Housing and Land Reclamation


Housing 
    Owner did not house the mirant workers. Individual landowners put up cheap, and usually unsafe, tenements for the new arrivals.
    Poverty was more concentrated and starkly visible in the city. Charles Booth, a Liverpool ship owner, conducted the first social survey of low skilled London workers. He found that as many as 1 million Londoners were very poor and were expected to live only up to an average age of 29. London 'needed the rebuilding of at least 400,000 rooms to house its poorest citizens'.
    A larger number of people began to recognize the need for housing for the poor. Reasons for this increasing concern are
    1.    The vast masses of one-room houses occupied by the poor were seen as a serious threat to         public health: they were overcrowded, badly ventilated, and lacked sanitation.
    2.    There were worries about fire hazards created by poor housing.
    3.    There was a widespread fear of social disorder, especially after the Russian revolution in 1917.

The City in Colonial India
    The pace of urbanisation in India was slow under colonial rule. In the early twentieth century, 11% of Indians were living in cities. Mostly in the three Presidency cities, of Bombay, Bengal and Madras, they had major ports, warehouses, home and offices, army camps, education institutions, museums and libraries. Bombay was the premier city of India.
    The first cotton textile mill in Bombay was established in 1854. By 1921, there were 85 cotton mills with about 146000 workers. Large number of  people flowed in from the nearby district of Ratnagiri to work in the Bombay mills.
    Women formed 23% of the mill workforce. By the late 1930s, women's jobs were increasingly taken over by machines or by men.
    Bombay dominated the maritime trade of India. It was also at the junction head of two major railways. The railways encouraged an even higher scale of migration into the city.

Housing and Neighborhoods
    Bombay was a crowed city. Every Londoner in the 1840s enjoyed an average space of 155 square yards; Bombay had a mere 9.5 Square yards. By 1872, when London had an average of 8 persons per house, the density in Bombay was as high as 20. From its earliest days, Bombay did not grow according to any plan, and houses, especially in the fort area, were interspersed with gardens. The Bombay Fort area was divided between a native town, where most of the Indians lived, and a European or 'white' section. A European suburb and an industrial Zone began to develop to the north of the Fort settlement area, with a similar suburb and cantonment in the south.
    With the rapid and unplanned expansion of the city, the crisis of housing and water supply became acute. The arrival of the textile mills only increased the pressure on Bombay's housing.
    The richer Parsi, Muslim and upper caste traders and industrialists of Bombay lived in sprawling, spacious bungalows. But 70 % of the working people lived in the thickly populated chawls of Bombay.
    Chawls were multi-stroreyed structures built in the 'native' parts of the town. These houses were largely owned by private landlords, such as merchants, bankers, and building contractors, looking for quick ways of earning money. Each chawl was divided into small one-room tenements, which has no private toilets.
    Many families could reside at a time in a tenement. High rents forced workers to share homes, either with relatives or caste fellows who were streaming into the city. People has to keep the windows of their rooms closed even in humid weather due to the close proximity of filthy gutters, privies, buffalo stables etc. Water was scarce, and people often quarreled every morning for a turn at the tap, observers found that houses were kept quite clean.
    The homes being small, street and neighborhoods were used for cooking, washing and sleeping. Liquor shop and akharas came up in any empty spot. Streets were also used for different type of leisure activities.

 

    Eg. Magicians, monkey players or acrobats used to regularly perform. The Nandi bull used to come.  Kadaklakshmi used to beat themselves on their naked bodies in order to fill their stomachs . Chawls were also the place for the exchange of news about jobs, strikes, riots or demonstrations.
    The jobber in the mills was the local neighborhood leader. He settled disputes, organized food supplies, or arranged informal credit.
    People of the ' depressed classes' found it difficult to find housing. Lower castes were kept out of many chawls and often had to live in shelters made of corrugated sheets, leaves or bamboo poles.
    The city of Bombay Improvement Trust was established in 1898; it focused on clearing poorer homes out of the city center. By 1918, trust schemes had deprived 64000 people of their homes, but only 14000 were rehoused. In 1918 a Rent Act was passed to keep rents reasonable, but it had the opposite effect of producing a severe housing crisis, since landlords withdrew houses from the market.
    In Bombay there was scarcity of land. One of the ways the city of Bombay has developed is through massive reclamation projects. 

Land Reclamation in Bombay
    The seven islands of Bombay were joined into one landmass in 1784. The Bombay governor William Hornby approved the building of the great sea wall, which prevented the flooding of the low-lying areas of Bombay.
    The needs of additional commercial space in the mid nineteenth century led to the formulation of several plans, both by government and private companies.
    Private companies became more interested in taking financial risks. In 1864, the Back Bay Reclamation company won the right to reclaim the western foreshore from the tip of Malabar hill to the end of Calaba. Reclamation meant the leveling of the hills around Bombay. As the population continued to increase rapidly in the early twentieth century, every bit of the available area was built over and new areas were reclaimed from the sea.
    The Bombay Port Trust built a dry dock between 1914 ands 1918 and used the excavated earth to create the 22-acre. Ballard estate. Subsequently, the famous Marine Drive of Bombay was developed.

