City: Chennai

Having been a resident of Madras for 20 years, I finally got an opportunity to visit the Buckingham Canal, through a walk organised for celebrating Madras week. Cochrane Canal, Clive Canal, East Coast Canal, North Canal (in Basin Bridge side), South Canal (in Adyar side) and finally Buckingham Canal. A bit of research revealed that these are the various names by which the Canal was known over the years. Interesting, isn’t it? I wanted to know more about the men after whom the canal was named at different points in history. Nineteen of us, all from different backgrounds, began our…

It has been a year since Dr D Karthikeyan took charge as the Commissioner of Greater Chennai Corporation. Within a few months of him taking charge as the commissioner, he was accorded the additional responsibility of holding the Special Officer’s post in the absence of a council which ended its term last October. GCC is not new to Karthikeyan. It is for the third time that he is serving as the Commissioner of the Greater Chennai Corporation. In a quick chat with Citizen Matters, the Corporation Commissioner speaks about some of the significant issues bothering the city. Excerpts from the…

Even as legal proceedings continue over the issue, in June the Housing and Urban Development Department of Tamil Nadu notified rules and guidelines for the regularisation of unauthorised structures under all urban local bodies in the state. The rule allows the regularisation of unauthorised buildings built before July 1 2007, upon payment of a penalty amount to the municipal authorities. While the Greater Chennai Corporation is yet to open the online application process for house owners who have violated the building byelaws, there seems to be growing dissent against the government decision. And this dissent among citizens may, in all…

Located along the borders of Chennai, Chitlapakkam Lake was a source of freshwater that was used by the residents of Chitlapakkam and nearby areas. With the urbanization of the neighbourhood, the lake has become a receptacle of garbage and debris. Chitlapakkam Rising, an NGO, along with the local Residents’ Welfare Associations and other NGOs, namely the Environmental Foundation of India and Arappor Iyakkam are trying to save the lake which has lost more than half its original area. As a step towards that, a social audit conducted by Harris Sultan of Arappor Iyakkam with the help of the Chitlapakkam Rising…

Five years ago, Mohammad Yusuf, a man in his late 20s belonging to the Rohingya Muslim community in Myanmar, did not have the slightest idea about the existence of a country called India, let alone Chennai as a city. Life, however, had other plans and five years on, today, he has made Chennai his new home as a refugee and loves the city for its hospitality. Nestled in the borders of the city, along Kelambakkam, the Muslim minority community of the Rohingyas have settled down in camps and live, almost indistinguishable, with the locals. As I enter their camp, I…

In an earlier article, we had written about how residents of the IT corridor on the Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR) continue to incur huge expenses in procuring water and ensuring proper sewage disposal in the face of the state’s failure to provide adequate infrastructure for the same. Yet one question that gnaws at them all the time is this: When will the OMR stretch get its water and sewer lines? This is now the proverbial million dollar question to which nobody has a precise answer. A visit to the Chennai Metro Water website indicates a vibrant water and sewage network…

Towards the end of the first decade of the 2000s, the Rajiv Gandhi Salai Information Technology (IT) corridor (formerly known as Old Mahabalipuram Road or OMR), became Chennai’s new face. The 45-km long IT corridor stretch that was launched with much fanfare to attract IT industries and thus bring in profit to the government exchequer is even today one of the fastest growing residential localities in the city. But take a guess at how much OMR residents spend on water and sewage every year? Approximately Rs 700 crore or more! For the residents, mostly IT employees living on the 20-km…

In January 2017, I joined CAG, specifically to work on solid waste management (SWM) projects. I started with the Mapping Waste Trails project, which aims to gain a better understanding of the lives of the informal waste pickers engaged in waste recycling in Chennai. Furthermore, we will be tracking the movements of certain recyclables, to ascertain the routes by which such materials traverse the city-scape, and the value added within each step in the routes. Although waste management is key to the sustainable development of the city, preventing the issue arising at the source is paramount. As India continues to…

Nisaptham translates to a lack of sound in Tamil. But a trust by that name translates the dreams of students from government schools into reality. In a function at the Anna Centenary Library in July, the Nisaptham Trust run by IT professional and writer Vaa Manikandan announced the launch of libraries at fifteen government schools across the State. While the initiative is undoubtedly a noble and commendable one, the launch occasion itself was also significant and awe-inspiring. Students and teachers from various government schools had converged at the Anna Centenary Library for the event and were visibly inspired by the…

First  it was Madras Day, then Madras Week. And now some say it should be Madras Month. And if that were to be accepted, today would be the first day of Madras Month! Happy birthday month to namma Madras! It has been reasonably established that 22 August 1639 was the day Andrew Cogan and Francis Day of the East India Company, purchased the village of Madrasapattinam from Damarla Venkatapathy, Nayak of Vandavasi, owing allegiance to the Vijayanagara kings. First, a trading post was established at the site. In 1640 the foundations of Fort St George were laid, and the rest,…