In the City, Out of Place

Environment and Modernity, Delhi 1860s to 1960s

Over the last two decades, cities as spaces of residence have come into conflict with
cities as sites of work, mediated by concerns around the environment. This essay engages
with the nature of urban modernity in India while historicising the debates over the
environment in Delhi. The issues and practices bundled together as “environmental”, around
which strategies and tactics are organised, shift through time. Infrastructure and public
health; nuisance and noxious trades; pollution and zoning; standards and technoscience;
and environmentalism through legal rights, leave their distinct imprints on how we dwell
in the city. An environmental injury, perhaps, does not lie in Nature alone and must
be apprehended through frameworks that render these injuries intelligible. The
attention to these shifting registers shall help to link planning and environment
both to power and to an anthropology of the urban modern in India.
AWADHENDRA SHARAN

thick foliage, cramped and ill-ventilated housing, etc.3 Excrement,

O
ver the last two decades, cities as spaces of residence
have increasingly come into conflict with cities as corpses, carcasses, and their odours, were anathema to the sani-
sites of work, the two often being mediated by concerns tary inspectors in cities across the world. Alain Corbin writes
about the environment. For some commentators environmental that through the nineteenth century “to contemplate the mass of
degradation in urban India is a consequence of administrative lapse vapours that accumulated where living beings crowded together
and lack of political will. Short-term interests have prevailed over was to be seized with a vertiginous sense of alarm”.4 Not sur-
long-range, scientifically conceived plans, leading to chaos with prisingly, the putrid crowd, the togetherness of people and animals
industries flourishing in residential spaces and majority of the urban and the enclosed nature of residential spaces became familiar
poor huddled in numerous ‘bastis’ and slums.1 For others, contem- objects of reform. Comprehensive water and sewerage systems,
porary environmentalism in cities such as Delhi, aims no more than well ventilated houses, clear streets and public spaces through
to render invisible that which is unaesthetic, the ugliness of pro- which a civic community could express the urban collective self
duction, and together with it, bodies at work.2 This essay seeks to were hallmarks of 19th century European cities as they responded
engage with the nature of urban modernity while historicising the to the spatial and social impacts of the industrial revolution.5 The
debates over environment in Delhi. I suggest that the constellation functioning of the human heart, as William Harvey had revealed
of issues and practices that are bundled together as “environ- it, shaped an image in which modern European and American
mental”, around which strategies and tactics are then organised, cities cast themselves, as circulatory systems with unhampered
shift through time. Five broad constellations may be suggested: movement of air, water and citizens through the body of the city.6
infrastructure and public health; nuisance and noxious trades; Liberal governmentality implied that these networks shaped
pollution and zoning; standards and technoscience; and environ- individual conduct without being directly interventionist, “clean-
mentalism through legal rights, each of which leaves its distinct liness” being a function not of the exercise of police power but
imprint on how we dwell in the city. Argued another way, the of technological discipline that left the home and the family
essay suggests that the nature of an environmental injury does not relatively autonomous to shape itself.7
lie in Nature alone but must be apprehended through the framework Colonial cities could not have been more different. The crowd
that render these injuries intelligible. The attention to these shifting was suspect for more reasons than one and the lack of legibility
registers, we hope, shall help us link planning and environment both of colonial streets that wound their way into narrow lanes and
to power and to an anthropology of the urban modern in India. cul-de-sacs spoke both of inferior urban design and functioned
The inquiry is developed in two parts, the first concerning the as a sign of degeneracy.8 Local urban practices, whether they
nature of colonial urbanism in Delhi and the second addressing related to the mix of the public or private or concerned the proper
the period of nationalist planning. The conclusion briefly outlines relationship between the spaces of the living and the dead, could
the framework of regulatory science and legal rights through not simply be cajoled into transforming themselves. Instead they
which environmentalism in contemporary Delhi has unfolded had to be coaxed into rendering themselves in the image of
over the last decade. Europe, making municipal governance in colonial contexts more
a matter of authority and policing than of individual fashioning.9
Colonial Urbanism: As Gyan Prakash has argued “colonial governmentality could not
Infrastructure, Nuisance and Congestion be the mere tropicalisation of the Western norm, but its funda-
mental dislocation”.10 What was achieved in the metropolitan
Technologies of urban governance till the end of the 19th centre through the sovereignty-discipline-government triangle
century were anchored in conceptions of public health. Miasma identified by Foucault could be effected in the colony only through
was the influential theory of disease that explained a sick body the power of police; the making of the citizen in the imperial domain
through the “corruption” of air on account of decaying vegetation, was counterposed to the domination of subjects in the colonies.

