A Master Plan for the City: Looking at the Past Author(S): Mariam Dossal Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol

A Master Plan for the City: Looking at the Past Author(s): Mariam Dossal Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 40, No. 36 (Sep. 3-9, 2005), pp. 3897-3900 Published by: Economic and Political Weekly Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4417098 . Accessed: 02/06/2011 02:29 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=epw. 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Economic and Political Weekly is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Economic and Political Weekly. http://www.jstor.org Mumbaitocope with numerouschallenges, would not only help in building up the shocking housing conditions and the natural and manmade, the city needs necessary infrastructurebut also ensure stranglehold of landlords and officials. multi-level.multi-dire ztional efforts that an efficient managementof risks.[1i During the decade 1896-1906, a deadly bubonic plague epidemic struck Bombay and extracted a heavy toll from the poorly serviced city. Large numbers succumbed A Master Plan for the City to the disease and others fled to safer places in an exodus bornof fear andrumour. Commercial and manufacturing activities Looking at the Past were severely affected and Bombay's self- image and civic pride as the 'Urbs Prima A play of vested interests has always ensured the shelving of in Indis' seriously undermined. The crisis successive master the compelled the Bombay government, the plans devisedfor city's planned and members of This article looks at to Mumbai, municipal corporation development. efforts 'improve' the public to seek both immediate and initiated in the late 1890s and the early years of the last century, long-term solutions. following the outbreakof the plague epidemic. The story of how such initiatives were stymied by groups comprisingtraders and Plague of 1896-1906 and developers acting in concert, is in turn revelatory of how little the Plague Committee seems to have changed over the decades. The first known case of the dreaded bubonic plague occurred on September MARIAMDOSSAL personnel, fire brigade and other workers 23, 1896 in Mandvi, a congested locality helped rescue those stranded in flooded which fronted the docks, from where it In the life of a city, as in that of an areas and restored services, the govern- then spread rapidly to other parts of the individual, come defining moments. ment did the unthinkable. Chief minister city. It was registered by T S Weir, health July 26, 2005 and the disastrous fort- Vilasrao Deshmukh declared a two-day officer of the Bombay Municipal Corpo- night thereafter has been such a moment holiday for all government servants - ration.3The island city's population at the in the lives of Mumbaikars. when a very including those responsible for waste time numberedapproximately one million. heavy downpour measuring 944 mm came management and essential civic services. and its limits extended from Colaba to crashing down on suburban Mumbai. A The environmentminister, Ganesh Naik. Parel. The northern part of the island still cloudburst which. in the space of less than instead of operationalising the city's di- consisted largely of rice fields, coconut 24 hours, killed hundreds of people and saster management plan, could only eye 'oarts' (gardens), salt pans and fishing seriously affected the lives of thousands Mumbai's few. remaining open spaces. villages. By late 1897 the city's popula- of others. While it is true that such a vast such as the Race Course. the Sanjay Gandhi tion had been reduced to nearly half. quantity of water would pose a challenge National Park and Aarey Milk Colony, Initially, municipal officials sought to to any city's sewerage and drainage sys- and offer them for up for sale, ostensibly wish away the problem, but as increasing tem, it is clear from reports detailing the to pay off the Maharashtragovernment's numbers of cases were reported and event, that it was not the intensity of the debts. amounting to more than a thousand mortality figures rose, relief operations rainfall that brought Mumbai to its knees. crore rupees. That the minister himself is were begun. Sometimes referred to as the dislocated public services and traumatised a 'land developer', owning 500 acres of first Plague Committee, it was set up on its citizens, but long years of unregulated commercial farmland in nearby Thane October 11, 1896.Consisting of the city's construction activity, without compatible district, says a great deal about his real leading doctors whose names are now infrastructure.This has led to naturalwater intentions. And the Shiv Sena, the politi- legendary such as Haffkine, Hanks, Childe and drainage courses being built over, cal party with a majority in the BMC. and Surveyor. As the death toll continued streams and drains polluted and choked instead of dealing with the devastated city to rise. a second Plague Committee with with poisonous effluents. The onus lies on on a war footing. was preoccupied with additional powers was set up in March the builder-politician nexus that has held, the differences among its top its leaders. 1898. It consisted of medical personnel and continues to hold. the city to ransom. The party's only anxiety was about the as well as senior government officials, For them immediate profit is everything. political fallout it would suffer in next led by surgeon and chairman brigadier and the people only statistics. year's municipal elections. General W F Gatacre, major general H P If Mumbai survived, it is in large mea- Dimmock, C C James and municipal sure due to the initia- P H 'Ostrich Response' or courage. self-help commissioner, C Snow.4 tives and resilience of its citizens. Commissioner Snow's submitted Criminal Neglect? ordinary report many of whom performedremarkable acts on October 2, 1897 to the Bombay govern- The Maharashtragovernment' s response of bravery, often risking their own lives ment detailed the Plague Committee's to the calamity was shocking. Instead while assisting others to safety.2 efforts to treat and contain the disease.5 of galvanising every department into Traumatic as these events were, this It was difficult, admitted Snow, to deter- emergency action to ensure that the was not the first time that Mumbai city mine the exact cause of the disease or Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's has paid a heavy price for civic neglect where it had come from. While some (BMC) street sweepers. garbage disposal - poor drainage, inadequate water supply. believed it had been carriedby pilgrims Economic and Political Weekly September 3, 2005 3897 from the others it Indians. saw measures Himalayas, thought had They government's Bombay City Improvement Trust travelled on ships returning from Arabia, as intrusive, violating their caste and 1898-1930 the Persian Gulf or Hong Kong. Some community precepts and status. The attributed it to the unusual pattern of the authorities in their turn labelled their re- The MumbaiCity ImprovementTrust monsoon that year, for heavy rains had sponses as borne of 'prejudices' which was established on November 9, 1898, initially resulted in floods and was then greatly increased the incidence of the underthe BombayAct IV of thatyear. The followed by long dry spells which led to disease. IndianJustices of Peace were urged specific tasks assignedto the BCIT were an acute scarcity of water. Prices of essen- by the government to convince the people to removeinsanitary housing, develop the tial commodities had increased and brought to support the Plague Committee's initia- northernpart of the islandto reduceover- great suffering to the poor. While the actual tives. but differences were deep-rooted crowdingand undertake a largenumber of cause of the epidemic was debated, it was and strikes and sporadic violence wide- new housing projects.The BCIT's urban evident to the committee that poorly con- spread.7 An example of this was the strike planninginitiatives were lateradopted in structed and overflowing drains, damp of the 'khatarawalas' (handcart pullers) othercolonialcities such as Calcutta, where homes, flooded localities and rotting grain and 'hamaals' (carriers). an ImprovementTrust was established in godowns had been responsible for the On April 6, 1897, 3,000 khatarawalas in 1911. spread of the epidemic. and hamaals struck work at Cotton Green. Importantamong the 33 schemesunder- As Commissioner Snow explained: protesting against official inspections and takenby theBCIT were those in Nagpada, forcible entries into their homes. Their and Mandvi-Koliwada. Un- ... the great and ever presentdanger to the Agripada. city arises fromthe floods of potable water strike affected the movement of cotton der other improvement projects, roads - upwardsof 30 million gallons. without stocks and impacted adversely the cotton were widened, unhygienic buildings sufficient means of escape: this, coupled trade. Fortunately for the Bombay govern- pulleddown, and low-lying lands drained. with the obstructionof naturalchannels of ment.

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