Given my background picture is of a tram, why not start with trams in Delhi? I found this picture on the internet a while ago. It's likely from the 1930s but I can't tell where in the city this was taken.
More generally, trams in Delhi were part of a package of technological interventions that came in the wake of the Durbar of 1903. The motorcar, tramways and electric lighting were all buttressed by narratives of civilisational superiority and the Durbar became a launchpad for these (I think I will take up the case of cars in another post).
While that is one side of the story, trams caught on as a mode of transport quite quickly. This was also to the ire of some of the early nationalist leaders in Delhi such as a firebrand called Syed Haider Raza (not the artist of the same name), who chastised people for using the tram network. Raza tried (in vain) to get people off trams and wrote commentaries in newspapers about the practice being un-swadeshi (swadeshi referred to manufactured goods made in India from materials also from India). As one can imagine, colonial censors went into overdrive and hounded him out of a job - he was a teacher at St Stephens College in Delhi. The last traces in the archive that I found of Raza were to do with him leaving for England (he was at a St Stephen's party for the King Emperor with the labour leader Keir Hardie!!)
Trams were last seen in Delhi in the 1960s and there seems to be some discussion about their re-introduction as part of the Lt. Governor's plans for Shahjahanabad's redevelopment. Here is the image once again:
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