Economic and Political Weekly November 25, 2006 4905

 In Delhi, Europeans and Indians had lived in a rather mixed Thus defined, nuisance covered a rather wide spectrum of
fashion till the middle of the 19th century. This changed fairly activities, many of which were not recognised as nuisance even
rapidly in the aftermath of the revolt of 1857 when a third of in England.23 Characteristic of the colonial context was also the
the city was demolished and rebuilt. Post-mutiny Delhi, like many power enjoyed by local officials to prosecute under this law, with
other Indian cities, had to be “sanitised” and “improved”, with the duty of “lay inspectors” being “to see the abatement of
a view to establishing order and containing disaffection. In 1863, nuisances and to bringing the cases of nuisances before the
a municipal committee was established for the city but unlike law”.24 Convictions for public nuisance increased rapidly between
English municipalities that provided amenities such as gas, 1870s and 1910s – in Bengal presidency from about 15 per cent
electricity, water and sewerage networks through taxes on rental of total convictions to about 45 per cent of total convictions for
value of property, Indian municipalities, Delhi included, were cognisable crimes.25 The post-mutiny colonial state might have
hampered by considerably less power, and even less financial affirmed a hands-off social policy at the highest levels of govern-
resources, to effect the necessary transformation.11 Not surpris- ment but as Veena Oldenburg suggests, there were steady attempts
ingly, the infrastructure that developed could, at best, secure to insert colonial agendas in fashioning the Indian society at lower
partial improvements. Water supply in Delhi saw the replacement levels.26 In every major city of the country we thus see nuisance
of the system of canals and wells by piped water beginning in as providing an important frame for fashioning the urban order.
the 1890s,12 conservancy arrangements were reworked13 and Michael Anderson mentions roadside hawking, bathing in a
electricity was first supplied on a regular basis from 1902.14 stream, use of manure in local fishing and defecation on the streets
Disease and disaffection were sought to be simultaneously as instances in which the colonial state intervened in shaping
addressed through widening of roads and creation of open spaces the everyday environment of cities. In Bombay we read of Arthur
that separated European residents from native quarters.15 Effec- Crawford’s concern with trades such as dyeing that he tried in
tive connectivity through these networks, however, was rather vain to locate outside the city boundaries.27 In Lucknow, the
limited, both on account of cultural differences and insufficient location of the graveyard became a matter of great dispute.28 In
finances.16 By 1894, Jyoti Hosagrahar points out, only 146 houses Delhi, familiar nuisances included encroachments on public lands,
in the city, mostly European, had water connections. Few streets construction of new privies opening into public streets, dilapi-
were regularly maintained and by 1912 the municipality had been dated houses, protruding walls endangering the lives of occupants
able to build only 25 public latrines and three public urinals for a or passers by and cremation grounds, around all of which there were
city that now numbered close to 5,00,000.17 Waterborne latrines frequent contests between the residents and municipal authorities,
were yet to be introduced in the city by the first decade of the given the rather different cultural understandings of public and
century and the ambitious scheme floated in 1913 to provide a private, sacred and profane, appropriate and inappropriate
waterborne sanitation system for the city remained a paper dream behaviours.29 Even open spaces outside the city wall qualified as
in the face of the fiscal conservancy of the government of India.18 “sightless nuisance”, rubbish lands that awaited improvement!30
Infrastructure in the colonial city, it may be suggested, operated Fines and cessation of activity were two ways of dealing with
most powerfully in the symbolic realm, gesturing to an imminent the issue of nuisance.31 In Delhi, fines were levied for encro-
modernity, even as that modernity was endlessly deferred. aching on roads, on unauthorised structures and for carrying on
The management of “vapours” and “nuisances” defined a “offensive trades” and at various times during the 19th century
second domain of interventions in the colonial city. The Military tanners and dyers were relocated, taxes were levied on ‘tehbazari’
Cantonments Act of 1864 contained regulations not only on land and on draught animals and milch cattle whose object was
use and drainage but also on nuisances and unlicensed trade.19 “entirely sanitary”, lime kilns were removed to Ajmere gate
Similarly, the report on the sanitary state of the army mentioned owing to smoke nuisance, trade in hides was sought to be
“unhealthy trades” alongside “bad air”, “badly constructed and regulated and the slaughter house sought to be moved from its
ill-ventilated habitations”, “poor drainage”, etc, as contributing location at Idgah to a site outside the city.32 Anderson argues
to an undesirable state of affairs.20 The remedy in law that had that these frequent conflicts around nuisance were reflective of
developed Europe was largely in the nature of private disputes an intense conflict over the use of public spaces and physical
suggesting that the enjoyment of one’s property could not be at resources suggesting that the state policy was at extreme variance
the expense of injury to another. Typically used by one form with the modes of existence and conceptions of property that
of productive activity (e g, agriculture) against pollution and obtained in the local society. This was especially true as one
consequent loss of value caused by another (e g, industry), these moved down the social ladder, the colonial law operating ad-
laws were resorted to rather infrequently by the working class versely against economically marginal groups by dispossessing
of Britain and found even less use in colonial cities.21 Instead them of common facilities that they had hitherto enjoyed. An
what came to the fore as a technology of governance in colonial “environmental good”, Anderson suggests, did not imply the
India were the laws of public nuisance, coded first in the penal same for those who “relied upon rivers, streets, and wastelands
code of 1862, chapter XIV of which concerns offences affecting as key resources in the daily conduct of production and subsis-
the public health, safety, convenience, decency and morals. tence” and those who “did not depend immediately upon common
The code recognised a person to be guilty of public nuisance if property resources for subsistence”.33 Christine Rosen’s study
s/he carried out “any act or is guilty of an illegal omission which of nuisance laws in 19th century US also suggests that the move
causes any common injury, danger or annoyance to the public to curb certain kinds of activities in the city was an aspect of
or to the people in general who dwell or occupy property in the modernisation, the legal evidence suggesting that the bar for proof
vicinity, or which must necessarily cause injury, obstruction, of environmental harm caused by modern, steam-driven factories,
danger or annoyance to persons who may have occasion to use mines, etc, was considerably raised as compared to proof of harm
any public right”. Instances of these included “[any] negligent from traditional works like pottery, slaughter houses, wax making,
act likely to spread infection of disease dangerous to life”, “ [any] etc.34 Anderson’s study of smoke pollution in Calcutta also sug-
malignant act likely to spread infection of disease dangerous to gests that the burden of proof under the 1863 Calcutta and Howrah
life”, “fouling water of public spring or reservoir”, “making smoke nuisances act was very high so as to make successful
atmosphere noxious to health”, and “negligent conduct with prosecution “almost impossible”.35 Conversely, we may note that
respect to poisonous substance”.22 the dyers, weavers etc, who had been the objects of Crawford’s