 Bombay as the City of Dreams: The World of Cinema and Culture 
    Despite its massive overcrowding and difficult living conditions, Bombay appears to many as a 'mayapuri' - a city of dreams.
    Many Bombay films deal with the arrival of new migrants  in the city and their encounters with the real pressure of daily life. Some popular songs from the Bombay film industry speak of the contradictory aspects of the city. Eg CID (1956) and Guest house (1959)

Housing and Land Reclamation


Housing 
    Owner did not house the mirant workers. Individual landowners put up cheap, and usually unsafe, tenements for the new arrivals.
    Poverty was more concentrated and starkly visible in the city. Charles Booth, a Liverpool ship owner, conducted the first social survey of low skilled London workers. He found that as many as 1 million Londoners were very poor and were expected to live only up to an average age of 29. London 'needed the rebuilding of at least 400,000 rooms to house its poorest citizens'.
    A larger number of people began to recognize the need for housing for the poor. Reasons for this increasing concern are
    1.    The vast masses of one-room houses occupied by the poor were seen as a serious threat to         public health: they were overcrowded, badly ventilated, and lacked sanitation.
    2.    There were worries about fire hazards created by poor housing.
    3.    There was a widespread fear of social disorder, especially after the Russian revolution in 1917.

The City in Colonial India
    The pace of urbanisation in India was slow under colonial rule. In the early twentieth century, 11% of Indians were living in cities. Mostly in the three Presidency cities, of Bombay, Bengal and Madras, they had major ports, warehouses, home and offices, army camps, education institutions, museums and libraries. Bombay was the premier city of India.
    The first cotton textile mill in Bombay was established in 1854. By 1921, there were 85 cotton mills with about 146000 workers. Large number of  people flowed in from the nearby district of Ratnagiri to work in the Bombay mills.
    Women formed 23% of the mill workforce. By the late 1930s, women's jobs were increasingly taken over by machines or by men.
    Bombay dominated the maritime trade of India. It was also at the junction head of two major railways. The railways encouraged an even higher scale of migration into the city.

Housing and Neighborhoods
    Bombay was a crowed city. Every Londoner in the 1840s enjoyed an average space of 155 square yards; Bombay had a mere 9.5 Square yards. By 1872, when London had an average of 8 persons per house, the density in Bombay was as high as 20. From its earliest days, Bombay did not grow according to any plan, and houses, especially in the fort area, were interspersed with gardens. The Bombay Fort area was divided between a native town, where most of the Indians lived, and a European or 'white' section. A European suburb and an industrial Zone began to develop to the north of the Fort settlement area, with a similar suburb and cantonment in the south.
    With the rapid and unplanned expansion of the city, the crisis of housing and water supply became acute. The arrival of the textile mills only increased the pressure on Bombay's housing.
    The richer Parsi, Muslim and upper caste traders and industrialists of Bombay lived in sprawling, spacious bungalows. But 70 % of the working people lived in the thickly populated chawls of Bombay.
    Chawls were multi-stroreyed structures built in the 'native' parts of the town. These houses were largely owned by private landlords, such as merchants, bankers, and building contractors, looking for quick ways of earning money. Each chawl was divided into small one-room tenements, which has no private toilets.
    Many families could reside at a time in a tenement. High rents forced workers to share homes, either with relatives or caste fellows who were streaming into the city. People has to keep the windows of their rooms closed even in humid weather due to the close proximity of filthy gutters, privies, buffalo stables etc. Water was scarce, and people often quarreled every morning for a turn at the tap, observers found that houses were kept quite clean.
    The homes being small, street and neighborhoods were used for cooking, washing and sleeping. Liquor shop and akharas came up in any empty spot. Streets were also used for different type of leisure activities.

 

    Eg. Magicians, monkey players or acrobats used to regularly perform. The Nandi bull used to come.  Kadaklakshmi used to beat themselves on their naked bodies in order to fill their stomachs . Chawls were also the place for the exchange of news about jobs, strikes, riots or demonstrations.
    The jobber in the mills was the local neighborhood leader. He settled disputes, organized food supplies, or arranged informal credit.
    People of the ' depressed classes' found it difficult to find housing. Lower castes were kept out of many chawls and often had to live in shelters made of corrugated sheets, leaves or bamboo poles.
    The city of Bombay Improvement Trust was established in 1898; it focused on clearing poorer homes out of the city center. By 1918, trust schemes had deprived 64000 people of their homes, but only 14000 were rehoused. In 1918 a Rent Act was passed to keep rents reasonable, but it had the opposite effect of producing a severe housing crisis, since landlords withdrew houses from the market.
    In Bombay there was scarcity of land. One of the ways the city of Bombay has developed is through massive reclamation projects. 

