Making the Modern Slum: The Power of Capital in Colonial Bombay

by Sheetal Chhabria, Padma Kaimal (Series Editor), K. Sivaramakrishnan (Series Editor)

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Bombay was beset by crises such as famine and plague. Yet, rather than halting the flow of capital, these crises served to secure it. In colonial Bombay, capitalists and governors, Indian and British alike, used moments of crisis to justify interventions that delimited the city as a distinct object and progressively excluded laborers and migrants from it. Town planners, financiers, and property developers joined forces to secure the city as a space for commerce and encoded shelter types as legitimate or illegitimate. By the early twentieth century, the slum emerged as a particularly useful category of stigmatization that would animate city-making projects in subsequent decades.

Sheetal Chhabria locates the origins of Bombay's now infamous "slum problem" in the broader histories of colonialism and capitalism. She not only challenges assumptions about colonial urbanization and cities in the global south, but also provides a new analytical approach to urban history. Making the Modern Slum shows how the wellbeing of the city-rather than of its people-became an increasingly urgent goal of government, positioning agrarian distress, famished migrants, and the laboring poor as threats to be contained or excluded.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published December 6, 2019

Reviews

[Swapna Peri ( Book Reviews Cafe ) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book Title: Making the Modern Slum: The Power of Capital in Colonial Bombay
Author: Sheetal Chhabria
Format: Kindle

My thoughts:
The books on a higher level are classified into two main categories. One is Fiction and other being the Non-Fiction. While each of the categories is further branched into several sub-categories like fiction into realistic fiction, historical fiction, romantic fiction, dark fiction etc., the non-fiction category talks mostly about biography, business, cooking, health and fitness, pets, crafts, home decorating, languages, travel, home improvement, religion, art and music, history, self-help, true crime, science and humour. Thus, it is apparent that non-fiction is all about reality, genesis, and the future of whichever sector the book is dealt in.

This book by Sheetal Chhabria comes under the category 'reality'. That reality which interests few people and precisely maybe someone related to the history of a place, stats of the growth of that place or politics of the place. But readers like me who want to explore more than known or seen will surely find this book a great read. The book is written in the basic English language, and great vocabulary will certainly allure the readers.

How good is the author's writing style?
This book made me realize the importance of research and a thorough study of a subject. The book is so perfectly articulated that as a chapter progresses a visual representation of the subject chosen also moves forward. Author Sheetal Chhabria has interestingly put many facts, figures and unknown ( at least to me ) those things that made Bombay the costliest and famous city. Right from the topic of why people choose Bombay aka Mumbai to make a living is explained greatly. The author takes the readers on to a ride starting from the British era to date, the growth and make-shift changes the city has seen both horizontally and vertically are described well. The growth of a city and the upsurge of labour are directly proportional, and in this book, it is proved! This book also proves the disparity between the haves and have nots, and it's genesis. There are many argumentative aspects in the book, and her writing pokes every reader's mind with so many questions and statements which drag them towards raw reality.

The birth and the metamorphosis of the word 'Slum' is thoroughly explained by Sheetal in this book.

Final Verdict
A book that is extensively and exhaustedly researched and stands unique!

Rating:
5/5

[Okafor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Making the modern slum explores the factors that led to overpopulation of the city "Bombay". The exodus of migrants who arrived Bombay from colonial India in search of a better living due to the famine in India at the time and the failure of government's efforts to provide a lasting solution.
The migration was mainly as a result of hunger and the migrants when asked why they were coming into the city often replied "pote bhurnea sate" which means to fill my stomach.
By 1880, Bombay had already become the second largest town in the British Empire after London and was fast becoming a commercial city.
Due to the increase in population, housing became a major challenge, the migrants had to live in the choultry and other congested buildings. These buildings became a "modern slum" because they parked themselves like sardines in the small spaces they occupied. Poverty was on the increase and disease was widespread. The government was concerned about restoring sanity in Bombay using methods like census..but at some point point certain methods employed faced resistance from migrants.

[Huey Carter · Rating 5 out of 5]

It has given an overview of on slums. A deep insight