Once the object of smirks and snide remarks directed at its owner, Tamil Nadu’s manjappai (yellow bag) has come centre stage again as Chief Minister M.K. Stalin upscaled it and relaunched its second coming as “Meendum Manjappai.” The DMK leader sees it as a central element of contemporary...
The campaign against a growing tide of plastic waste in Tamil Nadu, as elsewhere, is a road paved with good intentions and green messaging, but one littered with failed campaigns. Tonnes of plastic waste choke Chennai, smaller cities, towns and waterways. Annual monsoon floods in the capital...
The spectacle of a saffron-clad Prime Minister Narendra Modi immersing fully in the Ganga in a ceremonial Varanasi ghat on Monday, keeping just a ‘kalasam’ above the water, has turned Chennai’s attention to lost rivers. Although a lot of money has gone into the Ganga rejuvenation plan under...
The crash of the IAF Mi-17V5 helicopter carrying the Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Bipin Rawat, with his wife, Defence Assistant, commandos and IAF personnel near Coonoor in Tamil Nadu on December 8 brings up, once again, the question of safety of flying by rotorcraft. At least five people had...
Veteran actor Kamal Haasan said in an interview to this writer soon after the launch of his political party, Makkal Needhi Maiaim, that he planned to use Big Boss as a vehicle of political communication. He was responding to a question whether it is possible to do the sort of political...
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...
