The “Cleansing” Drive of Chennai
As you have your dinner after a long day of hard work, people walk into the vicinity of your residence and start marking dimensions. When interrogated, they provide a fleeting, ambivalent response, stating that they may destroy your living space at some point in time. They’ll compensate the destruction by pushing you to some other undisclosed location.
A few months later, after promises from authority that you could continue to stay at your current residence, a few people appear out of nowhere with a bulldozer, drag you out and demolish your only place of escape from the harsh world. And in that process, you are also informed that your new residence would be outside the city you currently live in.
Hard time visualizing that? Does even trying to do so make you at least a little anxious? This is the current reality for over 2000 families in Chennai.
Between 2006 and 2011, Chennai expanded drastically but in a haphazard and unsustainable fashion. The Chennai floods in 2015 was a reflection of this lack of organization. The Government proactively decided to come up with a “River Restoration” plan and rightly so. One of the major factors that caused the floods was the diminishing marshlands, which were now used to expand residential and industrial areas around the city. So naturally, the restoration plan’s conclusion was that marshlands and riverside/lakeside regions have to be evacuated and restored to the previous state and that river Cooum has to be cleaned (the river cleaning initiative has been on paper for years but has stayed a dream project).
Would this alone be enough for ecological restoration in Chennai and reduce flooding and other natural disasters from becoming increasingly manmade? Not exactly. But this seems to be a fair start. Everything looks reasonable. What could possibly go wrong? Well…
Sathyavani Muthu Nagar, a small settlement by the banks of Cooum river in Park Town, was one among the many settlements that Chennai Corporation have plans of evacuating and eventually relocating the evacuated families. This settlement is often hit by floods every time Chennai has a good monsoon. Initially populated by huts with asbestos roofs, the Chennai Corporation along with Tamil Nadu Housing Board built cement houses between 2008 and 2011.
When a Government replaces temporary accommodation with concrete housing, it is absolutely fair to assume that the occupants are guaranteed permanent residence because a good amount of investment has gone into ensuring proper housing by the Government itself. Right? Wrong!
At the break of the new decade, 500 out of a total 2100 families were evicted and their current establishments were decimated. They were relocated about 30 kilometers away, to Perumbakkam, which is technically way outside Chennai city limits. The worst part — the evicted families were given no prior notice. One fine day, they were forced to be homeless, become vulnerable in the face of the Corporation and get displaced far away, with their vocal chords snapped.
This triggered backlash from other residents in the locality and several independent social activists, forcing the Government to push back and put the eviction/clearance plan on halt. One would assume that the Corporation would go back to the drawing board and evaluate their relocation plan again and that the residents could sleep in peace again.
Almost a year later, the world is no longer the same place. Well, so isn’t Sathyavani Muthu Nagar, but for different reasons altogether. Close to 1750 families have been gradually evacuated in the same way — without prior notice and forcibly moving them 30 kilometers away — away from their former residence, from their livelihood. The locality is now almost dystopian. People have created walking paths among the debris of the decimated buildings. 350 families, striving to make sure they don’t lose what little control they have in their lives. They live in constant fear and anxiety, always half expecting people representing the Corporation to drive them away from their roofs.
“What else do you want the Government to do other than evacuate people living in low-lying areas? They have to keep the greater good in mind! The residents are too close to the problem to understand that!”
This is quite a common argument. And again, not entirely off target. Contrary to popular belief, the residents are perfectly ready and in fact, happy to move. In any practical transaction, at any point of conflict, there needs to be a middle ground. And the expectation was just that. All that the residents expect in return is to move them to a location within reasonable distance from their current accommodation and to be given prior notice before eviction.
The locality is in the heart of the city and many residents are daily-wage workers. They have to use public transport and/or work within close proximity. Their children study in schools that are within walkable distance. Perumbakkam is way across the city. If work-related travel takes only ₹10–20 per day for a resident who has to take public transportation in Sathyavani Muthu Nagar, it would take ₹50–100 if they move to Perumbakkam. And this would displace children from their schools in the middle of a school year. This would clearly mean that they won’t be able to continue education for the remainder of that school year.
As far as providing prior notice goes, well, that is just basic human respect. There is absolutely no necessity to make an argument about why people need to be treated like decent human beings.
We can protest to our hearts’ extent and stop this absolute atrocity from continuing. Sure, the remaining residents might win. Sure, residents from other similar localities would benefit. Is that enough, though? Another scheme will come up and another reason would pop up for people in power to continue walking over those who don’t have the same power. So why scratch the surface when you can reach for the roots?
There are several upper-middle class and upper class residential complexes, business centres and IT parks that have also been built by closing lakes and modifying marshlands. But we seldom see them coming under such scrutiny and subject to such a beating down of their dignity. Clearly, the idea here is that no one has to go through said beating down. But somehow, the economically challenged don’t get to save their self respect. And somehow, cleaning the city up has a different and personal connotation for them.
The root of the problem in this particular case, is not only in the current Government’s method of evacuation in 2020 but also in the fact that in 2008/09, the Government ignored the risks of accommodating people in a low-lying area in a city known for heavy monsoons. The sad truth is that the Government never planned to uplift the lower economic class but only to appease them for votes while keeping their situation static at the very most.
But in general, the root of the problem lies in the attitude. As long as we sympathize and not empathize, as long as we patronize and not appreciate, as long as the Government seeks appeasement of the lower economic class and not their upliftment, as long as we decide what others deserve and as long as we think we are better than those who are different from us, this constant disregard for basic dignity will continue — if not in Sathyavani Muthu Nagar today, then elsewhere tomorrow.