4906 Economic and Political Weekly November 25, 2006

ire in Bombay had significant financial clout, the opposition to authority to carry out the scheme. Where a municipality might
these activities therefore not simply being a matter of economic be undecided for months and years regarding the execution of any
divide but reflective of the fact that they were seen as being “out particular scheme, a Trust, subject to government approval, has
of place” in the modern city. power by statute to notify that a particular scheme be undertaken.43
Read thus as a modernising impulse, it is possible to argue that Beginning December 1937 the Delhi Improvement Trust drew
the delineation of nuisance activities were always inflected by up a number of schemes, 26 schemes being listed for the first
cultural markers. Mark Harrison points out that prior to the 19th triennial, followed by another 21 schemes between 1941and 1944
century climatic differences were seen as being sources of disease and six schemes between 1947 and 1950, all of which were
but subsequent emphasis shifted to the habits of the natives, the marked by the precedence of financial consideration over “im-
latter perspective being elegantly summed up in the view of the provement”. Tanners were not shifted from Rehgar Pura as it
surgeon Kenneth MacKinnon who wrote in 1848 that “disease was felt that this would have a prejudicial effect on land value
depends mainly on general climate ... but it depends also in part in Sarai Rohilla. The slaughterhouse remained where it was and
upon mere local causes, and on the social conditions, habits and big slum clearance schemes such as the Delhi-Ajmere Gate
morals of the population”.36 The view found support in influential rehousing scheme, in which approximately 2,000 families were
quarters such as in the Cantonment Act of 1864 and in the writings to be relocated, remained on paper since it was felt that existing
of Florence Nightingale: “They live amidst their own filth, ground rents would make the entire scheme unprofitable.44 Hume
infecting the air with it, poisoning the ground...polluting the had been well aware of the potential pitfalls. He wrote, “On the
water... [some] even think it a holy thing to drink filth”.37 Quite subject of poor class accommodation that the comparatively
obviously, referents of pollution in colonial narratives were heavy cost of acquisition of land, which in the circumstances
always in excess of “nature” and included elements of aesthetics, will not yield a big return, is a serious obstacle, unless proposals
racial difference and class biases. Consider for instance these for such a scheme go hand in hand with proposals for improve-
reports from the Delhi municipality: ment of an area of government land from which a higher return
Ghosis living in Gali Shahtara are a source of great nuisance as may be expected”.45 As it turned out, between the play of the
their cattle collect and roam about in the streets, and their economic and the environmental, the latter understood as decent
womenfolk collect cow-dung cakes within the railway boundary... housing conditions that could rid the city of its slums, the former
these dung cakes when stuck to the walls and roofs of the houses, always trumped. Sandip Hazeerasingh rightly points out that, “in
are as unsanitary as unsightly.38 spite of the consistently high level of frustration at their failure
Over 66 per cent of the deaths from respiratory diseases occurred to reverse the process of environmental degradation, the colonial
in Delhi city...The larger percentage of deaths amongst females agencies never questioned the shibboleth that urban development
is no doubt largely due to the purdah system and to the insanitary should be driven by the profit and prestige motives of the dominant
and congested housing conditions.39
classes”.46 Not surprisingly the committee set up by the govern-
Nuisance and disease, in the colonial imagination, thus called ment of independent India to inquire into the functioning of the
for both material improvements and the containment of the Trust was scathing in its assessment of the Trust’s activities. The
dangers posed by native habits. Cultural differences translated capital of an independent, democratic India, it suggested, needed to
into spatial distinctions and what Gyan Praksh calls the irreduc- be built according to radically different set of imperatives than what
ible difference regarding “the truth of the Indian body” both had characterised the first city of an Empire, based on scientific
produced the knowledge and techniques of policing and the knowledge and in accordance with a master plan.47 Even more
pragmatics of education in matters of health and hygiene. critically, it suggested, the planned city must cater to the needs
Congestion, in addition to sanitation and nuisance, was the third of all members of the urban public, especially “bearing in mind…the
important category through which the colonial state sought to requirements of the poorest sections of the population”.48
manage native populations and cityscapes. “The people in Delhi”,
Colonel Beadon, president of the New Delhi Municipal Com-
mittee, noted in 1912 “have been huddled into a totally insufficient Nationalist Modernisation and Urban Environments
area so that the streets have been encroached upon [and] slums In 1947, India was partitioned and Delhi became a city of
have been built”.40 By the early part of the 20th century it was refugees forced to migrate from the other side of the newly minted
suggested “to take up the question of extension comprehensively border under the shadow of death and massacre. Simultaneously,
and prepare outlines of a general scheme to provide for roads, the normal stream of migration continued, contributing to a
streets and space for building during the next 30 years”.41 massive growth of the city population from approximately 4,00,000
Improvement ever more tried to anticipate rather than merely persons at the beginning of the century to over 17,00,000 by 1951,
respond to a situation and as it did so, it began to acquire the the large numbers taking a toll on the city’s infrastructural
veneer of a plan. However, contrary to the assumption that any capacities. This was a matter of some concern to the newly
such plan would be for the betterment of the entire city, the two independent rulers of India. “Bad environment affects us all alike;
cities of Delhi were increasingly severed. Further, contrary to we are choked, each one of us...by the meanness and squalor
the growth of professional planning in the metropolitan context, which stretch their tentacles upwards from the lives of our less
the most that Delhi got was a bureaucratic Improvement Trust. fortunate fellow citizens”, wrote G D Birla in his report on the
The formation of this Trust was first proposed by A P Hume in Delhi Improvement Trust.49 The crisis was evidently most signi-
the Report on Relief of Congestion in Delhi that outlined the need ficant for the slum dwellers, but its articulation was through the
to provide an additional built area of about 1,200 acre to house lens of the urban reformer, concerned simultaneously with health
the excess population of the city (estimated at 1,00,000 persons), and morality of the poor and “danger” to the city. Pandit Thakur
which, Hume felt, would be best carried out by an Improvement Das Bhargava, among many others, hinted at sexual/psycho-
Trust.42 This was so because the Trust could work in “public logical tensions through proximate living: “There is so much
interest” while ignoring “politics” in a manner that was not congestion in Harpul basti that many families live in a single
possible even for a municipality with limited powers: room. Father, mother, son, daughter-in-law, daughter, son-in-law
The argument for an Improvement Trust rests on the basis that are all huddled in the same room. Under the circumstances how
having decided what scheme should be undertaken it has statutory on earth can a person maintain his health (‘tandrusti’), preserve

