Can the Calcutta Stock Exchange revive and relive its glory days?
“Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.” – Francis Bacon Bilash Rai Outside the stately Calcutta Stock Exchange (CSE) at 7 Lyons Range, row after row of closely packed, ramshackle cubicles buzz with activity. Hundreds of operators, all clad in white dhoti-kurtas, sit on gaddi mats, each frantically calling out numbers and talking on several phones at once. What takes place along this narrow street is just as important as what happens inside the CSE building, as these brokers are as knowledgeable as any about market trends and moves made by large companies. Even the reality of a burgeoning culture of online trading has not cut into this flourishing trading, which has long been a part of the CSE’s distinct identity and history. Share trading in colonial Calcutta actually began seven decades before the establishment of the CSE. Already by the late 1850s, share traders had begun trading under a neem tree in the area then known as New China Bazaar. Transactions could not continue
