GENRE: In Focus

Until a year ago, Selvi*, a 38-year-old from Tirunelveli, worked as a salesperson in a small textile shop in Chennai. "One of the male supervisors, who is related to the shop owner, would verbally abuse the women staff and misbehave with them. The instances of such abusive behaviour kept increasing. One day, I spoke up and told him it wasn't fair for him to act that way. He became furious and started verbally abusing me. It escalated into an ugly confrontation, and I was thrown out of my job," says Selvi. As the sole breadwinner of her family, Selvi struggled…

Dust from construction debris, damaged roads, major traffic congestion, and vehicles and machinery occupying footpaths. Pedestrians contend with all this and more on busy roads, where the Chennai Metro Rail work is ongoing. Spanning around 116 km across three different corridors and 118 stations, the Chennai Metro Rail’s Phase II is a major development project in the city. “Inconvenience today for a better tomorrow” — is a slogan displayed prominently in the Metro Rail construction zones. However, it is more than a mere inconvenience. Pedestrians put themselves at peril every day as they navigate dangers on the road because of…

Peenya Industrial Area, one of Bengaluru's oldest industrial hubs, is facing a significant challenge — rising urban temperatures exacerbated by the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. The aggregated maximum Land Surface Temperature for the first 8 months increased from 43 ℃ in 2023 to 46 ℃ in 2024, as derived from the ECOSTRESS sensor. This phenomenon, in which urban areas experience higher temperatures than their rural counterparts, is particularly pronounced in Peenya. The area’s industrial growth, coupled with a lack of green cover and the prevalent use of heat-absorbing materials, has made it one of the hottest zones in the…

A dump yard in Pammal, which was restored through bio-mining in 2020, has once again become a towering trash mountain. The real twist is that the Tambaram Corporation — the line agency tasked with managing waste — is responsible. When Pammal was a municipality, the dump yard was scientifically restored by treating the old waste and removing undigested organic matter, in a process called bio-mining. Once the locality was merged with Tambaram Corporation, the civic body started dumping about 150 tonnes of waste every day in Pammal’s Mahalakshmi Nagar (adjoining survey number where bio-mining was done) and the nearby Adyar…

Pavitharan*, a 30-year-old resident of Velachery, had a fever recently. Assuming it was a seasonal flu, he took over-the-counter medication and rested at home. On day three, he recovered from the fever. However, his fatigue remained and so he consulted with a doctor. The doctor ordered further tests and determined what Pavitharan had was dengue. The doctor also told him that his platelet counts were going down. Had he delayed the doctor's consultation, the infection could have worsened. Pavithran says he is unaware of the source as his house does not have dengue-breeding points. "Corporation workers come for regular checks…

Nilesh Shinde, the organiser of the Mumbaicha Samrat Ganpati at Khetwadi, is confused. Just as many other organisers of Mumbai's famed Ganeshotsav, he has also been preoccupied with the Bombay High Court's recent order. The Court, in its order, asked all civic bodies to intimate sarvajanik Ganesh mandals that they have to mandatorily follow the Central Pollution Control Board  (CPCB) guidelines of 2020 and shun PoP idols altogether. Yet, not all are aware of the rationale behind this."Why didn’t they put a ban on PoP for the past so many years? It is not as if people have started celebrating…

As the dump trucks drive in and deposit tonnes of refuse at the dumping ground in Kodangaiyur, a group of people wait patiently to sift through the garbage. As far as the eyes can see, there are mountains of unsegregated waste and the stench is unbearable. This group of informal workers are the waste pickers of Chennai, an important cog in the wheel of waste management in the city. Chennai produces about 6,300 tonnes of waste daily, overwhelming the city’s two main dumping sites, Kodangaiyur and Perungudi, with unsegregated trash. Although some community-led initiatives raise awareness about the importance of…

As dawn breaks, there is a steady stream of customers at Muhammed's tea shop in Chennai. As they arrive, he serves them tea in glass tumblers. However, one customer insists on a paper cup for hygiene reasons, despite Muhammed explaining that the glass tumblers are washed and sterilised with hot water. Glass tumblers cost around Rs 20 each and can be reused hundreds of times until they break. In contrast, paper cups cost Rs 100 for 50 cups (Rs 2 per cup) and are neither reusable nor environment-friendly. “Though plastic-coated paper cups are banned, we can’t avoid using them when…

Three months before the Ganesh festivities, residents of Kandivli’s Lokhandwala noticed disruptions in their walkways. Stalls making Ganpati idols had sprung up on the footpaths around the main Lokhandwala circle, making it difficult to walk. The presence of hawkers further compounded the problem. Unlike the community Ganesh pandals, which appear only a month before the festival and are confined to specific locations, these stalls are numerous and have been permitted to remain until the end of the Navratri festival in October, spanning almost four months. Read more: Soaring noise levels during Ganesh festival underlines the need for citizen action With…

Two years ago, the Tamil Nadu government published a glossary for addressing the LGBTQIA+  community. The development occurred in large part because of the advocacy by queer and trans groups. Since its release, the glossary has shown how language plays a crucial role in the broader struggle for visibility and equality for these communities. Orinam, an LGBTQIA+ support and activist group, has been curating queer and trans Tamil terms for years. They collaborated with Queer Chennai Chronicles and The News Minute to create the official state terminology. The glossary, which contains both Tamil and English words, not just promotes inclusive…