The Government of India launched the National Urban Sanitation Policy in 2008 to achieve 100 per cent sanitation coverage in Indian cities, through methods that encourage community participation. In this regard, the Ministry of Urban Development also allotted Rs. 13 crore to support cities to prepare their City Sanitation Plans (CSPs). A district level study was undertaken to rate the level of sanitization on 19 broad parameters called the “urban sanitation indicators”. These Service Level Benchmarks reveal that none of the cities in India, including Chennai, are close to achieving complete sanitization. Chennai, in fact, has been rated as a city that needs considerable improvement in its sanitary conditions. Yet we see very little effort and money committed towards sanitation.

While many states have already undertaken the process of writing their CSPs, the state government of Tamil Nadu has been completely irresponsive on this front. None of the cities in Tamil Nadu have been granted any funds to initiate the writing of CSPs for their city. Sources say that the Tamil Nadu government hasn’t been proactive in taking this up. For instance, Chennai which has only 715 public toilets serving a population of approximately 5 million, has done very little to improve access to this very basic public amenity. The informal sector in Chennai, which accounts for 70 per cent of the jobs, goods and services utilized by all, largely depends on the amenities provided by the city for its sanitation needs. 1 million people live in Chennai’s slums and over 1200 declared slums accommodate approximately 23 per cent of the city’s population. They lack all access to adequate shelter and services. Open defecation is still a common practice and women and children feel safer defecating in open fields close to their workplaces or homes rather than having to walk long distances to urinate in dimly lit city toilets. Considering the current status of sanitation, why are sanitation investments so less and programs not pro-poor? Why do sound policies and programs fail to take off in certain regions and states while they do wonderfully well in others?

A recent World Bank study – “The Political Economy of Sanitation: How can we increase investment and improve service for the poor?” discusses operational experiences from case studies from four different countries including India. It shows that the current limited focus on sanitation is driven largely by political motivation in the context of competing demands for resources, and to a lesser extent by technical or economic considerations.

“The case study looks at the political drivers for the success of the Total Sanitation Campaign in rural Maharashtra. Designed as a supply-driven sanitation program, the campaign has a set of defined components that include information, education and communication, community mobilization activities, construction of household toilets and community complexes, and provision of toilets in government schools and anganwadis. The India case study examines why the Total Sanitation Campaign failed to take off in most the states until 2004–05 and provides political economy insights on the Maharashtra success story”

To download the report, click here.

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Somya Sethuraman

Whenever there are any potholes, or water stagnation or any services that disturb the functioning of the road and reduce mobility, the public tends to blame the Chennai Corporation. The Chennai Corporation is to maintain all city roads as per section 203(2) of the Chennai City Municipal Corporation Act, 1919. But is the Corporation really to be blamed? My research for Transparent Chennai indicates that it is actually not the Corporation that is in charge of all the roads in the city.

In the process of collecting data regarding the pedestrian facilities in the city I stumbled across a surprising fact: until 2006, the City road division of the Tamil Nadu Highway Department maintained seven corridors of roads. These city roads were handed over to the Highway Department in 2002 on a special request from the Tamil Nadu State Government as it was far from satisfactory and required urgent attention. This was done to provide good quality riding surface and driving comfort of the highway standards which the Chennai Municipal Corporation could not deliver, as it did not have enough money, man power and technical knowhow to work in this area. The funding to maintain these roads were being given by TUFIDCO (Tamil Nadu Urban Finance and Infrastructure Development Corporation).

