EDITORS' PICK

With a growing population of over 12 million, Mumbai generates 2,700 - 3,000 million litres of sewage everyday. But just as water needs to be purified before it is fit for drinking, sewage needs treatment before it re-enters the water cycle. Untreated sewage is a dangerous mix of bacteria and organic matter, making it an excellent breeding ground for diseases like diarrhoea, cholera, gastroenteritis, hepatitis B, etc. Once in water, it also wreaks havoc in the environment of marine organisms, stealing from their oxygen stores, suffocating and eventually feeding on them. At present, sewage treatment in the city is divided…

Chennai saw unprecedented flooding the past year during the monsoon. Many streets were water-logged for days and residents marooned until the water receded. Analysis of the various reasons behind inundation in different parts of the city pointed to poor stormwater drain networking, poor construction of drains and loss of water bodies such as ponds and lakes to encroachment.  In addition to issues of flooding, loss of water bodies also leads to the loss of ecosystems that are supported by it. This is surely a cause for alarm in Chennai. The story of one such water body, a pond in Kolathur,…

The children used to come every evening after school, armed with cricket bats and balls, badminton racquets and footballs. They would descend upon the Chennai Corporation playground at RA Puram in droves, challenging one another to earnest matches. Anyone driving past on RK Mutt road or Brodies Castle road could see the children at play, occasionally catching thrilling glimpses of solemn contests, joyous victory, or bitter defeat. The kids have all but disappeared today, for CMRL has taken over the playground to undertake work relating to Phase 2 Corridor 3 of the metro expansion plans. The walking tracks in Panagal Park,…

Municipal councillors in Mumbai are elected officials for a city’s municipal corporation. They play a critical role in the development and functioning of the city as the primary facilitator between citizens and the state government.   What does a councillor do within their constituency? Councillors in Mumbai execute various developmental procedures in their constituency through the Rs 1.5 crore per annum of local area development fund granted to their local ward by the Brihanmumbai Mumbai Corporation (BMC). A further Rs 60 lakhs of discretionary funds are allocated to every councillor to be spent on their constituency for work they deem as…

On February 1st, the finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, while presenting the union budget for 2022-23, announced a plan to steer urban planning and development, referring to the fact that by 2047, half of India’s population will be urban. Her budget speech proposed nurturing of megacities to become centres of economic growth and preparing tier 2 and 3 to take on a similar path in the future. Her proposal included setting up a high-level committee consisting of urban planners, urban economists and institutions to make recommendations on urban sector policies, capacity building, planning, implementation, and governance.  As our cities grow larger,…

A study by the Chennai-based NGO Information and Resource Centre for the Deprived Urban Communities (IRCDUC) was conducted in five resettlement colonies — Perumbakkam, Semmenchery, Gudapakkam, Navalur and All India Radio (AIR) Site, was carried out with an objective of examining and understanding the issues faced by those resettled families. The findings show that there is an urgent need for the government to intervene as pointed out by Vanessa Peter, Founder of IRCDUC who had said that the study highlights the key issues that have to be looked into while framing the policy. Some of these had already been flagged…

Those tagged as ‘encroachers’ are the victims of the historical marginalization process, says Founder of Chennai-based NGO Information and Resource Centre for the Deprived Urban Communities (IRCDUC) Vanessa Peter. A study by the NGO reveals that limited access to basic facilities, especially during the pandemic, has increased the existing vulnerabilities of the communities who are grappling with the adverse impacts of resettlement.  Life on the margins The report titled ‘Life on the Margins - Access to Basic Infrastructure Facilities in the Resettlement Sites of Chennai’ points out several key issues pertaining to living conditions at resettlement areas. It has been…

Whoever forms the new Uttarakhand government in March will have several important urban issues to deal with. The first part of this article had given 10 specific suggestions for the new government to consider in its efforts to make urban development in the state sustainable and inclusive. In this second part, we again take a look at 10 data-driven competitions of the central government, which explicitly expose the poor performance of Dehradun and the state’s urban frameworks. Swachh Survekshan 2021 This was the world’s largest sanitation survey which covered 4320 cities across India. The results, announced in November 2021, saw Indore…

The idea of 'bin-less streets' has long captured the imagination of residents and authorities. The Greater Chennai Corporation had planned to make Chennai 'bin-less' as part of the Solid Waste Management Rules(SWM) framed in 2016. The GCC had decided to slow down this process, however, as a number of complications arose in removing the bins. Few neighbourhoods in the city have managed to go bin-less on account of rigorous awareness programmes and associational activity. Some attempts at going 'bin-less' have however inconvenienced residents in the area. While these cases could be chalked up to a matter of shoddy implementation, we…

Urban planning experts and allied interests have for long grappled with exactly how much open space Mumbai needs, and what more can be done to improve Mumbai’s natural environment. Given the likely impacts of climate change, especially in the context of the latest IPCC report warning the city of climate change catastrophes, urban planning in Mumbai appears to have reached a critical point of inquiry.  Extensive research already outlines Mumbai’s open space deficit as an outcome of administrative disputes, land availability, acquisition financing, lack of holistic policy implementation, and other reasons across social, economic and environmental aspects. While the search…