Articles by Laasya Shekhar

For 17-year-old Jareen Saifi, school is the highlight of her day. Born with multiple disabilities including speech impairment, she eagerly signs to her mother asking if they can go to school. For the past five years, she has been attending the Girls Senior Secondary School in New Delhi’s New Friends Colony — a mainstream institution with a relatively high proportion of children with disabilities. The school offers a special educator, resource room and speech therapy, all of which are crucial for her. The school’s playground is close to her classroom and that is where she truly lights up.  But the…

Two summers ago, even with the fans on, sweat would trickle down Rupali Devi’s face and body relentlessly.  Now, she can sit home and eat a meal in peace, without having to wipe sweat off every few minutes. Rupali, 23, lives in a 128 sq ft house at Nargis Dutt Nagar slum in Mumbai’s Bandra West with her parents and five siblings. With an asbestos sheet for a roof in a congested neighbourhood, summers felt hotter than they actually were. According to a study by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), between the decades of 2001-10 and 2014-23, Mumbai’s…

Every afternoon, Nanda Kumar makes a difficult choice. He parks his bike outside his home in Chennai and suspends work, losing up to ₹800 a day. The 27-year-old Ola and Uber rider isn’t on a break for leisure, though. A brutal heatwave and a recent heat stroke that landed him in the hospital for two days cost him over ₹10,000 in medical bills and lost wages. Since then, he has been forced to stay off the roads during the afternoon hours. “I can’t ride between 12 and 4 pm in the summer months. The heat is just unbearable,” he says. …

In mid-February, the Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL) submitted the revised Detailed Project Report (DPR) for the Airport-Kilambakkam metro project to the Tamil Nadu government. “The DPR proposes the construction of the elevated corridor in the first level and the metro corridor in the next level. It was prepared as per the suggestions of the State’s Highways Department,” M A Siddique, Managing Director, CMRL, told Citizen Matters Chennai.  Finance Minister Thangam Thennarasu, while presenting the state budget on March 14th, said the DPR would be forwarded to the union government. Estimated to cost Rs 9,335 crore, the metro line is among…

What started as a cool activity in the 1970s—a group of college students going on night walks to protect freshly laid turtle eggs—has, half a century later, evolved into a crucial conservation movement. The Students' Sea Turtle Conservation Network (SSTCN) now plays a key role in the conservation of the Olive Ridley turtles along the Chennai coast. Their awareness efforts have been so impactful that these night walks are flooded with people of all ages, particularly children and young adults. From collecting freshly laid eggs and relocating them to hatcheries to releasing hatchlings back into the sea after 45 days, SSTCN volunteers…

Chennai witnessed an unprecedented environmental disaster this year, as more than 1,000 dead Olive Ridley turtles washed ashore in January. The mass mortality event has put the Forest and Fisheries Departments, along with voluntary organisations, on high alert, prompting collaborative efforts to strengthen Olive Ridley turtle conservation. The Tamil Nadu Marine Fishing Regulation Act, 2020, which mandates mechanised trawlers to fish at least five kilometres from the shore, was enforced more strictly from late January. Fishermen were educated on the dangers of ghost nets and urged to use Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs) to prevent accidental turtle entanglement. Read more: Oil…

In Pallavaram, a sleepy suburb of Chennai, the water supply from the Palar River — once the lifeline of every household — has turned into a silent threat. On December 5th, three residents lost their lives in separate incidents allegedly after drinking the contaminated water. At least 50 others were rushed to Chromepet Government Hospital over three days with severe diarrheal symptoms.  The locality is in the Tambaram City Corporation limits. But, neither the corporation nor Tamil Nadu's Public Health Department has specified the cause of the deaths (as of publishing this article). The BJP's state unit has claimed that…

A dump yard in Pammal, which was restored through bio-mining in 2020, has once again become a towering trash mountain. The real twist is that the Tambaram Corporation — the line agency tasked with managing waste — is responsible. When Pammal was a municipality, the dump yard was scientifically restored by treating the old waste and removing undigested organic matter, in a process called bio-mining. Once the locality was merged with Tambaram Corporation, the civic body started dumping about 150 tonnes of waste every day in Pammal’s Mahalakshmi Nagar (adjoining survey number where bio-mining was done) and the nearby Adyar…

In August 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a renewed version of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), through which migrants could avail of a cooking gas connection with just a self-declaration as proof of address. Through this scheme, christened  Ujjwala 2.0, the beneficiaries could get a gas connection, the first gas cylinder worth over Rs 800 and a stove, for free. It was touted as a thoughtful welfare scheme that helped migrant workers avail themselves of a gas connection without the necessary documentation such as caste certificates and ration cards.  Three years later, this scheme remains an unfulfilled promise,…

Being the commercial nerve centre of the city, Chennai Central constituency has a significant population of migrants. From Chennai Metro Water department to the state electricity board and the GST and central excise departments, crucial city, state and central government offices are located in Chennai Central. The constituency is also a hub of healthcare institutions, with more than a dozen prominent government hospitals such as Government Children Hospital, Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital and Kilpauk Medical College Hospital located here.  Chennai Central comprises of six assembly constituencies — Villivakkam, Egmore, Harbour, Chepauk-Thiruvallikeni, Thousand Lights and Anna Nagar. Politically, the constituency…