URBAN PLANNING IN INDIA 55 By 1941, the average number of persons living in a house had reached 5.1 from 4.9 in 1911. As early as 1930, the Whittley Commission, reporting on housing and environmental conditions, reported that the neglect of sanitation was often evidenced by heaps of rotting garbage and pools of sewerage, while the absence of latrines enhanced the general pollution of air and soil. Houses, many without plinths, windows and adequate ventilation, usually consisted of a single "small room," the only opening being a doorway often too low to enter without stooping. In order to secure some privacy old kerosene tins and gunny bags were used to form screens which further restricted the entrance of light and air. In dwellings such as these, human beings are born, sleep, eat, live and die. In the pre-independence era, one of the very first measures taken to look after some of the problems of large cities was the setting up of sanitary commissions in Bombay, Bengal and Madras presidencies. Improvement Trusts also existed in major towns like Lucknow, Kanpur, Allahabad and others. These institutions attempted to develop some aspects of the towns but on the whole the activities of these Trusts remained uncoordinated and they were frequently hampered by the existence of parallel agencies. Back in 1915, the first Town Planning Act was passed in India by the Government of Bombay. This Act was strictly related to the city level construction, diversion, alteration, drainage, sewerage, water supply, lighting and preservation of historical monuments. This hardly related to all aspects of the spatial spread of the city. Around 1954, the formation of the Central Council of Local Self-Government paved the way to the urban community development programmes. Pilot project schemes started functioning in various states like Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Mysore, Punjab, Rajasthan, UttarPradesh and West Benal. By this time the Indian town planners had started attempting to tackle the problems by copying various models of the developed countries. There was an increasing talk about British town planning and our architects and engineers (educated on Western model) started sticking their stereotype * 'master plans" wherever it was found necessary according to the population criterion. The urban community development schemes set forward their objectives which were too vague with hardly any clear-cut meaning, though these might have had some significance in the administrative circles— for example, "creating a sense of social coherence through corporate action on civic matters and also by promoting a sense of national integration". Such statements even at the professional level will only help in generating misunderstanding and arguments. However, the Central Council of Local Self-Government and state ministers for town and country planning decided in 1963 on the following strategies towards solving the growing urban problems (these strategies were in context with the administrative aspects more than anything else):