GENRE: In Focus

In 1995, the Slum Redevelopment Authority (SRA) scheme was launched to provide free housing for slum dwellers. Twenty-seven years later, the scheme remains stuck in a maze of unkept promises, incomplete projects and poor slum dwellers caught up in rented houses waiting to get their own houses in Mumbai. Urban planners blame the builder-centric approach for the lack of progress on this scheme.  Since its inception, the SRA scheme has built only 2.36 lakh houses. As of date, about 5,20,645 houses are proposed to be built and approvals have been granted to start work on 2,75,942 houses.  The task to…

"I used to crave street food as a teenager. I frequently had lunches and dinners from roadside vendors for more than 5 years," said Shruti, a resident of KK Nagar. A few years ago she suffered from food poisoning due to one such meal and had to miss her college semester exams. "That was when it hit me how unhealthy street food in Chennai could be." How does Chennai's street food scene fare on food safety and hygiene? What should you look out for the next time you decide to treat yourself to some scrumptious roadside chaat or bajjis on…

A major source of tax revenue for states is Stamps, or Stamp Duty and Registration Fee. Karnataka, for instance, collected Rs 10,576 crore in Stamps and Registration Fee in 2020-21, which amounts to 11% of the state’s tax revenue, as per the State Finances Audit Report for the year ending March 2021 Stamp Duty is a tax payable on legal documents/instruments that function as evidence of the transaction that has taken place. It could be: Fixed (adoption deed, divorce etc.) orAd-valorem i.e, a proportion of the Market Value (MV). MV is defined in the Karnataka Stamp (KS) Act, 1957, as…

Pallikaranai marshland has become the first wetland in Chennai to get the Ramsar tag in July 2022. The award of the Ramsar tag is part of UNESCO's Ramsar Convention, which is an intergovernmental treaty aimed to conserve wetlands. India has been a party to the treaty since 1982. While this is welcome news, Pallikaranai has also seen a lot of damage over the years, despite being a "protected zone" as per the Tamil Nadu Forest Act. From 2,650 hectares, the wetland has shrunk to around 700 hectares, thanks to encroachments by government and private entities, garbage dumping, leakage of untreated…

With the outbreak of COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdowns, schools in Chennai run by the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) saw record high enrolment of new students. Across the 281 schools run by the civic body in the city, the total number of students increased from 90,394 in 2020-21 to 1,13,793 in 2021-2022, a 10-year high in enrolment. Many of these students moved from private schools to GCC-run schools in the middle of the pandemic. Loss of jobs for parents during the lockdown, the government declaring 'all pass' for all class students, and private schools demanding the same fee even for…

Parithi ElamSurithi is the son of six-time MLA of Egmore Parithi Elamvazhuthi. While his late father fell out with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) after an association spanning three decades, Parithi ElamSurithi's loyalties continued to rest with the party. He has been active as part of the DMK Youth Wing since 2009, holding various posts prior to his election as Councillor of Ward 99. Despite being a first-time Councillor, he says his experience on the field in the past decade has held him in good stead. "Members of my party, right from the Chief Minister, are my inspiration for the…

Mumbai’s perennial struggle with routine waterlogging and catastrophic floods is the result of several limitations in the city’s storm water drainage system. This includes its reliance on its riverine ecosystems of which the Mithi River is a key component. The Mithi is an urban river whose course has been trained and altered over the years, for almost its entire 17 km stretch. Channelizing the Mithi river for effective flood-risk mitigation has altered its capacity in several places, the impact of which is borne by those who live and work on the riverfront. Satellite images tracing the altered course of the…

“When we look at undergraduate admission exams across the world, from Gaokao (the National College Entrance Exam in China) to SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test), we see fierce competitive tests with high-end arrangements to avoid malpractice and cheating,” said Priyanshu Kumar Jha, a student at Kendriya Vidyalaya, Jamnagar who has taken the JEE mains and the CUET exam for under graduate college admission. “But only in India do we see such important exams being taken so casually”. The Common University Entrance Tests -Under Graduate (CUET-UG) exam centres allocated to students kept changing till the very last minute, and there were computer…

It is a truth universally acknowledged that public transit in Chennai is fragmented, poor in service quality, and dying a slow death in the last two decades. Certainly, the patronage numbers of the Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) and other modes of public transport would support this with modal share dropping over the last few decades, concomitant with an increase in the modal share of private vehicles.  The experiential knowledge of service quality is that service frequency, in particular of the MTC buses is poor and unpredictable; buses and trains are often crowded, and signage and information on fares and routes…

Stepping into the 76th year of Independence, India now has 75 wetlands that have got the coveted Ramsar site tag. After a gap of 20 years, Tamil Nadu has got the Ramsar tag for 13 wetlands across the State in 2022. This makes Tamil Nadu the State with the highest number of Ramsar sites in India.  Pallikaranai marshland in Chennai has become the first wetland in the city to get the Ramsar tag. What is a Ramsar site? A Ramsar site is a wetland site designated to be of international importance under the Ramsar Convention, also known as "The Convention…