seem to be busy.

Many enterprises usually left for the municipal authorities of a
city to carry on cannot be undertaken by the government of India
because of the laws of caste, religious customs and fanatical
prejudices of the people. The Hindu allows no man to enter his
home; the women of a Mohammedan household are kept in seclusion,
the teachings of the priests are contrary to modern sanitary
regulations, and if the municipal authorities should condemn
a block of buildings and tear it down, or discover a nuisance
and attempt to remove it, they might easily provoke a riot and
perhaps a revolution. This has happened frequently. During the
last plague a public tumult had to be quelled by soldiers at a
large cost of life because of the efforts of the government to
isolate and quarantine infected persons and houses. These peculiar
conditions suggested in Bombay the advantage of a semi-public body
called "The Improvement Trust," which was organized a few years
ago by Lord Sandhurst, then governor. The original object was to
clear out the slums and infected places after the last plague,
to tear down blocks of rotten and filthy tenement-houses and erect
new buildings on the ground; to widen the streets, to let air and
light into moldering, festering sink holes of poverty, vice and
wretchedness; to lay sewers and furnish a water supply, and to
redeem and regenerate certain portions of the city that were a
menace to the public health and morals. This work was intrusted
to twelve eminent citizens, representing each of the races and
all of the large interests in Bombay, who commanded the respect
and enjoyed the confidence of the fanatical element of the people,
and would be permitted to do many things and introduce innovations
that would not be tolerated if suggested by foreigners, or the