The price of electricity has become a hot topic in Tamil Nadu, with the DMK government proposing a tariff hike from September. While the erstwhile ruling party, the AIADMK has announced a demonstration to protest the move, the State government has defended the impending hike as unavoidable,...
The Akash Ganga Trust banks on a precious commodity that sells in bottles at Rs.20 a litre in your local store. This not-for-profit organisation has been working to promote harvesting of blue gold for years, led by Sekhar Raghavan. It runs the Rain Centre at Gandhi Nagar,in Adyar, Chennai,...
On June 28, Chief Minister M.K. Stalin made an appeal to Chennai motorists to stop honking unnecessarily, and to join the movement by not honking. He urged them to sign and spread an e-pledge. However, his request was drowned in most parts of the city, as drivers simply pressed on with their...
Years before the DMK government gave the former bureaucrat V Thiruppugazh the job of studying the disastrous 2021 flood in Chennai and suggesting permanent remedies, he had undertaken a study of best practices in the wake of the 2015 flood in the city on behalf of the Union Government’s...
It is a running battle between disability rights activists and government establishments to get officials to obey the law. Although it is six years since the new law on rights of the disabled was passed, the situation on the ground is far from improved, whether in public buildings, transport or...
A decade-long problem relating on hawking on the Chennai street resurfaced recently. The Madras High Court directed senior retired and serving IAS and police officers to appear personally for committing contempt on the issue of continued presence of hawkers on NSC Bose Road opposite the court...
The precipitous slide in India’s ranking on the Environmental Performance Index this year to rock bottom at 180 has triggered anger and denial by the Union government but it can provide lessons for Chennai environment protection. “Unfounded assumptions”, “surmises” and “unscientific methods”...
The controversy over YouTuber Karthik Gopinath collecting funds on a crowdfunding platform to “renovate” temple statues in Siruvachur of Perambalur in Tamil Nadu, and the State government coming down on him for accumulating money without authorisation has raised the uncomfortable question once...
Ethanol blending is recognised as a climate change fix since the carbon emission from the fuel comes from the atmosphere through the biological material. Bioethanol, a biofuel that can be blended with automotive fuels to reduce costs and pollution, is not new, but India as a whole and Tamil...
The Tamil Nadu government made the encouraging announcement during the Budget session recently that it would renovate 50 Uzhavar Sandhais (farmers markets) in the current year, strengthening its policy to revive and reopen more of these farmer-to-consumer outlets. As the price of a kilo of...
