From plague-hit Bombay to pay-per-use toilets: Tracing the history of Mumbai’s urinals

From the plague-hit streets of colonial Bombay to today’s pay-and-use toilets, public sanitation has long been a test of the city’s civic priorities. Now, as the BMC proposes charging Re 1 for urinals that have so far been free and raising toilet fees from Rs 2 to Rs 5, a century-old question returns: who should pay for a basic public service, and can the city keep its toilets accessible while meeting the cost of maintaining them?

From plague to public conveniences Public urinals were part of Bombay’s civic infrastructure somewhere in the 19th century. Records from 1866 refer to 80 public urinals across the city. These were often elevated structures with stairs leading up to these toilets.

Workers transported the waste by train to areas such as Sion and Kurla, where they mixed it with ash and vegetable matter before dumping it in salt marshes. The outbreak of plague in 1896 brought greater urgency to questions of sanitation and overcrowding. Authorities established the Bombay City Improvement Trust in 1898 to address the unhygienic conditions in the city’s densely populated neighbourhoods.