Micro History of Mumbai

The state, in turn, ensures the reproduction of the dominant spatial practices - private ownership, profitable land uses and stable property values - through technologies such as cadastral mapping, revenue surveys and urban planning. Dossal's study of the three major cadastral (property or revenue) surveys of Bombay conducted by the British under Thomas Dickinson (1811-27), George Laughton (1865-72) and during the first world war (1915-18) serve as "illuminating prisms which reveal the transformation of feudal lands into private property, the growing dominance of a capitalist land market, and greater state intervention" The undertaking of such a revenue survey of Bombay's lands had to wait until the consolidation of British power in western India following the Anglo-Maratha wars. Disputes over land use and tenancy continued as the city expanded rapidly northwards with the development of new docks, mills, roads and railways to support the burgeoning cotton trade and textile industry from the 1850s. The crisis caused by the outbreak of bubonic plague in 1896 led to the creation of the Bombay City Improvement Trust (BIT) and Development Department (BDD) which over the subsequent 40 years restructured the city's geography through the construction of new arterial roads and the layout of suburban estates given on long-leases for housing workers and the new middle class.