Tamil Nadu

Chennai is reeling under a severe water shortage and Bengaluru, the NITI Aayog says, will run out of groundwater by 2020. What ties these two large metropolis is, unfortunately, a dispute over a river. It is an unhealthy link. Both these cities are not exactly in the Cauvery river basin , though dependent on the river for their water requirements . Only one third of Bengaluru is in the river basin and Chennai is not in the river basin at all, yet draws water from the Veeranam tank within the delta. A civilizational change is transforming the river. An urban…

Human rights activists and eminent members of civil society have come together to raise deep concerns and unequivocally condemn the recent police action against protesters in Thoothukudi (Tuticorin), who had been demanding the closure of a plant owned by Sterlite Industries, a subsidiary of mining giant Vedanta Resources.  Police violence has left several people dead and many more injured. In a public statement, citizens point out that not only was this tragedy totally avoidable, it appears that the police have even given hot pursuit and shot at women and others in fishing hamlets like Theresepuram. The sheer brutality of the…

Last month, government bus drivers in Tamil Nadu struck work for over a week, throwing the cities’ commute scenario into chaos. The issue: long-standing demands over a wage hike. The bus drivers in the state have been demanding pay scales in compliance with the 7th Central Pay Commission (CPC) recommendations, approved by the central government in June 2016. Currently, in Chennai Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC), the basic salary of permanent drivers starts from Rs 17,700. This is according to a settlement that the MTC reached with some trade unions on January 4th. However, major trade unions including the DMK-backed Labour…

Many Indian state governments have experimented with subsidised canteens over the last few years. The most recent addition to this has been the Karnataka government launch of ‘Indira Canteens’ in Bengaluru this month (August 2017). According to media reports, the canteens in most states have been very popular, a fact borne out by the long queues often seen outside these. Intended for the urban poor - mainly the destitute, elderly, unemployed, migrants and the working poor - these canteens usually serve food for Rs 10 or much less. The concept of subsidised food canteens became especially popular after the success…