After the plague epidemic of 1896 the colonial government created the Bombay City Improvement Trust in 1898 to open up congested districts, widen and drive new arterial roads, and clear and rebuild insanitary chawls and bazaars. The Trust used compulsory land acquisition and betterment levies to fund road schemes such as Sandhurst Road and reclamation in Dadar-Matunga and Sion. Its slum-clearance approach displaced many poor residents even as it imposed a more open, sanitary street grid. It became the template for improvement trusts across British India.
It pioneered the statutory improvement trust as the chief colonial instrument for sanitary slum clearance and arterial road-cutting in Indian cities.
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