Threat to public health: The poor were living in one-room houses which were over¬crowded. These houses were badly ventilated and lacked sanitation. Thus, these houses were a threat to public health. Fire hazards: There were worries about fire hazards created by poor housing. In case of a fire, it was difficult to control it due to overcrowding of the area. Social order: There was fear of social disorder among the poor, especially after the Russian Revolution in 1917. Many of the criminals were in fact poor people who met their needs by stealing and other methods. As the areas of one-room houses of the poor were overcrowded, it was easy for the criminals or petty thieves to commit the crimes. Thus, under these circumstances, the need to build houses for the poor was supported by the well-off Londoners in the nineteenth century. (b) A number of Bombay films were about the lives of migrants because most of the people in the film industry were themselves migrants who came from cities like Lahore, Calcutta and Madras. They contributed to the national character of the industry. Those who came from Lahore, then in Punjab, were especially important for the development of the Hindi film industry. Many famous writers like Ismat Chughtai and Saadat Hasan Manto, were associated with Hindi cinema. These migrants knew the problems of people coming to Bombay and tried to highlight the same in the films that dealt with their encounters with the real pressures of daily life as well as contradictory aspects of the city. For example, in the film CID (1956) the hero sings, ‘Ai dil hai muskil jeena yahan; zara hatke zara bachke, ye hai Bombay merijaan.’ It means ‘My heart, it is difficult to live here! Move over a little, take care of yourself! This is Bombay my love!’ The major expansion of Bombay’s population in the mid-nineteenth century was due to the following reasons: In the beginning, it was a major outlet for cotton textiles from Gujarat. In the nineteenth century, the city functioned as a port through which large quantities of raw materials such as cotton and opium would pass. Bombay became capital of the Bombay Presidency in 1819, after the Maratha defeat in the Anglo-Maratha war. This led to its expansion. As the trade of cotton and opium grew, large communities of traders and bankers, artisans and shopkeepers came to settle in Bombay. 4 The establishment of textile mills led to a fresh surge in migration. The first cotton textile mill in Bombay was established in 1854. By 1921, there were 85 cotton mills with about 146,000 workers. Only about one-fourth of Bombay’s inhabitants between 1881 and 1931 were born in Bombay. The rest came from outside. Large numbers flowed in from the nearby district of Ratnagiri to work in the Bombay mills. Maritime trade also attracted a large number of people to the city. Bombay was at the junction head of two major railways. The railways also encouraged higher migration into the city. For example, the famine in the dry regions of Kutch drove large numbers of people into Bombay in 1888-89. As a result of above factors the population of Bombay increased from 644,405 in 1872 to nearly 1,500,000 in 1941.