City: Chennai

We have almost grown used to it now: serpentine queues before ATMs, chaos in banks, the hapless senior citizen waiting on the pavement and praying that the bank dispenses some 100-rupee notes today, and even the strident urban supporter who thinks all the pain is for greater gain in the end. It has been two weeks since the decision to ban currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 in a purported drive against black money in the economy, but the implementation of the policy so far has left the ordinary citizen grappling with serious liquidity crunch. As problems due…

At Sabari Terrace, an apartment community with 56 flats off the Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR) in Sholinganallur, we took the first steps towards segregation around five years ago. It started with the creation of a few humble compost pits within our premises - cement rings resting on the ground - where we would dump all our garden waste to begin with. We approached the guru of vermicomposting, Dr. Sultan Ahmed Ismail, and under his guidance started the process of composting our garden waste. Gradually over the next few weeks, months and years, we started approaching the families in the community,…

Even as society struggles to break gender stereotypes and end physical and mental abuse of women, movies continue to be made with regressive plots involving the male lead winning over the female lead, through various forms of coercion including stalking. Remo, a movie that has hit the screens recently follows the same template where male lead Sivakarthikeyan stalks and wins over the female character played by Keerthi Suresh. The movie was boycotted by many people across the state for glorifying the act of stalking. While the Tamil film industry continues to produce movies such as Polladhavan, Padikkadhavan etc., that redeem…

The Tree Lady, Nature Lover, Tree Evangelist... titles of eulogy sit lightly on Shobha Menon's shoulders. At first sight she gives away none of the tenacity and grit that has stood her in good stead in her determined fight to protect and increase the city's tree cover. The soft spoken Shobha chose to put the brakes on a long and successful stint in writing, to set up Nizhal (meaning shade in Tamil) in 2005. After a long (and often lonely) battle, she and her band of faithfuls can look back in happiness at the lovely Kotturpuram Tree Park, a 5-acre…

As a child growing up in the northern part of the country, Deepavali was a bit of a strange festival. We had to wake up at 4 am, have a bath (an oil bath!), wear our new clothes and burst crackers - at least one, said my grandmother - before the crack of dawn. And before we knew it, our Deepavali was over! And then the rest of the world started celebrating Diwali, and it went on and on and on. I clearly remember that our grandmother never let us go overboard with the crackers - she believed it was…

Avinash, a resident of Perungalathur, is waiting eagerly to see a change in the local government. “The councillor is unresponsive whenever we try to raise our voices. Though we were not much affected by the floods last year, we ensured the safety of our residents without claiming any help from the civic body and gathered a few boats to rescue people from the neighbouring area, Mudichur. I welcome the change of council with the hope that it happens soon, before the onset of monsoon flooding,” he says. How soon that will happen, however, is anybody’s guess. Delay in municipal elections…

“And through this having and giving and sharing and receiving, we too can share and love and have... and receive.”– Joey Tribbiani, in “Friends”. Funny that this quote, part of Joey’s intended speech at the wedding of his friends Monica and Chandler, would be apt for a nationwide festival of giving! Daan Utsav is not just about the receiving, we know, it is about the giving. A festival that turns the lens on to itself, like a particularly gorgeous selfie. When I began volunteering for Daan Utsav, I had not seen it up close. I had read about it in…

The floods of December 2015 have made the various departments of the Government think beyond conventional solutions for Disaster Management. As part of a long term plan, the Tamil Nadu Urban Infrastructure and Financial Services Ltd (TNUIFSL) is currently floating a tender for an Early Warning System, that would typically predict the areas and levels of inundation depending on the rain forecast. This will take into account the level of moisture in the soil, which will increase the accuracy of the prediction. This is expected to take about 2-3 years. LiDAR mapping, a remote sensing method that uses light in…

Residents of six large apartment complexes on the shores of the Muttukadu backwaters on Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR) have been helplessly watching the relentless damage to their environment for close to three years now. Constant dumping and burning of mixed waste goes on in these shores at Padur, just behind Hindustan University, within 300 metres of these apartments. Padur on the IT Corridor, 2 km from SIPCOT IT park, has seen rapid development concurrent with the construction of many high rise residential complexes comprised of more than 6000 apartments. Since the area under the Corporation of Chennai extends only up…

In the May 2016 elections, while Tamil Nadu recorded a polling percent of 73.85%, Chennai recorded only 60.5%. The pattern was similar in other metro cities. It was around 54% in Mumbai (2014) and Bangalore (2015), roughly 12-13% lower than the state average. The media, analyst and activists put the blame on urban citizens. But should we really judge by these figures? And even where turnout is in fact low, what are the real reasons behind the phenomenon? The problem of duplicate entries Vote Smart, a Bangalore based NGO run by PG Bhat, analyzed the electoral rolls using software. They…