GENRE: In Focus

It has been seven years since the Central Pollution Control Board came up with the Bio-Medical Waste Management Rules, 2016. But many conservancy workers like Ramesh* and Sivaraman* come across bio-medical waste in Chennai while handling municipal waste often. "There have been over 25 instances of illegal dumping of bio-medical waste in Chennai and its suburbs the last four years alone," says V Pugalvendhan, a social activist who has been tracking and reporting bio-medical waste disposal violations since 2019. Even in January 2023, there was an instance of bio-medical waste dumping in Adyar bund near Kolapakkam, which is a suburb…

The K-100 stormwater drain cuts across 23 wards in the city as it traverses from its source near Majestic Bus Stand to its destination – Bellandur Lake. The geographies of these drains and its surrounding areas serve as important starting points in understanding city planning and the context of urban floods. The ‘K’ in the K-100 stands for the Koramangala Valley and the ‘100’ denotes that it is the first primary stormwater drain (SWD) of the valley. The K-100 has multiple secondary and tertiary drains, numbered K-101, K-102 etc. intersecting at different points. The drain serves a catchment area of…

The 2023 GCC budget was presented by Chennai Mayor R Priya on March 27. Key announcements were made regarding traffic management, new projects on solid waste management and stormwater drains and education. Here is a roundup of some of the important projects proposed and the allocations made for the same by the civic body. Revamped traffic management strategy in GCC Budget To manage parking in the city, GCC plans to extend the on-street paid parking system under a PPP model to other zones. Currently, this model exists in zones 8, 9 and 10. A Parking and Traffic Management Committee is…

Residents of Chokkanahalli and Sampigehalli have been fighting to save their neighbourhood lake, Venkateshpura Kere. The lake was listed as 10 acres 35 guntas by BDA and BBMP until a few years ago, but has slowly been reduced to 6 acres and 35 guntas on paper. Read more about this in part 1. The remaining four acres, which comprise the lake watershed area, has been notified as a Civic Amenity (CA) site by BDA; part of this has been leased to a private trust. BBMP, which is the custodian of the lake, has done little to address the concerns of…

Distraught residents of Chokkanahalli, a neighbourhood near Jakkur in North Bengaluru, watch everyday as a rocky outcrop, which is part of a monument, is demolished by a private trust. The remains are currently being dumped into their neighbourhood lake, Venkateshpura. Chokkanahalli Sampigehalli Abhivriddhi Forum (CSAF), a residents group in the area, alleges that the BDA notified a portion of the lake as a Civic Amenity (CA) site and allotted it to a private trust. They have been trying to stop the construction and demand a resurvey of the lake. But neither BDA, which has allotted the land, nor BBMP, which…

“I board a share auto near my house in Virugambakkam to the metro station in Ashok Nagar to get to work every day. I use a share auto on my return as well,” says G Balakumar, a frequent share auto-user in Chennai. Over the years, share autos have become an integral means of first and last-mile connectivity for many in the city. They fill a necessary gap and bolster the use of public transport in the city by providing a reliable and cheap mode of transport. With a growing user base, it becomes necessary to bring in some form of…

Amidst much anticipation, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) presented its budget for the fiscal year 2023-24 on March 2nd. The total projected budget for this fiscal year stands at Rs 11, 163 crores. The budget's main focus is on construction and maintenance of road infrastructure, as has been the trend in the past years as well. This is mainly because of the sub-par quality of construction requires repeated expenditure on operation and maintenance.  It was announced that the total receipts of BBMP during 2023-24 will be Rs 7,070.11 crore, while the total Centre-State grants will be Rs 4,093.86 crore.…

A triplex penthouse in Malabar Hills, over 18,000 square feet, eight car parking spots, and a view of the Arabian Sea: all for the price of Rs 252.5 crore. A penthouse in Three Sixty West tower in Worli, 30,000 square feet, plus a terrace of 5,000 square feet and free sale land of 1.3 lakh square feet, 14 parking spaces: for the slightly lower price of Rs 230 crore. These are outliers in Mumbai's - and India's - housing market, one dethroning the other for the spot of the most expensive property deal in the country. But due to the…

Chennai had an earthquake scare on February 22nd, where people in Anna Nagar and Anna Salai alleged that they felt mild tremors. This triggered a panicked reaction among the people who came running out of their buildings and waited on the streets till they felt safe enough to return indoors. But the incident turned out to be a false alarm. However, if there is an actual emergency, how many of us know what needs to be done? Having a robust disaster management plan and training residents to be aware and equipped for emergencies becomes a pressing need in the era…

In May 2022, Bengaluru’s flooding issues prompted Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai to announce modernisation of these drains in an integrated manner, at a cost of Rs 1,600 crore. BBMP then authorised zonal commissioners to take up emergency work worth Rs 1 crore and this included removing silt in all drains. The BBMP engineers were also directed to identify low-lying areas and other vulnerable areas in the city. Housing Minister V Somanna stated that all engineers would be held responsible if flooding persisted during monsoons. The August-September 2022 rains did see more flooding. But no official was hauled up. Removal of…