Date:27/12/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/12/27/stories/2008122751150200.htm

Tamil Nadu

What corruption of nature’s gift spells to residents

K.Manikandan

Rainwater stagnation, poor roads… Pallikaranai filling up with woes

— Photo: K. Manikandan

cup of woes: Stagnation of rainwater is a routine problem faced by residents of the Pallikaranai town panchayat.

TAMBARAM: Pallikaranai is synonymous with two things — remnants of the once sprawling marshland, nature’s gift to Chennai, and a huge garbage dumping yard right inside the wetland that is seen as man’s response to nature. An ecological hotspot now turned into a disaster, the Pallikaranai town panchayat is the immediate town next to Chennai’s border in the south east direction.

Located next to the clusters of Perungudi and Sholinganallur, the two areas that are so crucial to the growth of Chennai as a software hub, Pallikaranai was upgraded as a town Panchayat in 1989 from a village panchayat. With a land area spread over 17.36 sq. km, it is probably the biggest town panchayat anywhere in the suburb of Chennai.

But most of it comes under the wetland category. Most of the construction and housing activities over the past decade or so, however, have been around the fringes of this wetland and other bodies, a cause of concern not only to the residents but also a challenge to administrators of the local body.

A recurring problem facing Pallikaranai is the stagnation of water and inundation of many of its residential localities during the monsoon.

Geographically, rainwater run-off from many places in the southern suburbs of Chennai is drained into waterbodies in Pallikaranai, including the marshland before entering the Buckingham Canal through Okkiyam Thoraipakkam. During last month’s rains as well as during the previous monsoons, residents in many low level areas faced severe problems. The result, poor roads and insanitary conditions, residents of Kamakoti Nagar said.

Pallikaranai Town Panchayat was among the first local body to experiment with source segregation, training its women self help groups on composting kitchen waste. The town panchayat also has an encouraging level of green cover developed in the form of parks from its own funds and also with financial assistance from the State government. But over the years, the overall condition of some of its basic amenities has been crumbling. Poor roads, inadequate drainage facilities, absence of markets and poor street lighting give ample scope for residents to complain about. The narrow stretch of Velachery Main Road between Jalladampettai and Pallikaranai has been posing problems to motorists for long.

The Mylai Balaji Nagar located near the intersection of the Velachery Main Road and the Pallavaram-Thoraipakkam Radial Road supports several hundred families that form a sizable chunk of the town panchayat’s population. The locality was developed by the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board as part of their efforts to provide alternate housing sites in 1976 to those who were displaced from Chennai during drive against encroachments. Living conditions here are appalling and even the housing scheme under Basic Services for Urban Poor of Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission – a Central government assisted programme has not taken off, while in other town panchayats and municipalities, beneficiaries have already occupied houses built under the programme.

Town panchayat authorities said they received an annual revenue of about Rs.3 crore and they were providing all resources they could within their means.