Land Reclamation in Bombay
    The seven islands of Bombay were joined into one landmass in 1784. The Bombay governor William Hornby approved the building of the great sea wall, which prevented the flooding of the low-lying areas of Bombay.
    The needs of additional commercial space in the mid nineteenth century led to the formulation of several plans, both by government and private companies.
    Private companies became more interested in taking financial risks. In 1864, the Back Bay Reclamation company won the right to reclaim the western foreshore from the tip of Malabar hill to the end of Calaba. Reclamation meant the leveling of the hills around Bombay. As the population continued to increase rapidly in the early twentieth century, every bit of the available area was built over and new areas were reclaimed from the sea.
    The Bombay Port Trust built a dry dock between 1914 ands 1918 and used the excavated earth to create the 22-acre. Ballard estate. Subsequently, the famous Marine Drive of Bombay was developed.

 Bombay as the City of Dreams: The World of Cinema and Culture 
    Despite its massive overcrowding and difficult living conditions, Bombay appears to many as a 'mayapuri' - a city of dreams.
    Many Bombay films deal with the arrival of new migrants  in the city and their encounters with the real pressure of daily life. Some popular songs from the Bombay film industry speak of the contradictory aspects of the city. Eg CID (1956) and Guest house (1959)

Housing and Land Reclamation


Housing 
    Owner did not house the mirant workers. Individual landowners put up cheap, and usually unsafe, tenements for the new arrivals.
    Poverty was more concentrated and starkly visible in the city. Charles Booth, a Liverpool ship owner, conducted the first social survey of low skilled London workers. He found that as many as 1 million Londoners were very poor and were expected to live only up to an average age of 29. London 'needed the rebuilding of at least 400,000 rooms to house its poorest citizens'.
    A larger number of people began to recognize the need for housing for the poor. Reasons for this increasing concern are
    1.    The vast masses of one-room houses occupied by the poor were seen as a serious threat to         public health: they were overcrowded, badly ventilated, and lacked sanitation.
    2.    There were worries about fire hazards created by poor housing.
    3.    There was a widespread fear of social disorder, especially after the Russian revolution in 1917.

The City in Colonial India
    The pace of urbanisation in India was slow under colonial rule. In the early twentieth century, 11% of Indians were living in cities. Mostly in the three Presidency cities, of Bombay, Bengal and Madras, they had major ports, warehouses, home and offices, army camps, education institutions, museums and libraries. Bombay was the premier city of India.
    The first cotton textile mill in Bombay was established in 1854. By 1921, there were 85 cotton mills with about 146000 workers. Large number of  people flowed in from the nearby district of Ratnagiri to work in the Bombay mills.
    Women formed 23% of the mill workforce. By the late 1930s, women's jobs were increasingly taken over by machines or by men.
    Bombay dominated the maritime trade of India. It was also at the junction head of two major railways. The railways encouraged an even higher scale of migration into the city.

Housing and Neighborhoods
    Bombay was a crowed city. Every Londoner in the 1840s enjoyed an average space of 155 square yards; Bombay had a mere 9.5 Square yards. By 1872, when London had an average of 8 persons per house, the density in Bombay was as high as 20. From its earliest days, Bombay did not grow according to any plan, and houses, especially in the fort area, were interspersed with gardens. The Bombay Fort area was divided between a native town, where most of the Indians lived, and a European or 'white' section. A European suburb and an industrial Zone began to develop to the north of the Fort settlement area, with a similar suburb and cantonment in the south.
    With the rapid and unplanned expansion of the city, the crisis of housing and water supply became acute. The arrival of the textile mills only increased the pressure on Bombay's housing.
    The richer Parsi, Muslim and upper caste traders and industrialists of Bombay lived in sprawling, spacious bungalows. But 70 % of the working people lived in the thickly populated chawls of Bombay.
    Chawls were multi-stroreyed structures built in the 'native' parts of the town. These houses were largely owned by private landlords, such as merchants, bankers, and building contractors, looking for quick ways of earning money. Each chawl was divided into small one-room tenements, which has no private toilets.
    Many families could reside at a time in a tenement. High rents forced workers to share homes, either with relatives or caste fellows who were streaming into the city. People has to keep the windows of their rooms closed even in humid weather due to the close proximity of filthy gutters, privies, buffalo stables etc. Water was scarce, and people often quarreled every morning for a turn at the tap, observers found that houses were kept quite clean.
    The homes being small, street and neighborhoods were used for cooking, washing and sleeping. Liquor shop and akharas came up in any empty spot. Streets were also used for different type of leisure activities.

