The Swachh Bharat Urban Mission for clean cities may be a successful Jan Andolan (people’s revolution) to the Central government, but in almost all the 4,320 cities surveyed, it remains stunted and incomplete. Mahatma Gandhi, the original swachh hero who deplored the low sensitivity among many...
After five years of competing with one another, India’s cities ranging from over 40 lakh people to under 25,000, are struggling to handle their municipal solid waste. The latest official figure for Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) being generated in a day in the country, given to the Lok Sabha in...
Chennai breathed easy on November 18, as the Bay of Bengal weather system skirted the rain-battered metropolis, leaving a warning for the State government to tie up the many loose ends in flood management. The DMK government and Chief Minister M.K. Stalin watched with relief as the impending...
Over many days since November 12, the unusual sight of farm tractors chugging along small roads in several core areas of Chennai has greeted residents. These hardy machines with a water pump strapped on at the rear were snaking fat hoses into storm water drains in residential localities and...
For a city with a population officially “fast approaching” one crore and bearing the burden of low-capacity civic governance, a 75% rise in rainfall, 491% of it in a matter of five days, spells disaster. Chennai has again encountered a flood disaster this year that revives memories of 2015, in...
At some Rs 15,000 a square foot, Chennai's commons, including its lakes, are worth more dead than alive to a large number of speculators. The cost of this avarice has once again been brought home sharply by this year's monsoon. The rise of high value speculative real estate has led to the...
