Maharashtra and People
INTRODUCTION
Chawls are a quintessentially Mumbai phenomenon, whose rise is inseparably linked to the rise of the textile mills. The textile mills were the next big industrial step that Mumbai took after the spurt in cotton trading and the shifting of the ports.
The mills flourished in the mid-19th century and the people who worked there were labourers mainly from the Konkan coast and ghats. Often one of the workers is sent back to the villages to recruit more people. These workers are known as ‘jobbers’ and they usually get back people who are from the same family or same village or caste. Once in Mumbai, they live together.
Some chawls are built by the government called the Bombay Development Directorate
(BDD) chawls and the Bombay Improvement Trust (BIT) chawls. The mill owners built other chawls to lure people to come and work for them, or by private landlords. Many private landlords who built chawls are Muslims, as according to their religion they couldn’t collect interest from money. So this is a way of investing the money.
Originally, the migrants come alone to work and leave their families in the villages. So often the rooms are occupied by a different set of workers at different times of the day. When one shift end, one set of people come to the rooms while the other set of people went to work. When the workers brought their families, the entire family and often more than one family stayed one room.
Chawls had mushroomed in the 30s to the 70s all over Mumbai. Mumbai was once the textile capital of India even being named Manchester of the East. Cloth mills dominated the skyline of Mumbai till the 90s. It was during these times that people from rural Maharahstra migrated to Mumbai in search of a better jobs and prospect. Landlords cashed on this new influx and built low cost housing called chawls. The idea was to get as many people in one building so as to increase the amount of rent. It was quantity not quality that was important.
Chawls are a quintessentially Mumbai phenomenon, whose rise is inseparably linked to the rise of the textile mills. The textile mills were the next big industrial step that Mumbai took after the spurt in cotton trading and the shifting of the ports.
The mills flourished in the mid-19th century and the people who worked there were labourers mainly from the Konkan coast and ghats. Often one of the workers is sent back to the villages to recruit more people. These workers are known as ‘jobbers’ and they usually get back people who are from the same family or same village or caste. Once in Mumbai, they live together.
Some chawls are built by the government called the Bombay Development Directorate
(BDD) chawls and the Bombay Improvement Trust (BIT) chawls. The mill owners built other chawls to lure people to come and work for them, or by private landlords. Many private landlords who built chawls are Muslims, as according to their religion they couldn’t collect interest from money. So this is a way of investing the money.
Originally, the migrants come alone to work and leave their families in the villages. So often the rooms are occupied by a different set of workers at different times of the day. When one shift end, one set of people come to the rooms while the other set of people went to work. When the workers brought their families, the entire family and often more than one family stayed one room.
Chawls had mushroomed in the 30s to the 70s all over Mumbai. Mumbai was once the textile capital of India even being named Manchester of the East. Cloth mills dominated the skyline of Mumbai till the 90s. It was during these times that people from rural Maharahstra migrated to Mumbai in search of a better jobs and prospect. Landlords cashed on this new influx and built low cost housing called chawls. The idea was to get as many people in one building so as to increase the amount of rent. It was quantity not quality that was important.