Search

The Calcutta Improvement Trust was set up in 1911 well after the plague scare of 1896, which indicated that there were many overlapping concerns that could not be immediately resolved. The autonomous nature of the Trust indicated that the colonial government distrusted Indians in the elected municipality. But state intervention also brought into focus the question of funding improvements pitching imperial and local governments against each other. The theme of the unhygienic Indian body was prominent among the non-official Europeans in the city and built a consensus for authoritarian reform linking the regulation of spaces to the regulation of bodies in the discourse about Calcutta's planning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]