CITIZEN JOURNALISM

Every monsoon, South Chennai goes underwater. The only sponge that soaks up all that rain is the Pallikaranai Marsh, yet around it, 8,619 hectares of land face severe flood risks. Despite this, the State has offered to protect only a fraction of that land.  On October 9th, the Tamil Nadu State Wetlands Authority (TNSWA) told the Madras High Court  that the marsh's interim Zone of Influence (ZoI) is just 36 survey numbers, covering 128.19 hectares. The next hearing of the case is on November 11th.  Scattered "protection"  These plots lie in bits and pieces across seven villages, from Pallikaranai to Perumbakkam.…

In Chengalpattu district, the main water channels of the Kovalam-Nemmeli coastal wetland, which drains a catchment of more than 270 square kilometres, have currently been blocked. Barriers that obstruct water flow have been built across Chennai's Buckingham Canal at three places: Thiruvidanthai-Vadanemmeli, near the Nemmeli-Thiruporur bridge, and Saluvankuppam. Earlier, we explored how the Mamallan Reservoir causes serious damage to the wetland’s ecology and how fishing livelihoods are affected. Field investigations by the Wetland Conservation Network have recorded the blockages preventing tidal exchange in the Buckingham Canal.           According to officials, these barriers were put up to enable construction of the Mamallan…

Where do the items in our homes come from, and what happens after we discard them? Let’s take a plastic bottle. Water, cola, buttermilk, and caffeinated drinks — all this comes in PET bottles. Indians collectively throw out 38,00,000 kg worth of PET bottles daily. Where does a plastic bottle come from? Oil, gas, and other fossil fuels are processed into polymers. Polymer pellets are shipped to factories where a multi-step process turns them into bottles. These bottles are shipped to other factories to be filled and labelled. These bottles go to warehouses, wholesalers, and then retailers.  Crude oil from…

Residents of Sancharnagar-MCECHS Layout in Ashwath Nagar, Thanisandra, are facing a prolonged civic crisis. What was once a well-regarded neighbourhood has now turned into a hazardous zone of dug‑up roads and broken footpaths. Exposed iron rods and makeshift wooden planks serving as temporary walkways pose constant danger to residents.  The same roads have been repeatedly dug up by multiple agencies. These include gas pipeline contractors, Cauvery water project teams, Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB), Bangalore Electricity Supply Company Limited (BESCOM), and most recently, drainage and sewage contractors. The situation has persisted for months leading up to a year…

When we first met Sarthak* in November 2025, he was eight years old and in Grade 2. We remember seeing him sitting on his teacher’s chair with both legs up, his shirt untucked, tear stains on his face, and demanding her phone.  We came to know Sarthak through our work as Social Work Fellows with Brain Bristle, a Mumbai-based non-profit working to advance autism inclusion and equitable education for children in low-income schools. The Fellowship places selected Master’s students of psychology with specialised training in under-resourced schools across Mumbai. The Fellows work to address systemic gaps and help children learn…

Over the past two decades, Chennai has weathered a tsunami, repeated floods, and now, according to a new study, a rapidly worsening mix of heat and rain. Heatwave-preconditioned extreme rainfall events in the Chennai Metropolitan Area have nearly tripled over four decades, rising from an average of 1.2 events a year between 1982 and 1991 to 3.2 events a year between 2012 and 2021. When a heatwave comes before the rain, the same study finds, the population exposed to flooding rises elevenfold and the number of buildings affected rises seven-fold. A separate assessment projects that heatwave days in the city…

Clothing waste is not generated every day, yet it remains a part of Chennai’s waste stream. As the city lacks disposal information and dedicated collection systems, clothing waste enters the mixed waste channels. Community-led initiatives such as that by the Residents of Kasturba Nagar Association (ROKA) highlight the gaps in the system and the potential of decentralised collection, reuse, repurposing, upcycling and recycling. Lack of a sustainable system to manage cloth waste Currently, there is no system for unusable cloth collection and no information for the public on how to dispose of clothes. Most unusable clothes, especially inner garments, are…

During the Open City biodiversity datajam held in December 2025, our group examined the ecological trends around Bengaluru’s lakes. Our analysis suggests a majority of waterbirds are declining across the city's lakes. Earlier, we addressed crucial questions on how migrant and resident waterbirds are surviving across 14 of Bengaluru’s lakes, how the shape of the lakes influence microhabitats, and how a scoring system can be used to record the decline in lake quality and bird populations. The last of our four-part series turns its attention to an individual site. As part of this study of waterbirds in 14 city lakes,…

While bird detection trends over the years clearly point to the decline of Bengaluru’s shoreline and vegetated-edge habitats, numbers alone tell only part of the story. In Part 3 of this four-part series on the state of the city's waterbirds, we have used a scoring system to understand how stressed the lakes and the microhabitats within the lake are, based on the bird diversity they support. We explore how lake shape, permanent inundation and shifts in citizen-led management might explain why some lakes may thrive as wetlands while others collapse.  For instance, at Kasavanahalli, the Pied Kingfisher and the Coot…

As work on the Mamallan Reservoir project is picking up pace, environmentalists and locals dread the devastation it is unleashing. The project not only threatens the fragile Kovalam-Nemmeli coastal wetland and the habitats it supports, but also poses flood risks to communities living nearby.  In an earlier article, we showed how field studies by the Suzhal Arivom team documented the damage this project will cause to the local ecology. Based on that same report, Part 2 looks at how the project impacts the daily lives and livelihoods of people in the Kovalam-Nemmeli area. The project can trigger the erasure of…