Economic and Political Weekly November 25, 2006 4907

her shame (‘sharm/haya’) or retain their morality”.50 Housing areas and neighbourhoods (e g, Sarai Rohilla, Mata Sundari,
congestion, the Birla Committee noted, was not only a causative Motia Khan, Mubarakpur Kotla, etc), transit camps and
factor in the spread of tuberculosis and other communicable “unauthorised land use”, the last including on the one hand
diseases but also bred juvenile delinquency, accentuated the beggars, vagabonds and squatters and on the other, open markets
bitterness of class antagonisms and fostered social discontent. and small vendors. The desire was to produce integration through
It observed “Where honest toil can produce nothing but squalor improvement, to secure at least a minimal degree of equity
there need be no wonder that unsocial tempers rise”.51 Into this through planning through schemes for relocation of basti squat-
social complex of doing justice for the “honest worker”, address- ters “in suitable areas not too far away from major work centres”
ing the needs both of the victims of partition and those who were with “structures and facilities [that] may be substandard” in order
merely poor and working towards the making of a national capital to keep rents and costs down, while maintaining ”space standards
that would not suffer the pyschological and social burdens of for schools and parks and streets, etc”. It was also recommended
mass poverty, Delhi began preparing for a planned future. This that these should be integrated with a larger neighbourhood and
was a political task, to be accomplished by technical means. If that “reasonable areas should be earmarked in several zones for
in the case of the Improvement Trust, politics was evaded through the low-income groups who migrate to Delhi on accord of the
the creation of an intermediate institution between the govern- relentless “push” from the rural areas”.60
ment and the elected municipality, nationalist urban planning Zoning, the plan argued, was entirely for promotion of health
operated not by evading politics but by making it distinct from and safety, moral and social welfare, and could not, on any count,
technical calculations: be “used to accomplish any kind of human segregation like
Non-officials do not understand anything about town planning excluding certain communities, or income groups from certain
…But any plan that will come now will come before this committee areas”.61 In the course of parliamentary debates that preceded
on which there are plenty of non-official members. They can study the arrival of the American planners the issue had elicited two
it and make any suggestions. But the actual planning for a town responses. One view favoured the acceptance of difference in
or an urban area must be done by town planners.52 standards and amenities so that all residents of Delhi had a place
In this background, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, in her capacity as to stay. “It would be much better”, Mohanlal Saxena, member
minister for health and local self-government, invited the Ford of Parliament from Delhi argued, “if we divide the whole of Delhi
Foundation to assist in the planning of Delhi in 1956.53 Albert into zones and say such and such zones will be A class, such
Mayer, a US-based planner with prior experience of working on and such will be B class and they will have such and such services,
the planning of Bombay and Chandigarh and the initiator of some will have all the services and some will have a few”.62
Etawah rural community development project, was appointed to To insist on uniform standards, he argued, would be to deprive
head the consultation team consisting of a physical planner, a the many of decent housing who could not afford such living.
specialist in government, an industrial planner, a transportation Others contested this logic of differentiation, arguing that similar
specialist, an economist and an urban sociologist. environmental amenities ought to be made available to all –
The city of Delhi that the planners encountered in the 1950s electricity, water, latrines and parks being the needs of the urban
was one that was embedded in the regional economy, drawing poor as much as of middle class residents.63 The master plan when
upon resources, providing goods but above all attracting people, it was formulated took both elements, suggesting that economic
both migrants and refugees. Its governance required the ability differentiation would only partially translate into differences of
to comprehensively map and order these flows so that optimum built form, the exceptions in quality of building material, etc, being
balance could be obtained, minimising “the friction of progress” offset by the need to “adopt a comprehensive system of building,
as James Scott puts it.54 A comprehensive regional and urban sanitary and other codes which prescribe adequate minimum
plan was the suggested solution. Two strands of regional planning standards of health, sanitation and safety”.64 The rule of excep-
had developed in the US since the 1920s, a metropolitan regional tions, it argued, would not translate into the zoning of difference.
development plan and another view inspired by Patrick Geddes However, what justice offered with one hand, culture withdrew
and the garden city movement that subscribed to low-density with the other. To be in city and inhabit its numerous bastis was
urban developments situated in their regional contexts.55 In the to be always under the injunction to mutate into an other, the
case of Delhi, the region as metropolitan area found favour over violence of the policing of colonial difference yielding to the
its conception as a resource region. Delhi, the argument went, burden of the nationalist/modernist desire for assimilation. Slums
was “an almost pure example of the need for the concept, were about economic poverty but also “social degeneration”, so
development and execution of a plan for the metropolitan region”, that their improvement was always more than merely physical
and within this metropolitan region two broad environmental reconstruction. Nehru stressed the need for improvement of
concerns were outlined: slums and industrial location.56 physical conditions but also of the need to face up to “ingrained
The issue of slums, in post-partition Delhi, was an absolute habits and lack of desire as well as lack of training to use better
priority, to be tackled pragmatically and scientifically. In a letter accommodation”.65 The Bharat Sevak Samaj wrote of slums as
to Nehru, Mayer pointed out that while in the west “the social a consequence of urban poverty, but remarked that “miserable
conscience that demanded slum elimination” emerged after a environment in which they live breeds despair and a fatalistic
large build-up of capital and resources, in India, the task was approach to life”.66 For them, social life in slums lacked “any-
rendered far more difficult because of “the growth of moral, thing desirable” and smacked of “many unhealthy trends”, sug-
social and political pressure before the build-up of resources to gesting that “social regeneration of slum dwellers” ought to be
permit the massive attack required”.57 It is entirely understand- an “essential and integral part of a slum clearance or slum
able that Mayer was cautious that “care must be exercised not eradication programme”.67 It is another matter altogether that the
to imply a type and rate of action which in fact may not be possible “problems” of the reformer were sometimes no more than alter-
to attain or continue”.58 What was required, in his opinion, was native preferred by the dweller. Details of a survey of the slums
a demonstration effect, the need to solve select problems in of old Delhi conducted by the Samaj, and made available to the
specific areas on a minimum, adequate, standard scale through planners, make clear that though an overwhelming 90 per cent
limited “controlled” development, while making long-term of those surveyed expressed their dissatisfaction with the
plans.59 Plans were thus drawn up for urban renewal of specific existing conditions in Delhi slums, a mere 3 per cent considered

