work, life and leisure

Bombay the prime city
--the East India company quickly shifted its capital from Surat to Bombay.
--at first Bombay was the major outlet for cotton textiles from Gujrat , later in the 19th c , the city functioned as a port through which large quantities of raw materials such as cotton & opium would pass.
--gradually it also became an important administrative centre in the western India and by the end of 19 th c a major industrial centre.
WORK IN THE CITY
Bombay became the capital of Bombay Presidencyin 1819, after the Maratha defeat In the Anglo-Maratha war.
--with the growth of trade in cotton & opium, large communities of traders & bankers as well as artisans & shopkeepers came to settle in Bombay.
--the establishment of textile mills led to a fresh sBOMBAY AS THE CITY OF DREAMS:
. Controlling domestic smoke, however, was far more difficulturge in migration.
--the first textile Mill in Bombay was established in 1854. By 1921, there were 85 cotton mills.Large number of workers to these mills came from nearby districts.
--women formed 23% of mill workforce between 1919-1926, after that the number droppedto less than 10%as machines had come.
--Bombay dominated the maritime trade of India.
--Bombay was also at the junction head of two major Railways, which encouraged an even higher scale of migration into the city.
For example during the famine in 1888-89, large number of people drove into Bombay from the dry regions of Kutch.
HOUSING & NEIGHBOURHOODS
Q. How was Bombay city planned?
Bombay was a crowded city with average space of 9.5 square yards, with an average of 20 persons.
Bombay was not a planned city and the house especially in the Fort area, were interspersed with gardens.
--in Bombay the FORT AREA which formed the heart of the city in early 1800s was divided between a ‘native town’ where most of the Indians lived, and a European or ‘white section.’
--the European suburb & an industrial zone began to develop to the north of the Fort area, with similar suburb & cantonment in the south. This racial pattern was true of all three Presidency cities.
--rapid & unplanned expansion of the city and growing mills led to the crisis of housing and water supply by mid-1850’s.
--like the European elite the richer Parsi , Muslim & upper caste traders & industrialist of Bombay lived in sprawling spacious bungalows and in contrast, more than 70% lived in the thickly populated CHAWLS of Bombay
CHAWLS:
--They were multi-storied structures built from 1860’s in the ‘ native’ parts of the town.
--they were like the tenements in London they were largely owned by the private landlords as merchants, bankers & building contractors for quick way of earning money from the migrants.
--chawl was divided into smaller one-room tenements which had no private toilets.
--many families could reside at a time in a tenement, which were of one room with 4-5 occupants.
--people had to keep their windows closed even during the humid weather due to the ‘close proximity’ of filthy gutters, prives, buffalo stables etc.
--water was scarce and there were quarrels over it.
--streets & neighbourhoods were used for a variety of activities such as cooking, washing & sleeping.
--LEISURE ACTIVITIES: -- liquor shops & akharas came up in any empty spot.
--There were magicians, monkey players or acrobats.
--chawls were also the place for the exchange of news about jobs, strikes, riots or demonstrations.
-- at times the jobber settled disputes, organized food supplies or arranged informal credit & also brought important information on political developments.
--people who belonged to ‘depressed classes’ found it even more difficult to find housing or were kept out of many chawls & had to live in shelters made of corrugated sheets, leaves or bamboo poles.
TOWN PLANNING:
Planning in Bombay was a result of fears about epidemic plague.
--the city of Bombay Improvement Trust was established in 1898, it focused on clearing poorer homes out of the city centre.
--by 1918, Rent Act was passed to keep rents reasonable, but it had the opposite effect of producing severe housing crisis, since landlords withdrew from the market.
--one of the way the city was developed was through massive reclamation projects.
LAND RECLAMATION IN BOMBAY:
--THE EARLIEST PROJECT BEGAN IN 1784. THE Governor of Bombay approved of building of the great sea-wall which prevented the flooding of the low-lying areas of Bombay.
--the need for additional commercial space in the mid-19thc led to the formulation of several plans, both govt. & private companies for the reclamation of more land from the sea.
--private companies became interested 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 Colaba. By 1870’s the city was expanded to about 22 square miles.
--successful reclamation project was undertaken by the Bombay Port Trust, which built a dry dock between 1914& 1918 and used excavated earth to create the 22-acre Ballard Estate. And famous Marine Drive of Bombay was developed..

