Articles by Laasya Shekhar

Pigs hogging the food waste, a few empty tablet sheets flying around and a muddy road reduced in width to almost half, thanks to the garbage overflowing from three bins -- this was the sight that greeted me at the approach to the Voluntary Health Services (VHS) hospital at Taramani on an evening in the second week of April. The VHS hospital is known for taking health care to the poorer sections of the society, and boasts of various upgraded departments including the neurological department and maternity ward, but on this occasion it certainly  appeared that it had a long way to…

The Tamil Nadu government’s decision to expand the Chennai Metropolitan Area (CMA) to eight times its current size has earned a fair share of criticism from city activists and residents. This became particularly evident during the public consultative meeting organised by the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) recently. Even though the second master plan for Chennai, proposed in 2008, has proved to be a damp squib, the state government had, via a notification in January 2018,  proposed to expand CMA from the current 1,189 sq.km to a whopping 8,878 sq.km.  The proposal, if implemented, will urbanise a total of 1,709 villages…

With an open sore infested with maggots and blood staining her blouse, S Husena, a 56-year-old cancer patient from Tambaram had given up on life. Diagnosed with fourth stage breast cancer, she knew death was near. As she witnessed her body being eaten away by maggots, Husena felt a strong urge to kill herself. Her life took a positive turn after the volunteers from one of the palliative care organisations in Chennai treated her. The nurse not only convinced Husena to take pain killers, but also treated her infection. This enabled the patient to accept her illness and allow the family…

With an amendment that, according to environmentalists, would degrade the environment further and protect the interests of Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) companies, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) notified the new Plastic Waste Management (Amendment) Rules, 2018. The new rules, an amended version of the environment friendly Plastic Waste Management Rules 2016, contain new clauses that benefit industries manufacturing and using plastic. Here is a brief explainer about some of these rules and their implications for the environment and public health. Energy recovering possible in India? While the 2016 rules mandated the usage of only such…

He wears a loupe on one side of his eye and closely scrutinises the mechanism of an old made-in-China watch. Watches of all ages and sizes lie scattered on a bench before him in his workshop in a small lane leading to the Guindy suburban Railway station. He is not disturbed by the crowds outside or the never-ending noise in the busy lane outside. A scene such as this -- of a watch mechanic immersed in his job -- was once a common sight in all the populated bylanes of Chennai, but has become a rare sight for quite some…

In a tragic incident, a Class 12 student riding a two-wheeler died in an accident at Thirumangalam in central Chennai in the first week of April. The case drew even more attention than usual, as Chennai Police, in a first, arrested the mother for letting the minor boy ride without a driving license. Chennai police seems to have followed suit of the Hyderabad police in this case, with reports of the latter having launched a massive crackdown against underage driving, are arresting the parents.  Business Standard recently reported that police in the Telangana capital catch more than 30 minors behind…

A three-hour-long fire that raged at the landfill at Kodungaiyur on Monday morning was extinguished by firefighters and Chennai Corporation workers. Thick smoke rising from the fire hung over the area for a few more hours, as a reminder of the regular peeve of residents here. The Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) seemed almost prepared to handle the emergency, since fires are hardly uncommon here. The GCC and the fire department employed 12 Sintex tankers of 2000 litre capacity each and two tankers of 12,000 litre capacity to douse the blaze. “Formation of Methane gas from the landfill would have caused the…

Wearing a plain school uniform, holding a banner in one hand and a lunch bag in the other, a young lad marched on the streets of Padur last year. Apart from the words on the banner -- ‘Kudiyai Vidu, Padikka Vidu’ (Give up liquor, let us study), it is the steely determination of the eight-year-old boy, A Aakaash, that caught everyone’s attention and spirited the anti-TASMAC agitation at Padur, a small hamlet on Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR). Toys or clothes do not interest Aakaash. His worries belie his age. When a liquor shop in an inappropriate place needs removal or…

For slum dwellers evicted from the banks of the Adyar and Cooum rivers in Chennai, currently residing in Perumbakkam, access to food rations under the Public Distribution System (PDS) is proving to be one arduous process. In addition to lack of educational facilities for children and infrastructural inadequacies highlighted in earlier articles in Citizen Matters Chennai, severe lapses in the functioning of the government-organised PDS, leading to insufficient essential commodities that families are dependent on, have also come to light. Inadequate numbers of PDS centres For the estimated number of 7600 families in Perumbakkam, there is only one PDS centre,…

Sewerage management has become a Herculean problem in Chennai. Thanks to the inaction by government departments, our sewage reaches our water bodies sans any treatment, either through the storm water drain network or private septic tanks. The hard reality is that the pumping stations are running beyond their capacities, resulting in sewage stagnation in many localities including Adambakkam and Egmore. But how many of us know that grey water recycling can not only address these issues to a large extent but can also cut down on the household monthly water budget? By making use of the water used in the…