ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on housing and sanitation before 1947 and discusses the one century and a half of urban housing in the erstwhile British colony and afterwards in independent India. It examines the sanitary facilities come to the fore, or rather the lack of these facilities: the access to potable—or even non-potable-water, the treatment of waste, the overwhelming dominance of filth and stench. The book presents some of the speeches, statements, etc., by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and other influential persons, spoken and written with the aim and even the promise to provide all poor urban citizens with decent housing. It describes how national and local authorities gradually scrabble back from their earlier aims and promises.
