I. Sewage Under Capitalism

The preservation of the wealth and welfare of nations, and advances inculture and civilisation depend on how thesewage question is resolved.(von Liebig, 1850s).

Delhi is a very suggestive and moralising place—such stupendousremains of power and wealth passed and passing away—and somehow I feelthat we horrid English have just ‘gone and done it’,merchandised it, revenue it, and spoiled it all. (Emily Eden, 1838).

Veena Oldenburg argues that after the Rebellion of 1857 British colonialofficials inaugurated a process of urban reconstruction following threeimperatives: safety, sanitation and loyalty. To make the cities of Indiasafe, clean and loyal, the colonial regime exerted a measure of‘social control . . . In an era when tinkering with the structure ofsociety had been officially and unambiguously forsworn.’. If the highest officesof the colonial regime proclaimed its remove from society, she argues, the‘lowest levels of decision making and action’, intruded effectively toreconstruct the social fabric of urban life. In this essay, we will examine this lowest levelof the colonial regime in the local government of Delhi (the Delhi MunicipalCorporation [DMC], the commissioner's office, the army, the Public WorksDepartment [PWD], the railway officials) and its relations with the local nobility(the rais and amirs), the merchants, and working people.