BOMBAY AS THE CITY OF DREAMS:
Bombay appears to many as a ‘mayapuri’- a city of dreams.
--many films in Bombay deals with the arrival in the city of new migrants & their encounters with the real pressures of daily life.
--some popular songs from the Bombay film industry speak of the contradictory aspects of the city, as in CID, Guest house etc.( TAKE SONGS FROM BOOK-PG—145)
HISTORY:
Q. When did the Bombay film industry make its first appearance?
Harishchandra Sakharam Bhatwadekar shot a scene of wrestling match in Bombay’s Hanging Gardens & it became India’s first movie in 1896.
--Dadasaheb Phalke made Raja Harishchandra in 1913.
--by 1925, Bombay had become India’s film capital producing films for national audience.
--the amount of money invested was about 756 million in 1947 in 50 films & the industry employed 520’000 people.
PEOPLE: most of the people employed in the industry were themselves migrants who came from cities looking like Lahore, Calcutta & Madras which contributed to the national character of the industry.
--people who came from Lahore than in Punjab were important to the development of the industry.
--many famous writers like Ismat Chughati & Saadat Hasan Manto, were associated with Hindi cinema.
--Bombay films have contributed in a big way to produce an image of the city as a blend of dream and reality, of slums & star bungalows.
LEE KUAN YEW’S SINGAPORE:
Singapore a successful, rich & well planned city, a model for city planning worldwide.Until 1965, Singapore though an important port but had all the problems of a Asain cities. It was overcrowded, lack sanitation, had poor housing & poverty.
Planning was known in Singapore since 1822,but benefitted only a small community of white people who ruled Singapore.
--all this city changed after the city became an independent nation in 1965. Under the leadership of Lee Kuan Yew, the President a massive housing and development programe was under taken and it completely altered the face of the island nation.
--through the planning every inch of the island’s territory was controlled in its use.
--the tall housing blocks, which were well ventilated & serviced were built.
--crime was reducedthrough external corridors, aged were housed alongside their families, ‘void decks’ or empty floors were provided in all buildings.
-migration to the city was strictly controlled.
--news-papers& journals and all forms of communication & association were strictly controlled.
--the citizens of Singapore enjoy a very high degree of material comfort & wealth.
CITIES & THE CHALLENGE OF THE ENVIRONMENT:
City development every occurred at the expanse of the ecology and environment.
--natural features were flattened out and transformed in response to the growing demands of space for the factories, housing and other institutions.
--large quantities of refuseanmd waste products polluted air & water, while excessive noise became the feature of the urban life.
ENGLAND:
Widespread use of coal in homes & industries I 19thc England raised serious problems such as :
a)in the industrial cities Leeds, Bradford & Manchester, hundreds of factory chimneys polluted the air—skies were always grey and all vegetation black.
--black fog that descended on towns, causing bad tempers, smoke related diseases and dirty clothes.
STEPS:
1.People joined campaigns for cleaner air, the goal was to control the nuisance through legislation. This was not easy as the factory owners & steams engine owners did not want to spend on technologies that improve their machines.
2. By the 1840’s few towns such as Derby, Leeds & Manchester had laws to control smoke in the city but the smoke was not easy to monitor or measures and the owners got away with minor adjustments to their machinery that did nothing to stop the smoke.
3.Smoke Abatement Acts of 1847-53 did not always work to clean the air.
CALCUTTA:
It too had the history of pollution.
–its people inhaled grey smoke, particularly in the winter.
–since the city was built on the marshy land, the resulting fog combined with the smoke to generate thick black smog.
–high level pollution was the consequence of the huge population that was dependent on the dung and wood as fuel in their daily life.
–the main polluters were the industries & establishments that used steam engines run on coal.
STEPS:
1. Colonial authorities were at first intent on clearing the place of miasmas, or harmful vapours, but the railway line introduced in 1855 brought a dangerous new pollutant into the picture-coal from Raniganj.
--the high content of ash in Indian coal was a problem. Many pleas were made to banish the dirty mills from the city with no effect.
--in 1863, Calcutta became the first Indian city to get smoke nuisance legislation.--in 1920, the rice mills of Tollygunge began to burn rice husk instead of coal, leading residents to complain that the air is filled up with black soot which falls like drizzling rain from morning till night. The inspectors of the Bengal Smoke Nuisance Commission managed to control industrial smoke. Controlling domestic smoke, however, was far more difficult