With their heavy woollen tunics and shiny brass buttons, Mumbai’s firefighters would not look out of place tackling a blaze in Victorian London. Now the brigade is about to update its antiquated uniform for the first time in a century.

The current woollen outfits, which date back to the days of the Raj, will be replaced by new suits constructed from the same synthetic material that protects fighter pilots and Nasa space capsules from extreme heat and explosions.

“The uniform was basically 125 years old,” said P. S. Rahangdale, the divisional fire chief for South Mumbai. “A lot of progress has been made since then.”

Modern helmets with protective visors and in-built radios will replace the plumed current ones, which are made from compressed cork. The leather belts, gleaming brass buckles and shining epaulettes will finally be consigned to history.

“The difference is like that between an Ambassador [the iconic Indian car based on the British Morris Oxford of the 1950s] and a modern-day Mercedes,” Mr Rahangdale said. “They both work. But in an emergency I’d rather be in the Mercedes.”

The new kit, due to be distributed this month, is one of several upgrades promised by politicians to improve Mumbai’s emergency services after the terror attacks of November 2008 exposed their shortcomings.

During the attacks, which claimed 166 lives, police in India’s financial capital were forced to tackle heavily armed gunmen equipped only with antiquated rifles and faulty bulletproof vests. The city’s firefighters struggled to fight blazes with equipment said to be the equivalent of that used in Britain 60 years ago.

Similar deficiencies blight much of the rest of India. In the western state of Maharashtra, about 100 towns have no firefighters at all, according to M.V. Deshmukh, the director of the fire service in the region. Efforts are being made to bulk up the force but finding recruits is proving difficult.

A career in the Mumbai Fire Brigade, which was founded under British rule in 1887 and modelled on its London equivalent, offers recruits a varied worklife but poor pay. New firefighters earn about 10,000 rupees (£146) a month.

The number of fires reported annually in Mumbai, one of the world’s most densely populated cities, has increased by about a fifth in the past five years.

Fighting fire

• The Mumbai Fire Brigade dates back to 1777, when one Colonel Lee was paid four rupees per day “for his trouble of superintending the fire engines”, which were hand-operated

• In 1855 a regular service was created using horse-drawn fire trucks

• From 1890 to 1948 it was commanded by officers on secondment from the London Fire Brigade; after that, MNG Pradhan became its first Indian chief officer

• It serves 18 million people, has a motto — “Valour, Abnegation and Sacrifice” — and its own flag, based partly on that of the London Fire Brigade

• The test for would-be entrants includes running with a 50kg weight, climbing ropes and leaping between floors of a building

Sources: Brave Men in Blue by Rashna Ardesher, Change magazine; Times archives