Articles by Padmaja Jayaraman

"A city designed with the principles of Universal Design will ensure that all users, including people with disabilities, the elderly, children, and women, can move about the city seamlessly, at any given time, without any dependence on anyone else," said Santhosh Loganaathan, a Chennai-based urban planner with the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP). If Chennai implements Universal Design perfectly, no resident will feel any inhibition while accessing urban spaces, said Santhosh. For instance, a visually impaired person and a sighted person must have the same confidence while navigating the city. "Currently, only some groups of people can participate…

"In my class, if a girl got her periods, two other girls stood behind her as human shields, so that nobody would see her holding a sanitary pad in class. If someone saw her with a pad, she feared being judged,” recalls 19-year-old Keerthana Srinivasan. This attitude is all too common among young people shielded from learning about themselves and their bodies. "Pads are not missiles to be afraid of!," says Sharath Sathya, founder of Karpom Karpipom, an NGO working towards sex education in schools. Keerthana finished Class 12 in 2020 from a school in Chrompet sans any kind of…

Before Chennai became the bustling metropolis that it is today, bright, artifical light was limited to a few sources. Street lights, name boards of shops and festive lighting were not as widespread. One could actually see stars in the night sky, an act almost impossible these days. Light pollution has not captured the attention of the masses but continues to grow as an issue that could affect human, animal and plant life in cities. We look at what light pollution means and some of the causes and effects of it across Chennai. Light pollution and its components Light pollution refers…

If you have felt like Chennai's streets are turning increasingly cacophonous lately, the belief may not be unfounded. The city has been ranked the noisiest city among seven metros - Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Lucknow, Delhi, and Kolkata by the pollution watchdog, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) of India in their Annual Report 2020-21. Despite this, there is little attention paid to the problem of noise pollution in Chennai. "Noise pollution does not get the same attention as air pollution or water pollution," said Prabhakaran Veerarasu, an environmental engineer with the environmental collective Poovulagin Nanbargal. "This is because the impact…

Two similar scenes were unfolding one after another in AGS Colony, Velachery West. A garbage collection worker was unloading unsegregated waste into a bin on the street. Ten metres away, Geetha Ganesh Karthik emptied segregated kitchen waste into her home composting set-up. But these two streams of waste will follow very different paths with different results. The former will end up in a dump yard while the latter will yield manure, enabling the growth of 200 plants. Geetha has been recycling her kitchen waste by composting it since 2016. If not for her terrace garden, she would be spending around…

“In 2013, a woman called Geetha came to our studio. She thanked us profusely for making her life peaceful as her husband had stopped drinking because of the work of Anna Community Radio,” recalls Malliga Kaliappan, who has been an RJ at Anna FM for 22 years. "Geetha's husband had learnt about the ill-effects of alcohol consumption due to the anti-liquor awareness programmes we carried," added the RJ. Airing at 90.4 MHz, Anna FM is a social initiative taken up by the Educational and Multimedia Research Centre (EMRC) of Anna University since 2004. The community radio has touched the lives…

Waste management had long been a puzzle that Chennai failed to crack as the city grew over the past few decades. As the city made strides toward decentralised waste management, there was hope that this might prove to be the step that improves the situation. However, over a year after the new system was put in place, there are questions about the efficacy of its working. One of the two key components of decentralistion is wet waste composting which takes place through dedicated micro composting centres (MCCs). Citizen Matters zoomed in on how wet waste is treated in the city…

“Oho! Namma Ooru! Semma Joru!” Kamala Vanchinathan, a resident of Ramapuram, takes this tune as cue to carry two bins filled with garbage to hand over to the conservancy worker. "Vandi kulla kuppaya pirichi podanum," blares the song as she hands over the wet and dry waste to the battery-operated garbage collection vehicle. She is quite proud of her efforts to segregate the waste generated in her house at source and encourages others to embrace the practice. But the responsibility of solid waste management does not end with those such as Kamala who segregate waste at source. Although they are…

Translated by Sandhya Raju கீழ்பாக்கத்தில் தனது குடும்பத்துடன் வசிக்கும்78 வயது டி சுரேஷ், 2012-ம் ஆண்டு முதல் இது வரை ஆண்டுக்கு 2 எல்பிஜி சிலிண்டர் மட்டுமே வாங்கியிருக்கிறார். தினமும் அவர் குடும்பம் வெளியே சாப்பிடுவதில்லை, எலெக்ட்ரிக் அல்லது இண்டக்ஷன் அடுப்பையும் உபயோகிப்பதில்லை. "இதில் ஒன்றும் பெரிய சூட்சமம் இல்லை," என கூறும் சுரேஷ், கடந்த 9 ஆண்டுகளாக சமையலறை கழிவுகளிலிருந்து அவர்களுக்கான சமையல் எரிவாயுவை தயாரிக்கிறார். இது எந்தவொரு ஆய்வகத்தில் தயாரிக்கப்படுவதில்லை, தன் சொந்த வீட்டிலேயே அவர் நிறுவியுள்ள உயிர்வாயு அமைப்பு மூலம் பெறுகிறார். சமையல் எரிவாயுவை உருவாக்குவதைத் தவிர, உயிர்வாயு வெளியிடும் மிச்சம் தாவரங்களுக்கு கரிம உரமாக பயன்படுத்தலாம். பல வருடங்களாக மேற்கூரை சோலார் பேனல் வைத்திருக்கும் இவரிடம் பலர் இது குறித்து ஆலோசனை கேட்டுச் செல்கின்றனர். "சுமார் 10 வருடங்கள் முன், என்னுடைய சோலர் நிறுவலை கஆண வந்த ஒருவர், தான் உயிர்வாயு வணிகம் செய்வதாக…

78-year-old D Suresh lives with his wife, son and daughter-in-law in Kilpauk, and he says he has bought only two LPG cylinders per year since 2012. His family does not eat outside every day, nor do they use electric or induction stoves for cooking their daily meals. "It is not rocket science," says the septuagenarian when he says that he has been generating his own cooking gas from kitchen waste for over nine years. When the waste decomposes in the absence of oxygen, Suresh gets biogas that he uses for cooking. This process does not happen in a scientific laboratory…