 

    Eg. Magicians, monkey players or acrobats used to regularly perform. The Nandi bull used to come.  Kadaklakshmi used to beat themselves on their naked bodies in order to fill their stomachs . Chawls were also the place for the exchange of news about jobs, strikes, riots or demonstrations.
    The jobber in the mills was the local neighborhood leader. He settled disputes, organized food supplies, or arranged informal credit.
    People of the ' depressed classes' found it difficult to find housing. Lower castes were kept out of many chawls and often had to live in shelters made of corrugated sheets, leaves or bamboo poles.
    The city of Bombay Improvement Trust was established in 1898; it focused on clearing poorer homes out of the city center. By 1918, trust schemes had deprived 64000 people of their homes, but only 14000 were rehoused. In 1918 a Rent Act was passed to keep rents reasonable, but it had the opposite effect of producing a severe housing crisis, since landlords withdrew houses from the market.
    In Bombay there was scarcity of land. One of the ways the city of Bombay has developed is through massive reclamation projects. 

Land Reclamation in Bombay
    The seven islands of Bombay were joined into one landmass in 1784. The Bombay governor William Hornby approved the building of the great sea wall, which prevented the flooding of the low-lying areas of Bombay.
    The needs of additional commercial space in the mid nineteenth century led to the formulation of several plans, both by government and private companies.
    Private companies became more interested in taking financial risks. In 1864, the Back Bay Reclamation company won the right to reclaim the western foreshore from the tip of Malabar hill to the end of Calaba. Reclamation meant the leveling of the hills around Bombay. As the population continued to increase rapidly in the early twentieth century, every bit of the available area was built over and new areas were reclaimed from the sea.
    The Bombay Port Trust built a dry dock between 1914 ands 1918 and used the excavated earth to create the 22-acre. Ballard estate. Subsequently, the famous Marine Drive of Bombay was developed.

 Bombay as the City of Dreams: The World of Cinema and Culture 
    Despite its massive overcrowding and difficult living conditions, Bombay appears to many as a 'mayapuri' - a city of dreams.
    Many Bombay films deal with the arrival of new migrants  in the city and their encounters with the real pressure of daily life. Some popular songs from the Bombay film industry speak of the contradictory aspects of the city. Eg CID (1956) and Guest house (1959)

Housing and Land Reclamation


Housing 
    Owner did not house the mirant workers. Individual landowners put up cheap, and usually unsafe, tenements for the new arrivals.
    Poverty was more concentrated and starkly visible in the city. Charles Booth, a Liverpool ship owner, conducted the first social survey of low skilled London workers. He found that as many as 1 million Londoners were very poor and were expected to live only up to an average age of 29. London 'needed the rebuilding of at least 400,000 rooms to house its poorest citizens'.
    A larger number of people began to recognize the need for housing for the poor. Reasons for this increasing concern are
    1.    The vast masses of one-room houses occupied by the poor were seen as a serious threat to         public health: they were overcrowded, badly ventilated, and lacked sanitation.
    2.    There were worries about fire hazards created by poor housing.
    3.    There was a widespread fear of social disorder, especially after the Russian revolution in 1917.

The City in Colonial India
    The pace of urbanisation in India was slow under colonial rule. In the early twentieth century, 11% of Indians were living in cities. Mostly in the three Presidency cities, of Bombay, Bengal and Madras, they had major ports, warehouses, home and offices, army camps, education institutions, museums and libraries. Bombay was the premier city of India.
    The first cotton textile mill in Bombay was established in 1854. By 1921, there were 85 cotton mills with about 146000 workers. Large number of  people flowed in from the nearby district of Ratnagiri to work in the Bombay mills.
    Women formed 23% of the mill workforce. By the late 1930s, women's jobs were increasingly taken over by machines or by men.
    Bombay dominated the maritime trade of India. It was also at the junction head of two major railways. The railways encouraged an even higher scale of migration into the city.

Housing and Neighborhoods
    Bombay was a crowed city. Every Londoner in the 1840s enjoyed an average space of 155 square yards; Bombay had a mere 9.5 Square yards. By 1872, when London had an average of 8 persons per house, the density in Bombay was as high as 20. From its earliest days, Bombay did not grow according to any plan, and houses, especially in the fort area, were interspersed with gardens. The Bombay Fort area was divided between a native town, where most of the Indians lived, and a European or 'white' section. A European suburb and an industrial Zone began to develop to the north of the Fort settlement area, with a similar suburb and cantonment in the south.
    With the rapid and unplanned expansion of the city, the crisis of housing and water supply became acute. The arrival of the textile mills only increased the pressure on Bombay's housing.
    The richer Parsi, Muslim and upper caste traders and industrialists of Bombay lived in sprawling, spacious bungalows. But 70 % of the working people lived in the thickly populated chawls of Bombay.
    Chawls were multi-stroreyed structures built in the 'native' parts of the town. These houses were largely owned by private landlords, such as merchants, bankers, and building contractors, looking for quick ways of earning money. Each chawl was divided into small one-room tenements, which has no private toilets.
    Many families could reside at a time in a tenement. High rents forced workers to share homes, either with relatives or caste fellows who were streaming into the city. People has to keep the windows of their rooms closed even in humid weather due to the close proximity of filthy gutters, privies, buffalo stables etc. Water was scarce, and people often quarreled every morning for a turn at the tap, observers found that houses were kept quite clean.
    The homes being small, street and neighborhoods were used for cooking, washing and sleeping. Liquor shop and akharas came up in any empty spot. Streets were also used for different type of leisure activities.

