LOCAL

Kenatha Kanom! Kenatha Kanom! Who can forget actor Vadivel's comic sequence in the film Kannum Kannum, where he lodges a false complaint about the disappearance of his open well. The joke soon became a rage because, again, how can a waterbody go missing? Shockingly, it can. Just like the seven ponds that have disappeared on the Chennai Tiruvallur Highway (CTH) Road. Over the years, these ponds have been steadily encroached upon by citizens and various government departments, including the Greater Chennai Corporation and Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board (TNSCB). There was a time when children along with adults fished at…

Residents of Kasturba Nagar Association (ROKA), a RWA in Chennai, have streamlined their waste management using simple practices and in the third week of December, within three months of starting focused door-to-door collection, managed to hit the magic mark of 1 TPD (tonne per day) of organic kitchen waste collected for composting!! On an average, 800-850 kgs of wet waste is now being collected from four main roads in the neighbourhood, and sent to a municipal compost yard for processing.  Members of this RWA achieved this through a series of events and planning and sensitisation meetings. They hosted events such…

Unplanned commercialisation is the reason behind the traffic congestion on GST Road, a national highway and a crucial road connecting the suburbs to the city. Accountability here rests with the Pallavaram Municipality, which issues licences to the builders but fails to prevent or penalise irregularities in construction or deviations from rule. Has the outlet allocated space for parking? Is the drainage system proper? What about rainwater harvesting? -- Vital parameters such as these remain unchecked by municipal officials. Incidentally, these have a lot to do with the traffic nightmare that this road has become. Shortcuts and violations In the entire…

Pushing a rickety tricycle and making multiple stops to collect waste from households is a Herculean task for conservancy workers. As the day progresses, the vehicle gets progressively heavier with heaps of garbage but the worker still pushes it, going door to door to collect the waste.   "Every part of my body aches, literally," said a conservancy worker, who has been in the job for over 15 years. The long term health effects of their work on these blue-collared workers include persistent shoulder and back pain.  But there is some good news for them.  This troublesome situation could soon become…

Opening a hornet’s nest among the community, the city corporation has declared recent construction by fishermen around Thiruvanmiyur beach in Chennai as encroachments. Several additional structures have been constructed close to the beach, by the fishermen residing in the fisher-colony near Kuppam Beach Road, in the interest of better mobility and livelihood. “We received a lot of complaints from the residents of Thiruvanmiyur,” says K.B. Vijayakumar, Regional Deputy Commissioner at Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC), Adyar. “When we enquired, we found shanties with temporary roofs and a road built within 200 metres from the sea belt, which comes under Coastal Regulation…

A sea of vehicles struggles to move forward from Pallavaram signal to the Airport flyover on a Friday morning. Vehicles move inch by inch, literally, taking more than twenty minutes to cover a kilometre. In a rush to reach their destinations on time, two-wheeler riders take the easy route -- they simply take over the pedestrian space, while four-wheelers often jump red signals. In all this chaos, there's little room for even ambulances to find a clear corridor. In short, Grand Southern Trunk (GST Road), the spacious two-lane highway that connects the suburbs such as Tambaram and Pallavaram to the…

The story of Ennore is neither new nor untold. However, there is a need to retell it, only because justice seems to be slipping further and further away. The dual onslaught of unplanned industrialisation and deforestation has taken away an important constitutional right from Ennore residents -- the right to life.  Both public and private sector industries have been drastically exploiting the natural resources of Ennore since 1993. Who suffers the consequences? The residents in eight villages of Ennore, for whom clean air and unpolluted water has become an unattainable luxury.  As the locality suffers the consequences of industrialisation in…

Red Hills Reservoir is in the news again. As per news reports, the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) had accepted an application from the Small Industries Development Corporation (SIDCO) to allocate around 54 acres of land in the Red Hills catchment area for the construction of a women’s entrepreneur zone. This land is designated as 'Redhills catchment area' in the Master Plan 2026; that is, no construction or development activity is allowed here. But once the project is approved, the land use will be changed to 'industrial'. The move has elicited criticism from citizens of Chennai, reeling as they are…

How does a national downturn affect a small, local market in this city? If we want to understand that, we should probably look at the Pudupet spare parts market.  The nation-wide auto sector slowdown has hit the livelihoods of many traders at Pudupet, a second hand vehicle-parts market off Egmore. There has been a slump in metal prices due to the slowdown, a factor that has probably had the most damaging impact on the Pudupet traders.  “There has been a steep fall in metal prices: Iron price has declined to Rs 16 from Rs 25 and aluminium costs Rs 63…

One of the older and more populous neighbourhoods, T Nagar is at the focus of several initiatives under the smart cities mission in the city, with many of smart city projects dedicated to its improvement. However, in a case of what is called missing the forest for the trees, a skywalk proposed to decongest the busy Ranganathan street may merely end up creating new infrastructure that most residents deem unnecessary. A  safety hazard in the making When one talks of encroachment of public places, T Nagar stands as a prime example. Ranganathan Street which is a 30-feet road, has been…