City: Chennai

A family of professional singers disguise themselves to take their loved one, a young girl with mental illness, for treatment in the psychiatric hospital. Such is the stigma of mental health disorders. While this was decades ago, the perception of such disorders has changed for the better, over the years. As she narrates this incident, Dr R Padmavathi, Director of Schizophrenia Research Foundation (SCARF), a premium non-governmental organisation in mental health care in Chennai, says while healthcare delivery has made great strides, we still have a long way to go in awareness and overcoming stigma about mental disorders.      According…

In the first week of December 2023, residents of Chennai and surrounding areas experienced flood fury, which brought the city to a grinding halt. When the 2015 Chennai floods happened, the authorities said it was a one-in-100-years disaster and would not occur for a long period. Yet, in eight years, here we are facing the consequences of a disaster. Now the citizens are asking — who is to blame for the Chennai floods? Major rivers, lakes and canals in the city come under the purview of the Water Resources Department. "But the department, which should be restoring waterbodies and channels…

Chennai received one of its worst rains in the last 80 years in December 2023*, and we should not be surprised if the city is primed to break more such records in the future for the worse. The scenes of boats out on the streets, families stranded on rooftops, and news media outlets asking what happened to all the funds sanctioned for building stormwater drains are painfully familiar for Chennai come monsoon-cyclones season. Since 2015, this ‘water-stressed’ city has endured brutal cycles of extreme rainfall and destructive flooding, most recently from Cyclone Michaung. The 2015 deluge saw nearly 50 cm…

Panel on Ennore gas leak directs CIL to pay compensation The seven-member technical committee constituted by the Tamil Nadu government to look into the ammonia gas leak in Ennore in Chennai has directed the Coromandel International Limited (CIL) to pay a fine of ₹5.92 crore to the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB). The panel confirmed that the leak that occurred on December 26 and affected many local people, was from an under-sea pipeline belonging to the fertiliser plant. The technical committee also recommended that the existing pipeline should be replaced by a new one that has automatic control and…

From a homemaker, who had little knowledge of the workings of the outside world to being triumphant in the Chennai urban local body polls — and managing her ward — B Sumathi, Councillor of Ward 77, has charted an eventful journey. "My husband was quite active in the party and also involved in social work. Since, this was a ward reserved for women from scheduled castes, I was given a seat to contest. To my surprise, I won by a margin of 6,847 votes," says Sumathi. Speaking about her tenure so far, she says, "Though I was scared initially, I…

The Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) recently released the results of the 2023 Swachh Survekshan, a cleanliness survey conducted as part of the Swachh Bharat (Urban) campaign that covers 446 cities. The evaluation parameters covered the cleanliness levels of residential and commercial areas as well as public spaces, water bodies, parks, schools and waste management arrangements. Indore and Surat shared the first rank while Navi Mumbai bagged third place. As for our State, the survey results are rather tepid – no city in Tamil Nadu made it to the top 100 clean cities list. Trichy was named the…

The habits of birds have long been studied to make sense of the changes and trends in our natural ecosystems. Given that these are environmentally adaptive creatures — whose patterns of migration and breeding change as the ecosystems change — watching birds can teach us many things about climate change, ecological degradation and the ways we can respond to these phenomena. Every year during Pongal time, birders and nature enthusiasts around Tamil Nadu participate in the Pongal Bird Count, a state-wide annual bird monitoring programme, which is an initiative of the Tamil Birders Network. This year as a part of…

Ennore protest against ammonia gas leak continues for more than a month More than a month has passed since the ammonia gas leak incident happened in Chennai's Ennore. The gas leak from the Coromandel International Limited (CIL) fertiliser plant led to the hospitalisation of over 50 people, while a couple of them had also undergone angioplasty surgery. Demanding the permanent closure of Coromandel, families from over 30 villages in and around Ennore have been protesting indefinitely since December 27. Following the gas leak incident, the National Green Tribunal (NGT), which took up a suo motu case, has directed the Tamil…

In December 2023, many parts of Chennai received record-breaking rains for two days. Though the event of cyclone occurrence was the same throughout the city, the capacity to recover from the aftermath was not the same for all. Experts say the reasons for this recovery variability could be attributed to infrastructure resilience such as sewage treatment capacity, water supply, water holding capacity of reservoirs and waterbodies encroachment. These physical parameters are intensified by the socio-economic status such as the livelihood, income levels, social status of people and assets across different parts of Chennai. Here, it is important to look at…

Six months ago, the Tambaram City Municipal Corporation carried out work on East Main Road and West Main Road in  Sri Prashanthi Colony, Madambakkam. In the past ten years, these roads were re-laid three times and each time, their heights increased considerably. The new roads came as a relief for residents only until the onset of the Northeast monsoon in 2023.  As the interior roads including the 2nd, 3rd and 4th cross streets of Sri Prashanthi Colony have not been re-laid, excess water runs down to these roads which now lie at a lower level compared to  the main roads.…