 

    Eg. Magicians, monkey players or acrobats used to regularly perform. The Nandi bull used to come.  Kadaklakshmi used to beat themselves on their naked bodies in order to fill their stomachs . Chawls were also the place for the exchange of news about jobs, strikes, riots or demonstrations.
    The jobber in the mills was the local neighborhood leader. He settled disputes, organized food supplies, or arranged informal credit.
    People of the ' depressed classes' found it difficult to find housing. Lower castes were kept out of many chawls and often had to live in shelters made of corrugated sheets, leaves or bamboo poles.
    The city of Bombay Improvement Trust was established in 1898; it focused on clearing poorer homes out of the city center. By 1918, trust schemes had deprived 64000 people of their homes, but only 14000 were rehoused. In 1918 a Rent Act was passed to keep rents reasonable, but it had the opposite effect of producing a severe housing crisis, since landlords withdrew houses from the market.
    In Bombay there was scarcity of land. One of the ways the city of Bombay has developed is through massive reclamation projects. 

Land Reclamation in Bombay
    The seven islands of Bombay were joined into one landmass in 1784. The Bombay governor William Hornby approved the building of the great sea wall, which prevented the flooding of the low-lying areas of Bombay.
    The needs of additional commercial space in the mid nineteenth century led to the formulation of several plans, both by government and private companies.
    Private companies became more interested in taking financial risks. In 1864, the Back Bay Reclamation company won the right to reclaim the western foreshore from the tip of Malabar hill to the end of Calaba. Reclamation meant the leveling of the hills around Bombay. As the population continued to increase rapidly in the early twentieth century, every bit of the available area was built over and new areas were reclaimed from the sea.
    The Bombay Port Trust built a dry dock between 1914 ands 1918 and used the excavated earth to create the 22-acre. Ballard estate. Subsequently, the famous Marine Drive of Bombay was developed.

 Bombay as the City of Dreams: The World of Cinema and Culture 
    Despite its massive overcrowding and difficult living conditions, Bombay appears to many as a 'mayapuri' - a city of dreams.
    Many Bombay films deal with the arrival of new migrants  in the city and their encounters with the real pressure of daily life. Some popular songs from the Bombay film industry speak of the contradictory aspects of the city. Eg CID (1956) and Guest house (1959)

Housing and Land Reclamation


Housing 
    Owner did not house the mirant workers. Individual landowners put up cheap, and usually unsafe, tenements for the new arrivals.
    Poverty was more concentrated and starkly visible in the city. Charles Booth, a Liverpool ship owner, conducted the first social survey of low skilled London workers. He found that as many as 1 million Londoners were very poor and were expected to live only up to an average age of 29. London 'needed the rebuilding of at least 400,000 rooms to house its poorest citizens'.
    A larger number of people began to recognize the need for housing for the poor. Reasons for this increasing concern are
    1.    The vast masses of one-room houses occupied by the poor were seen as a serious threat to         public health: they were overcrowded, badly ventilated, and lacked sanitation.
    2.    There were worries about fire hazards created by poor housing.
    3.    There was a widespread fear of social disorder, especially after the Russian revolution in 1917.

The City in Colonial India
    The pace of urbanisation in India was slow under colonial rule. In the early twentieth century, 11% of Indians were living in cities. Mostly in the three Presidency cities, of Bombay, Bengal and Madras, they had major ports, warehouses, home and offices, army camps, education institutions, museums and libraries. Bombay was the premier city of India.
    The first cotton textile mill in Bombay was established in 1854. By 1921, there were 85 cotton mills with about 146000 workers. Large number of  people flowed in from the nearby district of Ratnagiri to work in the Bombay mills.
    Women formed 23% of the mill workforce. By the late 1930s, women's jobs were increasingly taken over by machines or by men.
    Bombay dominated the maritime trade of India. It was also at the junction head of two major railways. The railways encouraged an even higher scale of migration into the city.