4908 Economic and Political Weekly November 25, 2006

overcrowding to be a principal reason for the same; while many anticipation, not reaction, was needed in a new urban context
spoke of the need for provisions, a mere 0.4 per cent considered and zoning helped ”place a margin of safety between that which
education of people in sanitary habits as a possible solution; is permitted and that which is sure to lend to injury or loss”.75
and while congestion had been a common concern of both the The argument against zoning also considered the question of
colonial state and the nationalist modernisers, most slum dwe- knowledge, arguing that municipal councils simply lacked the
llers preferred to suffer “a little more congestion to being cold wisdom and the knowledge to “measure prophetically the surging
to social ties”.68 However, while these alternatives were re- and receding tides by which business evolves and grows, to
corded, they hardly registered and so even as the Samaj recom- foresee and map exactly the appropriate uses to which land shall
mended the provision of facilities, it also spoke of “rousing social be developed and for each separate use”.76 The argument in
and civic consciousness”, “infusing hope and confidence”, favour of zoning, in contrast, emphasised its scientific, apolitical
through a programme of “extensive education”.69 The fullest character: “A zone plan finds its scientific as well as its legal
expression of this urge to recast the rural in the mould of the justification in the fact that it represents the product of a study
appropriately urban came two decades later, expressed in the designed for the promotion of public health, safety, convenience,
words of Jagmohan: prosperity and welfare, and that he who made the design kept
I have always believed in the destiny of this city, in its historic these purposes in mind throughout the work”.77 Thus conceived,
role, in its being a spiritual workshop of the nation, in its capacity zoning was also tied to regional planning, so as to eliminate any
to impart urbanity and civility to the rural migrant...The real possibility of its manipulation by local interests. Zoning without
problem of the slums is not taking people out of slums but slums planning, it was suggested, lacked “coherence and discipline in
out of people.70 the pursuit of goals of public welfare”.78
But we anticipate our story. In the years when the master plan This was the tradition available to Mayer and his team at the
was being put together, American consultants brought their own time they began to prepare the master plan for Delhi. Not sur-
views on the matter of the refashioning of Delhi’s slums on the prisingly, they made a strong case for zoning regulations as not
basis of American neighbourhood schemes that resonated with only protecting residential areas from the harmful invasions of
ideas being promoted by Indian nationalists on the issue of civic commercial and industrial uses but also promoting business and
citizenship. In the American view too, Indian slums were more industry through planned and orderly development.79 However,
than the “aggregate of physical surroundings”. They were “a way zoning was not simply an idea that had been grafted onto Indian
of life” as well, one characterised by disease, illiteracy and limited cities from elsewhere. As we saw above, versions of the zoning/
cultural resources, save cinema and gambling, peopled by persons planning paradigm had been debated in India for some time and had
who were “apathetic or even antagonistic to local authorities” many Indian adherents.80 In the course of the planning exercise,
and “lacking community consciousness”.71 The task before the J P Sah of the Central Regional and Urban Planning Organisation,
planner was to help the slum dwellers make the transition from Delhi posited the necessary and desirable link between the
this state to one of engaged civic disposition by stimulating modernisation of nuisance laws and zoning:
“common frontiers of associations” that would pave the way Zoning regulation should provide a very effective remedy against
for “community consciousness and integration” and identifying blight, non-conforming uses and high densities…At present only
“natural leaders” who would help organise mutual aid and self- very few trades, business or industries, characterised as “offensive
help work.72 Planning and community were tied through the and dangerous” are subject to municipal licensing powers. There…
making of ‘vikas mandals’ (development councils), specifying is every reason why municipal licensing should be made so
sets of activities in which the entire community could participate. extensive as to comprehend every trade, business or industry
The education was not of slum dwellers alone but of all marginal within a city.81
sections of the society including refugees and migrants. “We need The consideration before the planners was two-fold: provision
to”, Mayer wrote to Nehru, “tie these submerged citizens into our of adequate workspace for workers and provision of adequate
corporate and civic life, give them a sense of a stake in living and space for the growth of desirable kinds of industry and production
performing …[which would] both fulfill the needs of social policy in the city. The manufacturing industry was considered of some
and buy time for a realistic policy of urban development”.73 This importance for the economic growth of the city. However, existing
was the proposal for the making of a reasoned civil society, that industries posed a number of problems. Apart from some cotton
in time was constantly undermined by the operations of the mills, very few modern plants had been established in Delhi in
political society.74 the preceding decades; industries established in the wake of the
The play between the social and the physical, between land- inflow of refugee population were marked by severe inadequacies
use and environment and between environment and the fashion- regarding space, air and light; in most neighbourhoods, especially
ing of the urban modern in Delhi found an even fuller expression in Old Delhi, there was an intimate mingling of industry with
in considerations of industry and pollution, their types and location residence; working space for manufacturing workers was limited;
and the extent to which zoning and planning could help in making many industries were “rural” in character and little suited for a
improvements. Zoning had first been introduced in Germany in modern metropolis; and above all, many were noxious and
the late 19th century and soon became globally influential with produced nuisance, making it imperative that they be relocated
New York passing the first comprehensive zoning law in 1916 elsewhere.82 The size of plants and scale of nuisance, planners
and the constitutionality of the zoning principle being upheld by suggested, were the two most important considerations in classi-
the US supreme court in 1926. Links between nuisance and zoning fying industries.83 Depending on these, it was proposed to have
and between zoning and planning were enunciated in the course a number of industrial zones in the city. Multistoried flatted
of the arguments presented before the US supreme court. Both factory spaces were envisaged for smaller industries and work-
the proponents and opponents of zoning recognised that nuisance shops that dotted the old city and the city centre and were not
laws were incapable of dealing with more dense, complex urban noxious.84 Work-cum-industrial centres were proposed for out-
settings, necessitating an extension of the police powers which lying industrial areas to provide for household manufacturing
inhered in them. However, while opponents feared that zoning units. Provision were also made for non-noxious light and service
on aesthetic grounds might constrain public welfare by restri- industries.85 In contrast, there was only a grudging acceptance
cting growth of business and industry, proponents argued that of clay mining and pottery and it was suggested too that large

