GENRE: Voices

(All persons and events mentioned in this piece are real and will be named when needed) August is the cruellest month. The month that reminds me of the repeated betrayal of the promises made when freedom dawned on our country at midnight in 1947. I remember the sunny morning in August 1990, when I was winging my way back to Bengaluru after a nine-year break. Seated next to me was the Chief of the Bureau of Industrial Costs and Prices, whose days were passed among the country’s leading industrialists. “You know you are going to the most corrupt city in…

In 2022, as many as 132 cities that are currently implementing clean air action plans under the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), will have only two years left to meet the 2024 target of 20-30% cut in annual average particulate pollution from 2017 levels. While these generic targets are common for all cities, the city-wise target for meeting the national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for both particulate matter of size less than 10 micron and 2.5 micron (PM10 and PM2.5) are significantly tighter for some. Especially those in the Indo Gangetic Plain, where the reduction needed is 50-60% or more.…

I remember being on the school bus, on the way to school and looking out the window on the final stretch to see a large and empty ground. I did not concern myself with its origin, assuming that it was a wasteland. Then, one day, I noticed some activity taking place on this wasteland. I could not make out what was happening. Till one day, a great change took place: the land was suddenly blue with water! This ‘great change’ did not take place in a day, of course; the project that transformed the land and restored the original water…

One night on a stroll through Santacruz, Mumbai, I noticed a tree with a larger than usual trunk right in the middle of SV road, a major road that connects the city’s suburbs. A friend I was with remembered the tree from his childhood; he would wait to pass by it every time he returned home on a scooter with his father. Another friend, an ecologist, identified the tree as a Baobab tree. Since I stumbled upon the history of the baobab tree, it made me look at trees around me differently. The Baobab is native to Africa, and was…

As 2021 drew to a close, Chennai appeared to be reliving the dominant highlights of the year that just passed us by – rains and COVID-19 (in its new manifestation through the Omicron variant). Just as Chennai was recovering from the extreme rainfall that lashed the city in November, the city was taken by surprise as another very heavy spell of rain on December 30th brought it to a standstill. On the other hand, the city is also witnessing a rise in COVID cases yet again, with 397 cases being reported on December 30th alone. The Government of Tamil Nadu…

“Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat them”. So wrote Winston Churchill. A chillingly apt truth those in charge of urban governance in India need to learn today. Many lessons of 2020 — public health and livelihoods to name two — went unlearnt. The same lessons and some new ones came to the fore in 2021, especially the images of people running helter-skelter and paying exorbitant prices for that precious cylinder of life-giving oxygen as wave two of COVID ran amok. For me, the sight of students slowly trooping back to schools and colleges was among the…

The whirlwind that was 2021 has left us with many takeaways for how Chennai can be governed better and why citizens must play an active role in it. The city received record rainfall and an almost unwelcome deja vu of the 2015 floods. It goes into the new year without an elected local government, the sixth year in running. With  the promise of local body elections around the corner and some exciting developments in terms of urban projects, we step into 2022.  On the pandemic and Singara Chennai 2.0 Chennai, like the rest of the country, was badly hit by…

It came and went without much hooha. World Mountain Day on December 11th. And its theme for this year, “Sustainable tourism”. It was an apt theme that the UN chose. But it also exposed the limited understanding of mountains in the larger context. Mountains across the world, including our own Himalayas, attract a large number of tourists. But considering them as just hotspots for sustainable tourism is not the right approach. These mountains are actually large ecosystems so profound in the sustainability of our existence. The Himalayas provide abundant proof of this. The lives of millions of people depend on these…

While it feels like everything in the past two years has been overshadowed by the spectre of the COVID-19 pandemic, as a city we need to look at our shortcomings and resolve to pull up our socks in the new year. So here’s CAG’s wishlist for Chennai for 2022. Managing the city’s water and water bodies Many moons ago, Rainwater Harvesting (RWH) was made mandatory and for a while it was implemented well. Chennai reaped the rewards of this effort. Since then though, we have let it slide and are again facing grave water shortage. Widespread and proper implementation of…

Very often the mention of residents' associations, or RWAs, conjures up images of members of an apartment community and a rigidly structured set-up involving various office bearers. But the R K Nagar Residents’ Association (R K Nagarra), comprised of representative groups from 12 streets, is experimenting with an ever-evolving model, engaging residents from individual houses and apartment complexes in the area. Formation of R K Nagar Residents’ Association  In the evolution of RK Nagar Residents' Association so far, we have covered almost 12 streets. The idea was also to create a healthy competition between the streets as they engaged in…