Bombay's health department, by using some statistical mumbo jumbo, had concluded that the city's rat population was 3,200,000 and that each rat's gnawing cost ten rupees ($3.02) a day. When the city councillors heard that last week, they got into a squabble along ideological lines.
Some conservatives suggested a Western-style solution: they wanted a "Rat Week," with plenty of anti-rat ballyhoo, and, to stimulate private enterprise, an increase in the present bounty of a half ana (1ยข) for each rat caught. Others objected that if the bounty were raised, it would pay the city's poor to go into the business...
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