City: Chennai

The inauguration of Chennai's first incinerator in February by the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) at Manali has paved the way for many more in and around the city. The civic body has, in quick succession to Manali, floated tenders to set up six more incinerators at Pallikaranai, Mylapore, Ambattur, Sathankadu, Kodungaiyur and Aynavaram zones.  In the suburbs, the Tambaram Municipality has floated tenders for two incinerators at Venkatamangalam, while Chitlapakkam Town Panchayat has floated for one in that area. The rationale behind setting up incinerators First things first; what is an incinerator and why is it used? To put simply,…

The administrative backing strengthening civic society volunteering towards water conservation. Chennai sets a water standard for India. Collaboration is the key to conservation. When cause is the hero, any project, no matter the difficulty or challenges ahead, is executed perfectly. Our cause has been and will always be water conservation. We thank the Greater Chennai Corporation for providing support in the water conservation projects in the city of Chennai. Take a look at the #Eco-Restoration projects under the GCC-E.F.I collaboration. Anaikeni Pond, Sholinganallur Located in the I.T. Hub in Chennai, the Anaikeni Pond is going through scientific restoration prior to…

The scenes inside the Kumaran Silks store at T Nagar that went viral on Tuesday, leading GCC to seal the shop on grounds of violation of COVID protocol, would lead most to believe that shopping fervour in the run up to the festive season has defied pandemic blues. And that there has finally been a revival of cheer among retailers in Chennai after a long, lean season. Sadly, that is far from the truth for many small retailers in T Nagar and other shopping districts in the city. Take for example, Kadhar Moideen, a footwear store owner on Usman Road.…

Air-conditioned coaches, swanky stations, easy ticketing options -- the infrastructure in Chennai Metro places it at par with similar commute options in developed global cities in most ways. The third largest metro in India, Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL) is also often lauded for connecting the arterial parts of the city and being the fastest mode of transportation.  But when Raghuraman K, a person with visual impairment takes the metro, he does not feel very positive about it. The tactile paving (textured tiles on the ground) doesn’t serve its purpose of assisting visually challenged people with navigation, as a result of…

COVID-19: Salary delayed for survey workers, number of containment zones decreases Field survey workers on COVID duty have raised complaints of not having been paid for the past few months by the civic body. The workers, employed by the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC), have been engaged in door-to-door surveillance and checking temperature and oxygen levels since the early days of the pandemic. A GCC official stated that they have employed two kinds of workers -- sector health workers (appointed by the officials at zone level) and volunteers (by NGOs). The official stated that the sector health workers have been paid…

The Patchai Maadi project, an initiative of the Chennai Resilience Centre (CRC) and supported by The Adrienne Arsht Rockefeller Resilience Centre (AARFRC), is part of a three-pronged strategy to improve the green cover of Chennai and encourage urban horticulture. The Patchai Maadi project envisions a garden over every rooftop in Chennai. The project aims to rope in RWAs and schools and other institutions to create urban gardens that can thrive in the right conditions. The vision is to reach six lakh households by 2030.  To this end, the CRC called for citizens to pitch in with ideas on how the…

It was the low land prices that encouraged citizens to settle in Thoraipakkam in the 90s. More people chose to invest in homes in the locality with the boom in the IT sector around twenty years ago.  In 2011, when Thoraipakkam became one of the areas to be included in GCC limits, citizens here were excited. They hoped that this would bring them good roads, better drinking water supply and an underground drainage (UGD) system -- all things they had been fervently waiting for.  Indeed, several schemes were soon rolled out, raising hope among residents. But most of the schemes…

A new waste management concessionaire has taken over our zone starting October 1 2020. We have been engaged in efforts to improve the waste management in our area through segregation and composting under the banner of RK Nagarra (RK Nagar Residents’ Association), which is replicating the the methods followed by TAKSRA (Thiruveedhi Amman Koil Street Residents Association) The effort covered individual houses and apartment blocks, with residents segregating their waste at source. The system functioned smoothly and was recognised as a pioneering effort by the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board which conferred a Green Award for TAKSRA. TAKSRA received the…

Bright welcoming classrooms with mural-decked walls, kitchen gardens on campus to teach kids about sustainable lifestyles, and game-based interactive pedagogy to engage students and bring out the best in them. No, these are not scenes from any private school in the city, but how the Greater Chennai Corporation plans to give a facelift to several of its institutions.  Roping in a not-for-profit organisation called World Vision India, the civic body is beautifying 14 Corporation schools of Chennai. When children go back to the schools after a long break due to COVID-19, they are sure to be pleasantly surprised by the…

The last few weeks have seen a renewed debate on whether the State needs a new capital. This is of course one of those topics that are periodically dusted, discussed and then put back on the shelf. But nevertheless, it is a matter that merits attention, especially in the present circumstances. It must however be pointed out here that after having been aired, all talk on this has died out for now, but we never know as to what can take focus, especially with state assembly elections due next year. Concentration of development The ongoing COVID crisis has shown that…