Housing and Neighborhoods
    Bombay was a crowed city. Every Londoner in the 1840s enjoyed an average space of 155 square yards; Bombay had a mere 9.5 Square yards. By 1872, when London had an average of 8 persons per house, the density in Bombay was as high as 20. From its earliest days, Bombay did not grow according to any plan, and houses, especially in the fort area, were interspersed with gardens. The Bombay Fort area was divided between a native town, where most of the Indians lived, and a European or 'white' section. A European suburb and an industrial Zone began to develop to the north of the Fort settlement area, with a similar suburb and cantonment in the south.
    With the rapid and unplanned expansion of the city, the crisis of housing and water supply became acute. The arrival of the textile mills only increased the pressure on Bombay's housing.
    The richer Parsi, Muslim and upper caste traders and industrialists of Bombay lived in sprawling, spacious bungalows. But 70 % of the working people lived in the thickly populated chawls of Bombay.
    Chawls were multi-stroreyed structures built in the 'native' parts of the town. These houses were largely owned by private landlords, such as merchants, bankers, and building contractors, looking for quick ways of earning money. Each chawl was divided into small one-room tenements, which has no private toilets.
    Many families could reside at a time in a tenement. High rents forced workers to share homes, either with relatives or caste fellows who were streaming into the city. People has to keep the windows of their rooms closed even in humid weather due to the close proximity of filthy gutters, privies, buffalo stables etc. Water was scarce, and people often quarreled every morning for a turn at the tap, observers found that houses were kept quite clean.
    The homes being small, street and neighborhoods were used for cooking, washing and sleeping. Liquor shop and akharas came up in any empty spot. Streets were also used for different type of leisure activities.

 

    Eg. Magicians, monkey players or acrobats used to regularly perform. The Nandi bull used to come.  Kadaklakshmi used to beat themselves on their naked bodies in order to fill their stomachs . Chawls were also the place for the exchange of news about jobs, strikes, riots or demonstrations.
    The jobber in the mills was the local neighborhood leader. He settled disputes, organized food supplies, or arranged informal credit.
    People of the ' depressed classes' found it difficult to find housing. Lower castes were kept out of many chawls and often had to live in shelters made of corrugated sheets, leaves or bamboo poles.
    The city of Bombay Improvement Trust was established in 1898; it focused on clearing poorer homes out of the city center. By 1918, trust schemes had deprived 64000 people of their homes, but only 14000 were rehoused. In 1918 a Rent Act was passed to keep rents reasonable, but it had the opposite effect of producing a severe housing crisis, since landlords withdrew houses from the market.
    In Bombay there was scarcity of land. One of the ways the city of Bombay has developed is through massive reclamation projects. 

Land Reclamation in Bombay
    The seven islands of Bombay were joined into one landmass in 1784. The Bombay governor William Hornby approved the building of the great sea wall, which prevented the flooding of the low-lying areas of Bombay.
    The needs of additional commercial space in the mid nineteenth century led to the formulation of several plans, both by government and private companies.
    Private companies became more interested in taking financial risks. In 1864, the Back Bay Reclamation company won the right to reclaim the western foreshore from the tip of Malabar hill to the end of Calaba. Reclamation meant the leveling of the hills around Bombay. As the population continued to increase rapidly in the early twentieth century, every bit of the available area was built over and new areas were reclaimed from the sea.
    The Bombay Port Trust built a dry dock between 1914 ands 1918 and used the excavated earth to create the 22-acre. Ballard estate. Subsequently, the famous Marine Drive of Bombay was developed.

 Bombay as the City of Dreams: The World of Cinema and Culture 
    Despite its massive overcrowding and difficult living conditions, Bombay appears to many as a 'mayapuri' - a city of dreams.
    Many Bombay films deal with the arrival of new migrants  in the city and their encounters with the real pressure of daily life. Some popular songs from the Bombay film industry speak of the contradictory aspects of the city. Eg CID (1956) and Guest house (1959)

Housing and Land Reclamation


Housing 
    Owner did not house the mirant workers. Individual landowners put up cheap, and usually unsafe, tenements for the new arrivals.
    Poverty was more concentrated and starkly visible in the city. Charles Booth, a Liverpool ship owner, conducted the first social survey of low skilled London workers. He found that as many as 1 million Londoners were very poor and were expected to live only up to an average age of 29. London 'needed the rebuilding of at least 400,000 rooms to house its poorest citizens'.
    A larger number of people began to recognize the need for housing for the poor. Reasons for this increasing concern are
    1.    The vast masses of one-room houses occupied by the poor were seen as a serious threat to         public health: they were overcrowded, badly ventilated, and lacked sanitation.
    2.    There were worries about fire hazards created by poor housing.
    3.    There was a widespread fear of social disorder, especially after the Russian revolution in 1917.

The City in Colonial India
    The pace of urbanisation in India was slow under colonial rule. In the early twentieth century, 11% of Indians were living in cities. Mostly in the three Presidency cities, of Bombay, Bengal and Madras, they had major ports, warehouses, home and offices, army camps, education institutions, museums and libraries. Bombay was the premier city of India.
    The first cotton textile mill in Bombay was established in 1854. By 1921, there were 85 cotton mills with about 146000 workers. Large number of  people flowed in from the nearby district of Ratnagiri to work in the Bombay mills.
    Women formed 23% of the mill workforce. By the late 1930s, women's jobs were increasingly taken over by machines or by men.
    Bombay dominated the maritime trade of India. It was also at the junction head of two major railways. The railways encouraged an even higher scale of migration into the city.