Till today, the City Road Division of the Highway department continues to maintain four main roads measuring 65.9 kms in the city and 17 subways on these roads. Following are the roads:
S.No Name of the Road Length of Stretch being maintained in (Km)
1 Anna Salai (G.S.T Road) or NH45 28
2 Poonamalle High Road/ E.V.R.Salai (G.W.T Road)NH4 9.2
3 Wall Tax Road/ Erukkancheri High Road (G.N.T Road) NH5 10.7
4 Jawaharlal Nehru Road/ 100 Feet Road (Inner Ring Road) 17.5

But the bus shelters, street lights and the trees on these roads continues to be maintained by the Corporation of Chennai.
Any subsidiary functions such as laying of pipes (sewerage, water supply, telecom lines etc) which involves digging of roads and abruption of traffic due to these functions, on these roads requires prior permission of the Highway Department. Mr. Duraisamy, (Chief Engineer Planning division, City Road Division, Highway Department) said that the agencies responsible for these subsidiary functions pays the Highway Department for the road digging and relaying.

The question is who should one contact in case of any dysfunction of services which may lead to disruption of the traffic on these roads. As the services are being maintained multiple agencies like the water supply and drainage by the CMWSSB, the transformers and electricity supply by the TNEB, the telecom utility boxes by the various companies, the role of the Corporation and the Highway department is to manage and co-ordinate its repair and maintenance. They further hire contractors either through tenders or through their contacts to finish the job depending on the type and size of work.

The roads deteriorate due to wear and tear because of the traffic, and sometimes because it is not laid properly. The constant digging and relaying parts and stretches of roads creates imbalance and results in uneven surface. Hence, from all the above arguments, it is clear that the services on the roads require special attention, space and a body which manages and integrates these. This will result in better accountability and reduce wear and tear of the roads without disrupting traffic.

- Roshan Toshniwal

Rodriguez (2010) in his paper ‘Claims for Survival’ written on behalf of the Dakshin Foundation observes that one of the major problems that has hindered the articulation of clearly defined rights for traditional fisher folk is the absence of data that explains their relationship with the coast. He notes that most studies on fisher communities often fail to comment on the historical processes through which coastal communities have evolved their relation with particular stretches of coastline that they use, the boundaries of these stretches, the property regime, and the spatio-temporal details and patterns of shore/beach uses.

In Section 2 of his paper he addresses this lack of data by presenting findings from key studies on beach and coastal land use by fishing communities in India. His analysis is useful in that it helps to illustrate how fishing communities use large tracts of coastline space beyond their village settlement.

Absence of such studies have weakened fishing communities influence in their say and control of the coastal space, especially in regards to development in areas occupied and used by them. Proper information on landuse, traditional practices and the like on fishing communities would go a long way in empowering them and their supporting organizations by helping to counter threats from outsider driven development initiatives.

Take for example the strongly contested elevated highway, which is a 6-lane highway proposed by the government from the Lighthouse on Marina to ECR. Currently the feasibility report prepared by consultants Wilber Smith Associates (2009) takes into account only the residential boundaries of project-affected communities. At Urur and Olcott Kuppam, which are two project-affected fishing hamlets, this is a flawed assumption as it fails to take into account the socio-economic and socio-cultural role of the beachfront and the coast to these two communities

In an effort to create data that is locally generated, Transparent Chennai along with the residents of Urur and Olcott Kuppam will be organizing a participatory mapping exercise at Urur and Olcott Kuppam in the month of February 2011. This kind of data collection is important as Brown & Hutchinson (2000) explain that the problem with data obtained on communities by outsiders (say NGO’s etc) is the fact that the consultations are often designed to meet a specific agenda and can be totalitarian at worst and extractive at best. Furthermore, through such methods the ownership of the information generated seldom lies with the local community.

Participatory mapping is a method through which the community’s perspective of the local environment is documented in a number of ways and is an easy way of obtaining spatial information on the community. We are excited over the fact that unlike other data gathering processes, the initiation and ownership of the data will rest primarily in the hands of the local panchayat and residents.

Based on preliminary meetings held with kuppam residents and the panchayat it has been decided that three kinds of maps will be generated- those that provide information on landuse, on local infrastructure and those that provide locally generated demographic information on the community.