Economic and Political Weekly November 25, 2006 4909

industries were “undesirable industries in urban Delhi” and because there is now an entirely different order of material flows
therefore, best located in neighbouring towns.86 Finally, there and urban expectations than that which obtained for the planners,
were those industries that were to be completely prohibited, viz, necessitating the innovation of new institutional mechanisms.
the noxious industries that were associated with stench, smoke,
fumes, etc, posing hazards to those residing in their Conclusion: New Beginnings
neighbourhoods. A list of 22 such obnoxious and hazardous
industries was prepared and these, the plan emphatically argued, Earlier concerns with pollution that was visible and degradable
must be kept out of Delhi urban area, leaving unsaid where these are giving way to new types of pollution with very small quantities
should be located.87 However, the most interesting case was that of synthetic chemicals that…damage the environment...Despite
of industries designated “rural”, discussions on which figure both uncertainties and insufficient knowledge, political and scientific
in the context of urban redevelopment and the making of new decisions concerning environmental change will increasingly be
industrial zones, sometimes described as noxious and at other necessary.91
times as being merely anachronistic. This essay has argued that environment is a fluid concept,
In the colonial period, we have suggested above, native habits linking cultures, populations, materials and spaces in specific
were considered a major cause of environmental degradation. In ways in particular historical conjunctures. In the colonial period,
many ways the nationalist plans for urban improvement and public health and concerns around nuisance shaped the strategies
dealing with nuisances carried this style of argument forward, through which the state sought to manage spaces and populations.
and yet they could hardly do so without dropping the baggage About a half century ago, the nuisance paradigm yielded to the
of cultural inferiority ingrained in colonial writings. The response planning approach in a bid to tackle pollution that occurred in
that emerged was to deploy the trope of the “rural”, rural persons non-proximate instances. Over the last decade, land use planning
and rural industrial processes/trades being made to stand in the itself has had to gradually accommodate environmental planning,
place of the native, as that which was prior and inferior and in first in the form of statutory laws governing air and water
need of transformation. The first needed to be educated into being pollution and then as a discourse of rights, environment as
properly urban/modern while the second required to be relocated fundamental right, as pronounced in numerous judgments of the
beyond the margins of the city, into “urban villages”. The main Supreme Court. Planning, in the 1950s had justified itself as a
plan itself spoke little of the subject except to recommend that science and a diagnostic of social needs that could address general
village-like trades such as keeping milch cattle be removed to good through specific standards. Today, we reflect on the possible
urban villages, which would both strengthen the rural economy limits of that science and the uncertainty that is intrinsic to
and help provide cheap milk to the city.88 However, a more regulatory science trying to cope with an ever rapid introduction
elaborate set of reasonings were on offer in the work studies of new chemicals and wastes into our environment and try to
related to the making of the master plan. Rural industries were unpack the new politics of environment – legal, technoscientific
defined more widely to include such activities as pottery, tannery, and highly mediated; precaution must take precedence over
keeping milch cattle, handloom weaving, artistic metal works, follow-up. However, even in these contemporary environmen-
‘zari’ and ‘zardosi’ making, etc. The criteria that made them “rural” talist discourses there is also the evocation of common nuisance
was not quite spelt out though the reasons regarding the necessity laws, planning prescriptions and provisions of statutory laws,
for such a shift were on offer: these industries, it was argued, suggesting that no one agenda totally eclipses another though
were located in the heart of the residential areas, intensifying each does seek to fashion the city in its own way. Reflections
slum conditions, and their relocation would therefore mean the on the contemporary city requires that we recover the ways in
release of “valuable land” and “weeding out those uses not which we ordered our cities in the past, not with a view of a
required in the urban core”. It was argued too that some of these, return but to excavate their traces in our everyday habits and
such as tanning, were also obnoxious and hence must be located ways of inhabiting the city. EPW
outside the proposed urbanisable limits. On the other hand, it
was assumed that the villages would gain through new economic Email: [email protected]
activities and rural life that had been stagnating would be revitalised.
The problem was that the people who practised such trades were Notes
hardly appreciative of the “win-win” scenario. It was estimated that
of the nearly 30,000 families of slum dwellers involved in rural 1 Gita Dewan Verma, Slumming in India: A Chronicle of Slums and Their
Saviours, Penguin Books, Delhi, 2002.
industries, only about half would be willing to move to the urban 2 Amita Baviskar, ‘The Politics of the City’, Seminar 516, August 2002;
villages being created, the fate of the other half left unsaid.89 Dunu Roy, ‘From Home to Estate’, Seminar, 533, January 2004.
This sharp polarisation between the urban and the rural, as 3 Mark Harrison, Climates and Constitutions: Health, Race, Environment
persons and in their economic roles, was posited not only in the and British Imperialism in India, 1600-1850, OUP, Delhi, 1999.
plan itself but also in its popular descriptions: 4 Alain Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social
Imagination, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass, 1986, p 47.
A further step would be to relieve urban Delhi of those members 5 On “sanitary city” in England see Christopher Hamlin, Public Health and
of its population whose occupations – and consequently ways of Social Justice in the Age of Chadwick, Britain 1800-1854, Cambridge
living – are primarily rural, and resettle them in the villages. University Press, Cambridge, 1998.
Tannery, pottery, weaving... are all occupations which belong not to 6 Matthew Gandy, Concrete and Clay: Reworking Nature in New York City,
the city but the village ...Too many people now settled in Delhi...are MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, 2002, p 8.
by their very nature and instincts rural dwellers ...if Delhi is to 7 Thomas Osborne, ‘Security and Vitality, Drains, Liberalism and Power in
the 19th Century’ in Andrew Berry, Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (eds),
be planned into a well integrated city, and to be maintained as such, Foucault and Political Reason, Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism and Ration-
it needs inhabitants with a primarily urban psychology.90 alities of Government, Routledge, London and New York, pp 99-122.
“Nuisance” and pollution were thus to be located elsewhere, 8 Jyoti Hosagrahar, ‘Design, Domination and Defiance: Negotiating
spatially and socially, and the discourse of planning acquired its Urbanism in Delhi, 1857-1910’, PhD, Diss, University of California,
Berkeley, 1997.
significance from its confidence in managing these separations. 9 This in not to deny that there were significant social differentiation
Over the next three decades or so, this confidence has been much within European cities with regard to the nature of the municipal intervention.
shaken, both through the many exceptions to the master plan and 10 Gyan Prakash, ‘The Colonial Genealogy of Society, Community and

