CITIZEN JOURNALISM

On February 5 this year, an important public hearing was held at Perungudi’s Ward 184 office on Panchayat Office Road to discuss the fate of a large chunk of the Pallikaranai Marshland. The Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) organised the hearing to assess public opinion towards an eco-park set to come up on the Perungudi dump yard located in the marshland area. News reports about the eco-park first started to appear in 2023, as the next step after a process of biomining, which was a means to clear up the legacy waste dumped for three to four decades in the marsh…

Part 2: The cluster of the ‘plant-detritus-eating darkling’ beetles Lesson learnt: Never forget to get your tiled roof cleaned annually especially when you live under trees, which shed leaves and flowers that get sticky as they rot. We considered ourselves lucky to live in a home whose frontage was shaded by mature social forestry trees, mainly West Indian mahoganies and Pongamia (Indian beech). The trees managed to survive their initial perilous years of existence and now the parking spots in front of our home are hotly contested. Auto and cab drivers seem to have telepathically passed the word around that…

Cantonment lies almost at the heart of Bengaluru, and has the city’s oldest Railway Station. It is presently being redeveloped as the fourth Railway Terminal of Bengaluru – after KSR City, Yeshvantpura and Sir MV Terminal. The earlier heritage facade will be replaced with a new modern look. The new features planned include a large air-conditioned concourse area, segregated arrival and departure points, ground + multi-level underground parking, a roof plaza / waiting area over the platforms, new green building features, new foot-over-bridges across platforms, etc. All this is planned for completion by the end of 2025. Proposed design of…

"I say no to passengers who want to go to Viviana Mall because of the service road traffic, " says Manik Patil, an auto rickshaw driver who drives from Kapurbawdi to Majiwada in Thane. The service road in question is a 1.3 km road that starts from Cadbury junction to Majiwada Naka Pokhran Road 2, near Thane’s biggest mall – Viviana Mall. Given its location, the road often ends up being a hub of traffic jams. A local resident Avinash Tripathi says, "Just a few days ago, it took me around half an hour to cross 500 metres on the…

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…

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…

Gift-giving is a time-honoured tradition that helps us celebrate special occasions, express our love and appreciation for others, and foster strong social connections. However, the way we approach gifting can have a significant impact on the environment. Many gifts end up unused, discarded, or contributing to environmental pollution. In this article, I will share the consequences of gift-giving and suggest options for sensible gifting. As I have observed numerous gifts accumulating beneath Christmas trees or even being discarded in the ground, only to be unearthed as waste, I have become aware of the pressing issue of gift-related waste. Additionally, working…

Part 1: More insects than we cared to get acquainted with… Both as an architect and heritage conservation expert, ecological living has been a day-to-day mantra for me. However, it’s not without its attendant perils as many years of living in a home in the city, built with natural materials, has demonstrated. Our woeful tales of insects and other species reluctantly permitting us to share space with them, provide much amusement to friends and family. And now, I have decided to spread the joy and share some of our encounters with a wider audience.   We blithely commenced our home construction…

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…

In 2019, a new underground drainage pipe (UGD) was installed to clear an earlier blocked sewer that erupted, leaked, and contaminated the land. The culprit – output from the unplanned growth of commercial kitchens in 5th block, Koramangala, which have been pumping these effluents into the UGD. The Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) moved the UGD from the carriage way to the side of the road, where all the utilities were planned, as part of the whitetopping procedure. They found that the discharge from the line that was attached to a restaurant was entirely filled with oil when…