Urban infrastructure: Drinking Water
          
During the years after the mutiny, the British started to seriously plan clean drinking water for the city. By 1870 a water treatment plant at Palta was set up and two pumping stations were installed in the city for supplying water to the predominantly European areas. Throughout the city four hundred odd taps supplied water to the city. In the beginning, there was resistance among the Indian population to tap water because it was considered ‘impure’. Orthodox Hindu women, particularly widows, refused to touch it because according to some, the taps had leather washers. Many households stored Ganga water in huge earthen jars though tap water was available in the vicinity.²

As a popular, satirical poem shows that people were against the introduction of a technology which was now leveling a society that had its hierarchies clearly marked out.
      Motorcar, water tap, are unloosening bonds,
      Kaliyug is near, my brethrens,
      The poor, the ignorant, the labourer
      The king and his subjects drink this water
      Been made the same by this water

The real impact of urban water supply was to break class barriers and create a society where all will have an access to the same. But in reality, there were always a few who enjoyed accessibility to these new technology and those who belonged to the periphery.