4910 Economic and Political Weekly November 25, 2006

 Political Modernity in India’ in Patrick Joyce (ed), The Social in Question, New 51 GoI, Delhi Improvement Trust Enquiry Report, Vol 1, p 21.
Bearings in History and the Social Sciences, Routledge, 2002, pp 81-96. 52 Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, Lok Sabha Debates, 1955, Vol IX, Part II, p 1890.
11 Sandip Hazareesingh, ‘Colonial Modernism and the Flawed Paradigms 53 Letter from Rajkumari Amrit Kaur to Douglas Ensminger, Ford Foundation
of Urban Renewal in Bombay, 1900-1925’, Urban History, 28, 2, 2001, Representative in India, January 14, 1956. Ford Foundation Archives,
pp 235-55. For expenditures of Delhi municipality on policing and other NY. A Town Planning Organisation had been set up prior to the
functions see Narayani Gupta, Delhi between Two Empires: Society, arrival of the American consultants that had prepared an interim
Government and Urban Growth, 1809-1931, Oxford University Press, general plan for the city, a “holding the line” operation awaiting
Delhi, 1998, pp 83-168. the making of a regional master plan. See George Goetschius,
12 Gupta, Delhi between Empires, pp 160-61. ‘TPO: History and Current Affairs’ (nd), Albert Mayer Papers
13 Vijay Prashad, ‘The Technology of Sanitation in Colonial Delhi’, Modern (hereafter AM papers), box no 23, folder 3, University of Chicago spl
Asian Studies (hereafter MAS), 35, 1, 2001, pp 113-55. collections.
14 Gupta, Delhi between Empires, pp 167-68. 54 James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the
15 Gupta, Delhi between Empires, Ch 6, ‘The Strains of Urban Expansion’ Human Condition Have Failed, Yale University Press, 1998.
and Hosagrahar, ‘Design, Domination and Defiance’, esp Ch 3, 55 On the New York Plan see David A Johnson, Planning the Great Metropolis:
‘Constructing Landscapes of Health, Sanitation and Infrastructure’. The 1929 Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs, London, E and
16 Mark Harrison, Public Health in British India, Delhi, Foundation Books, FN Spon, 1996, On Garden City Movement see Stephen Ward (ed),
1994, esp Ch 7, ‘Public Health and Local Self-Government’. Garden City, Past, Present and Future, Spon Press, 1992.
17 Hosagrahar, ‘Design, Domination and Defiance’, p 169. 56 Albert Mayer, AM Papers, box 21, folder 35.
18 Prashad, ‘Sanitation Technology’, p 123. 57 AM Papers, box 22, folder 4, Letter May 15, 1957.
19 Harrison, Public Health in British India, p 76. 58 Albert Mayer to Jawaharlal Nehru, May 15, 1957, AM Papers, box 22,
20 Hosagrahar, ‘Design, Domination and Defiance’, p 147. folder 4.
21 John P S McLaren, ‘Nuisance Law and the Industrial Revolution – Some 59 See the note, ‘Study-Work Plan, Slum Clearance and Urban
Lessons from Social History,’ Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Vol 3, Redevelopment Section’, first draft (revised) (nd), Ford Foundation
No 2, 1983, pp 155-221. archives, NY.
22 Indian Penal Code, Sections 268-291, in England, nuisance laws had been 60 Delhi Development Authority, Master Plan for Delhi, 1962 (hereafter
first passed in 1846. MPD-62), p 27.
23 M R Anderson, ‘Public Nuisance and Private Purpose’, SOAS law 61 MPD-62, p 44.
department working paper, 1, 1992. 62 Mohanlal Saxena, Lok Sabha Debates, 1955, Vol IX, Part II, December 7,
24 Gyan Prakash, Another Reason, Science and the Imagination of Modern 1955, p 1728.
India, OUP, Delhi, 1999, p 131. 63 Naval Prabhakar, Lok Sabha Debates, 1955, Vol IX, Part II, p 1739.
25 Anderson, ‘Public Nuisance and Private Purpose’. 64 MPD-62, p 28.
26 Veena Talwar Oldenburg, The Making of Colonial Lucknow, 1856-1877, 65 Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘Foreword’, to Bharat Sevak Samaj, Slums of Old Delhi,
OUP, Delhi, 1985. Atma Ram and Sons, Delhi, 1958.
27 Arthur C Crawford, The Development of New Bombay: A Pamphlet, 66 Bharat Sevak Samaj, Slums, p 217.
Bombay, 1908, cited in Miriam Dossal, ‘A Master Plan for the City: 67 Bharat Sevak Samaj, Slums, p 150.
Looking at the Past’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol XL, No 36, 68 Bharat Sevak Samaj, Slums, pp 183, 85, 72.
September 3-9, 2005, p 3899. 69 Bharat Sevak Samaj, Slums, p 209.
28 Oldenburg, Colonial Lucknow, pp 112-16. 70 Jagmohan, Island of Truth, Vikas Publishing House, Delhi, 1978, pp 9, 14.
29 Hosagrahar, ‘Design, Domination and Defiance’, p 174, fn 62. 71 Marshall B Clinnard, ‘Report of a Pilot Project in Urban Community