Housing and Neighborhoods
    Bombay was a crowed city. Every Londoner in the 1840s enjoyed an average space of 155 square yards; Bombay had a mere 9.5 Square yards. By 1872, when London had an average of 8 persons per house, the density in Bombay was as high as 20. From its earliest days, Bombay did not grow according to any plan, and houses, especially in the fort area, were interspersed with gardens. The Bombay Fort area was divided between a native town, where most of the Indians lived, and a European or 'white' section. A European suburb and an industrial Zone began to develop to the north of the Fort settlement area, with a similar suburb and cantonment in the south.
    With the rapid and unplanned expansion of the city, the crisis of housing and water supply became acute. The arrival of the textile mills only increased the pressure on Bombay's housing.
    The richer Parsi, Muslim and upper caste traders and industrialists of Bombay lived in sprawling, spacious bungalows. But 70 % of the working people lived in the thickly populated chawls of Bombay.
    Chawls were multi-stroreyed structures built in the 'native' parts of the town. These houses were largely owned by private landlords, such as merchants, bankers, and building contractors, looking for quick ways of earning money. Each chawl was divided into small one-room tenements, which has no private toilets.
    Many families could reside at a time in a tenement. High rents forced workers to share homes, either with relatives or caste fellows who were streaming into the city. People has to keep the windows of their rooms closed even in humid weather due to the close proximity of filthy gutters, privies, buffalo stables etc. Water was scarce, and people often quarreled every morning for a turn at the tap, observers found that houses were kept quite clean.
    The homes being small, street and neighborhoods were used for cooking, washing and sleeping. Liquor shop and akharas came up in any empty spot. Streets were also used for different type of leisure activities.

 

    Eg. Magicians, monkey players or acrobats used to regularly perform. The Nandi bull used to come.  Kadaklakshmi used to beat themselves on their naked bodies in order to fill their stomachs . Chawls were also the place for the exchange of news about jobs, strikes, riots or demonstrations.
    The jobber in the mills was the local neighborhood leader. He settled disputes, organized food supplies, or arranged informal credit.
    People of the ' depressed classes' found it difficult to find housing. Lower castes were kept out of many chawls and often had to live in shelters made of corrugated sheets, leaves or bamboo poles.
    The city of Bombay Improvement Trust was established in 1898; it focused on clearing poorer homes out of the city center. By 1918, trust schemes had deprived 64000 people of their homes, but only 14000 were rehoused. In 1918 a Rent Act was passed to keep rents reasonable, but it had the opposite effect of producing a severe housing crisis, since landlords withdrew houses from the market.
    In Bombay there was scarcity of land. One of the ways the city of Bombay has developed is through massive reclamation projects. 

Land Reclamation in Bombay
    The seven islands of Bombay were joined into one landmass in 1784. The Bombay governor William Hornby approved the building of the great sea wall, which prevented the flooding of the low-lying areas of Bombay.
    The needs of additional commercial space in the mid nineteenth century led to the formulation of several plans, both by government and private companies.
    Private companies became more interested in taking financial risks. In 1864, the Back Bay Reclamation company won the right to reclaim the western foreshore from the tip of Malabar hill to the end of Calaba. Reclamation meant the leveling of the hills around Bombay. As the population continued to increase rapidly in the early twentieth century, every bit of the available area was built over and new areas were reclaimed from the sea.
    The Bombay Port Trust built a dry dock between 1914 ands 1918 and used the excavated earth to create the 22-acre. Ballard estate. Subsequently, the famous Marine Drive of Bombay was developed.

 Bombay as the City of Dreams: The World of Cinema and Culture 
    Despite its massive overcrowding and difficult living conditions, Bombay appears to many as a 'mayapuri' - a city of dreams.
    Many Bombay films deal with the arrival of new migrants  in the city and their encounters with the real pressure of daily life. Some popular songs from the Bombay film industry speak of the contradictory aspects of the city. Eg CID (1956) and Guest house (1959)

Housing and Land Reclamation


Housing 
    Owner did not house the mirant workers. Individual landowners put up cheap, and usually unsafe, tenements for the new arrivals.
    Poverty was more concentrated and starkly visible in the city. Charles Booth, a Liverpool ship owner, conducted the first social survey of low skilled London workers. He found that as many as 1 million Londoners were very poor and were expected to live only up to an average age of 29. London 'needed the rebuilding of at least 400,000 rooms to house its poorest citizens'.
    A larger number of people began to recognize the need for housing for the poor. Reasons for this increasing concern are
    1.    The vast masses of one-room houses occupied by the poor were seen as a serious threat to         public health: they were overcrowded, badly ventilated, and lacked sanitation.
    2.    There were worries about fire hazards created by poor housing.
    3.    There was a widespread fear of social disorder, especially after the Russian revolution in 1917.

