FROM THE FREE PRESS ARCHIVES I

nscrutable are the ways of God — and Government. It is all very well to say that the Government is for the people by the people, but sometimes the Government appears to be just for the Government alone. An advertisement issued by the Maharashtra Housing Board informs that 24 tenements at the Government Housing Colony, Goregaon, are available to be left out for any trade “excepting flour-mill and hotel.”The advertisement also makes it clear that the tenements were built under the Hutment Dwellers Scheme. Comment seems superfluous. Anyway, who but a Government agency could have thought of it? Anything but a flourmill and a hotel, the two things which might be most useful to the residents of the colony! The idea, therefore is not to provide service to the colony. Moreover, the tenements have been constructed for a specific purpose, from special funds. The advertisement appeared almost alongside the statement of a Minister that the Government had authorised the construction of 200 tenements for housing persons dishoused by house collapses. How many of these are to be let out to money- lenders and bootleggers? What is even more interesting is the fact that the Housing Board has borrowed all the phrases of the local estate agents in stipulating conditions of tenancy. If the leave-andlicense racket is good for the Board, why sniff at the unscrupulous estate agents or set up committees to inquire into the racket? The unholy mess that is housing in Bombay has been made more abominable by the imbecile attitude of the authorities.