Raja Serfoji II by Savithri Preetha Nair

Author:Savithri Preetha Nair [Nair, Savithri Preetha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Social Science, Sociology, Anthropology, Cultural & Social, Popular Culture
ISBN: 9781317809579
Google: oMITAwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-03-14T01:22:27+00:00

A Good State of Health

Raja Serfoji passed orders for the regulation of the streets of the Tanjore Fort in 1815. The grounds of the streets were accordingly made hard and channels dug on both sides, so that the rain water and domestic waste could be drained without being disposed off to public areas. This arrangement, however, could not be sustained as the drains became choked with solid domestic waste. We do not know what measures were adopted to resolve this problem, but in 1819, the idea of a sanitation project was mooted by one Appasawmy Moodely of Tanjore. Appasawmy’s ancestors had worked as head managers, cash-keepers and accountants under the Company’s military officers, and also under civil paymasters, engineers, Collectors and Residents since the 1780s. His father and uncle were palace employees in charge of the Raja’s Mooktamba Chattram.64 Educated in Tamil and English, Appasawmy had himself served under several military officers before joining the revenue department, from where he had been expelled ‘upon some bad persuasion’ after twelve long years of service. As a smart means of finding new employment, Appasawmy prepared a ‘Report of a Fund to be made that the Streets of the Fort of Tanjour may continue to the longest period free of all Mucks & Dirts’, and sent it to Serfoji for consideration. More than a report, it was a clever and well-thought out proposal for a sanitation scheme within the Tanjore Fort. The report began with how the streets of the Presidencies were ‘well repaired & kept neat & clear in consequence of the Establishment made for throwing away all Muck & Dirts of the Streets out of the Fort under the expense of the Sirkar, or from the Fund allotted for that purpose which keeps the Streets in proper order & gives Health to every Individuals that lives therein’.65

Plans to keep the Madras town clean goes back to the late seventeenth century, when an attempt was made to levy tax from every house, as was being done in England. Public hygiene and sanitation, however, continued to be a problem even in the late eighteenth century, with the garbage-pickers shirking in their public duties. To make the collection of the town’s waste more effective, it was proposed that the localities be divided into eight divisions, with four carts allocated to each. In addition, the scavengers were not to be paid cart and bullock fees unless they produced an endorsement from the residents that the streets had been cleaned twice a week. The management of this whole operation was delegated to the Rental General. The miserable state of affairs continued into the 1790s, despite all efforts in keeping the town clean and free of garbage.66 In fact it was not until the early 1840s, that a committee (the Justices of Peace) was formed — consisting of a European, an East Indian and a ‘native’ — to cooperate with the government for promoting the interests of the Black Town67 and the health of the community in Madras.

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