The City in Colonial India
    The pace of urbanisation in India was slow under colonial rule. In the early twentieth century, 11% of Indians were living in cities. Mostly in the three Presidency cities, of Bombay, Bengal and Madras, they had major ports, warehouses, home and offices, army camps, education institutions, museums and libraries. Bombay was the premier city of India.
    The first cotton textile mill in Bombay was established in 1854. By 1921, there were 85 cotton mills with about 146000 workers. Large number of  people flowed in from the nearby district of Ratnagiri to work in the Bombay mills.
    Women formed 23% of the mill workforce. By the late 1930s, women's jobs were increasingly taken over by machines or by men.
    Bombay dominated the maritime trade of India. It was also at the junction head of two major railways. The railways encouraged an even higher scale of migration into the city.

Housing and Neighborhoods
    Bombay was a crowed city. Every Londoner in the 1840s enjoyed an average space of 155 square yards; Bombay had a mere 9.5 Square yards. By 1872, when London had an average of 8 persons per house, the density in Bombay was as high as 20. From its earliest days, Bombay did not grow according to any plan, and houses, especially in the fort area, were interspersed with gardens. The Bombay Fort area was divided between a native town, where most of the Indians lived, and a European or 'white' section. A European suburb and an industrial Zone began to develop to the north of the Fort settlement area, with a similar suburb and cantonment in the south.
    With the rapid and unplanned expansion of the city, the crisis of housing and water supply became acute. The arrival of the textile mills only increased the pressure on Bombay's housing.
    The richer Parsi, Muslim and upper caste traders and industrialists of Bombay lived in sprawling, spacious bungalows. But 70 % of the working people lived in the thickly populated chawls of Bombay.
    Chawls were multi-stroreyed structures built in the 'native' parts of the town. These houses were largely owned by private landlords, such as merchants, bankers, and building contractors, looking for quick ways of earning money. Each chawl was divided into small one-room tenements, which has no private toilets.
    Many families could reside at a time in a tenement. High rents forced workers to share homes, either with relatives or caste fellows who were streaming into the city. People has to keep the windows of their rooms closed even in humid weather due to the close proximity of filthy gutters, privies, buffalo stables etc. Water was scarce, and people often quarreled every morning for a turn at the tap, observers found that houses were kept quite clean.
    The homes being small, street and neighborhoods were used for cooking, washing and sleeping. Liquor shop and akharas came up in any empty spot. Streets were also used for different type of leisure activities.

 

    Eg. Magicians, monkey players or acrobats used to regularly perform. The Nandi bull used to come.  Kadaklakshmi used to beat themselves on their naked bodies in order to fill their stomachs . Chawls were also the place for the exchange of news about jobs, strikes, riots or demonstrations.
    The jobber in the mills was the local neighborhood leader. He settled disputes, organized food supplies, or arranged informal credit.
    People of the ' depressed classes' found it difficult to find housing. Lower castes were kept out of many chawls and often had to live in shelters made of corrugated sheets, leaves or bamboo poles.
    The city of Bombay Improvement Trust was established in 1898; it focused on clearing poorer homes out of the city center. By 1918, trust schemes had deprived 64000 people of their homes, but only 14000 were rehoused. In 1918 a Rent Act was passed to keep rents reasonable, but it had the opposite effect of producing a severe housing crisis, since landlords withdrew houses from the market.
    In Bombay there was scarcity of land. One of the ways the city of Bombay has developed is through massive reclamation projects. 

Land Reclamation in Bombay
    The seven islands of Bombay were joined into one landmass in 1784. The Bombay governor William Hornby approved the building of the great sea wall, which prevented the flooding of the low-lying areas of Bombay.
    The needs of additional commercial space in the mid nineteenth century led to the formulation of several plans, both by government and private companies.
    Private companies became more interested in taking financial risks. In 1864, the Back Bay Reclamation company won the right to reclaim the western foreshore from the tip of Malabar hill to the end of Calaba. Reclamation meant the leveling of the hills around Bombay. As the population continued to increase rapidly in the early twentieth century, every bit of the available area was built over and new areas were reclaimed from the sea.
    The Bombay Port Trust built a dry dock between 1914 ands 1918 and used the excavated earth to create the 22-acre. Ballard estate. Subsequently, the famous Marine Drive of Bombay was developed.

 Bombay as the City of Dreams: The World of Cinema and Culture 
    Despite its massive overcrowding and difficult living conditions, Bombay appears to many as a 'mayapuri' - a city of dreams.
    Many Bombay films deal with the arrival of new migrants  in the city and their encounters with the real pressure of daily life. Some popular songs from the Bombay film industry speak of the contradictory aspects of the city. Eg CID (1956) and Guest house (1959)