia town in Nadia (bordering Howrah) is one of West Bengal's major handloom cotton weaving centres, producing the Fulia cotton sari — a soft-finished plain-weave cotton sari with bright zari borders popular as a Bengali everyday sari — woven on pit looms by Muslim Ansari weavers in the town's handloom cluster. Howrah's agricultural blocks along the Damodar delta grow jute, potato, and vegetables for the Kolkata market, contrasting with the heavy industrial character of the district's urban core.