BIT

Bombay City Improvement Trust was formed in the year 1898 with the over all responsibility of developing the city, after the outbreak of bubonic plague in Bombay in the year 1896. It was a body parallel to the Municipal Corporation and was charged with the responsibility of laying of new roads, improvement of crowded localities, construction of sanitary dwellings for the poor, reclaiming of further lands and providing accommodation for the police.

BIT was dominated by industrialists and commercial magnates.

The fatal flaw in Bombay Improvement Trust was identified by the urban planner Patrick Geddes in the 1920s. “Bombay,” said Geddes when he visited the tenements of the Bombay Improvement Trust, “is not housing its workers – it’s warehousing them.”