We are very excited at the prospect of helping create locally generated maps, and hope to use the mapping exercise at Urur and Olcott Kuppam as a pilot study, so that we can extend this method of data collection to all the fishing hamlets on Chennai’s coastline.

References:

Brown, M, & Hutchinson, C 2000, ‘Participatory mapping at landscape levels: Broadening implications for sustainable development and biodiversity conservation in developing country drylands’, Aridlands, No. 48.

Rodriguez, S 2010, Claims for Survival: Coastal Land Rights of Fishing Communities, Dakshin Foundation, Bangalore.

Wilbur Smith Associates Pvt. Ltd 2009, Link Road from Light House on Kamarajar Salai to ECR Via Besant Nagar: Final Detailed Feasability Report, Highways Department, Chennai.

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- Siddharth Hande: Core Member, Reclaim Our Beaches (Currently interning with Transparent Chennai)

This post in an excerpt from a Media Voice Magazine article on Chennai’s SWM crisis. Read more in the March issue of Media Voice Magazine.

The informal sector in SWM refers to scavengers and rag pickers that are involved in the extraction of reusable and recyclable materials from unsegregated waste. The work of this group is labor-intensive, low-paid and unregulated. The informal sector intervenes at several points of the SWM system. This includes iterant waste buyers that collect waste door-to-door, street-level waste pickers and dump site workers. Most Indian metros have large populations of rag pickers. Chintan, a New Delhi-based NGO, estimates that the city has close to 300,000 rag pickers who retrieve around 1,000 tons of waste a day from the municipal cycle – around 20% of Delhi’s daily garbage that would otherwise make its way into dump yards.

About a decade ago, Chennai’s SWM network included thousands of waste pickers, who scavenged for raw materials from dust bins, road sides, dump sites and transfer stations. This sector has shrunk to a great degree in recent years due to reasons which can be attributed to privatization of SWM and a general disregard for rag pickers by the CoC. In 2000, Chennai became the first Indian city to hire a private agency to fulfill part of its SWM duties. Onyx used a large work force, compactors and other facilities to clear garbage, and thus left rag pickers with limited access to waste. Furthermore, in order to comply with the SWM Rules, the CoC constructed compound walls around Perungudi and Kodungaiyur dump yards, as well as its transfer stations and set up security personnel to guard these sites. Rag pickers, who used to retrieve recyclables in these sites, now have very limited access to them. Many have to pay bribes or undergo harassment in order to enter these places.

A rag picker settlement adjacent to the Kodungaiyur dump yard in Chennai.

Kodungaiyur is one of two major dump sites in the city of Chennai. This 350-acre site receives around 1500 tonnes of garbage a day. It is also home to over 2000 rag pickers, who live in shacks behind the site. With the main entrance guarded by security and the site walled off, rag pickers only have access to waste from the back entrance of the site. Dubeda, in this photo, is a rag picker who lives in this settlement and only collects remnants of shoes. She says that many rag pickers specialize in retrieving specific raw materials, such as glass, paper, plastic, etc. She has been involved in this profession ever since she lost her husband 14 years ago. Rag picking is her main profession, without with she has no source of income. Also seen in this picture is Dubeda’s young daughter, who will be helping her out with waste picking in a few years.

Vijay Anand, a social worker with Exnora, stresses on the importance of resource recovery and estimates that only 5% of our absolute waste would end up in landfills with proper recycling and segregation. He explains that the informal sector is an integral cog to the SWM system, without which resource recovery is extremely low. Accommodations must be made at the policy-making level to recognize the importance of their work and include them within the formal SWM system. Almitra Patel of the Supreme Court committee for SWM recently urged the CoC to formally employ rag pickers to clean up the city. She estimates that waste that is source segregated could potentially earn Chennai up to 1 crore rupees a month. Unfortunately, the CoC is apprehensive about hiring informal sector workers to do corporation jobs due to their nomadic lifestyles, lack of stability, and because they do not possess identification material, such as ration cards and birth certificates.

- Vaishnavi Narasimhan