30 Charles Trevelyan, cited in Gupta, Delhi between Empires, p 17. Development’, Ford Foundation Programme Letter, India, Report No 112,
31 Gupta, Delhi between Empires, p 71. May 23, 1960.
32 Gupta, Delhi between Empires, pp 61, 159; Hoshragar, ‘Design, Domination 72 B Chatterjee, director, Delhi Municipal Corporation, ‘The Delhi Urban
and Defiance’, p 138 and A P Hume, Report on Relief of Congestion Community Development Project’, Ford Foundation India, Report No 130,
in Delhi, Vol 1, Simla, 1936, p 38. July 12, 1962.
33 Anderson, ‘Public Nuisance and Private Purpose’, pp 24-25. 73 Albert Mayer to Jawaharlal Nehru, May 15, 1957, AM Papers, box 22,
34 Christine Rosen, ‘Knowing Industrial Pollution: Nuisance Law and the folder 4.
Power of Tradition in a Time of Rapid Economic Change, 1840-1864’, 74 On the interplay of civil and political society see, Partha Chatterjee, The
Environmental History, Vol 8, No 3, October 2003, pp 565-97. Politics of the Governed, Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the
35 M R Anderson, ‘The Conquest of Smoke: Legislation and Pollution in World, Columbia University Press, 2004.
Colonial Calcutta’ in David Arnold and Ramchandra Guha (eds), Nature 75 Arthus V N Brooks, ‘The Office File Box’ in Charles Haar and Jerold
& Culture and Imperialism: Essays on the Environmental History of South Kayden (eds), Zoning and the American Dream, American Planning
Asia, OUP, Delhi, 1995, pp 293-335. Anderson also points out that the Association, 1990, p 29.
blame in the case of pollution was often passed on to the Indian workers, 76 Brooks, ‘The Office File Box’ in Haar and Kayden (eds), Zoning, p 14.
suggesting that class and racial distinctions were never too far off from 77 Earl Finbar Murphy, ‘Euclid and the Environment’ in Haar and Kayden
the considerations of tradition and modernity. (eds), Zoning, p 169.
36 Harrison, Climates and Constitutions, p 176. 78 Charles Haar, ‘In Accordance with a Comprehensive Plan’, Harvard Law
37 Cited in Gyan Prakash, Another Reason, p 130. Review, 68, 1955. Cited in Robert Nelson, Zoning and Property Rights,
38 Government of India (GoI), Report on the Administration of the Delhi MIT Press, 1980, p 60.
Municipality for the Year 1940-41, Vol II: Annual Report of the Medical 79 MPD-62, p 44.
Officer of Health for 1940, p 26. 80 In zoning in Bombay see Annapurna Shaw, ‘The Planning and Development
39 GoI, 1932, Public Health Report on the Delhi Province for the Year 1930, of New Bombay’, MAS, 33, 4, 1999, pp 951-88.
pp 1-2. Racial distinctions of this kind were invoked in many other 81 J P Sah, ‘A Note on Urban Land Policy’, 1961, AM Papers, box 22,
colonial cities in India and elsewhere. See, Robert-Home, Of Planting and folder 23.
Planning, the Making of British Colonial Cities, E and FN Spon, London, 1997. 82 Noxious/nuisance industries were described in the master plan as any
40 Cited in Bharat Sevak Samaj, Slums of Old Delhi, Atma Ram and Sons, industry ‘Which Is or May be Dangerous to Life or Injurious to Health
New Delhi, 1958, p 215. or Property Caused by Fumes, Effluent or Smoke or by Producing or
41 Cited in Hume, Congestion in Delhi, Vol 1, p 5. Storing Inflammable Materials’, MPD-62, p 46.
42 Hume, Congestion in Delhi, Vol 1, p 22. The size of the excess population 83 Weekly Report, September 30, October 12, 1957, AM Papers, box 23,
was based on the standard of 50 sqft of living space per person. folder 11.
43 Hume, Congestion in Delhi, Vol 1, pp 67-68. 84 MPD-62, p 71, p 51.
44 GoI, Report of the Delhi Improvement Trust Enquiry Committee, Vol 1, 85 MPD-62, p 22.
Delhi, 1951. 86 MPD-62, p 83; p 153.
45 Hume, Congestion in Delhi, Vol 1, pp 38-39. 87 MPD-62, p 85.
46 Hazeerasingh, Colonial Modernism, p 242. 88 MPD-62, p 27.
47 GoI, Delhi Improvement Trust Enquiry, Vol 1, p 25. 89 DDA, Work Studies, Vol 1, p 188. On consultation prior to relocation
48 GoI, Delhi Improvement Trust Enquiry, Vol 1, p 11. see ‘Social Studies and Action in Planning,’ AM Papers, box 23, folder 20.
49 GoI, Delhi Improvement Trust Enquiry, Vol 1, p 13. 90 Anand, Aptay and Jhabvala, ‘Why a Master Plan for Delhi’, The Hindustan
50 Pandit Thakur Das Bhargava, Lok Sabha Debates, 1955, Vol IX, Part II, Times, August 21, 1960.
p 1838. 91 GoI, MoEF, 1992, Policy Statement for Abatement of Pollution, p 2.

Economic and Political Weekly November 25, 2006 4911