On the eve of World Heritage Day, let’s remember and commemorate the architectural and cultural spaces in Chennai. The city of Chennai is actually a cluster of several old settlements, with each one having distinct histories and important landmarks.

In places like Fort St. George and in Egmore, the British built several administrative and institutional buildings in the Indo-Saracenic style using a variety of materials like exposed red bricks, pillars made of rough granite, and inlays of marble and ivory. The city also has beautiful traditional south Indian temple architecture with large gopurams, intricately carved shikhars, and temple tanks which serve as a recharged pool of surface water for the entire community. These temples can be seen in the older settlements like Mylapore, surrounded by the homes of Brahmins during earlier eras. Unlike North India the mosques in Chennai are smaller and are very different. For example, the Thousand Lights mosque is a cream coloured, multi-domed mosque unlike the traditional single domes in the north. The Dutch settlement in Pulicat, and Portuguese constructions like the Santhome Basilica display completely different elements of Western architecture. From traditional to Indo-saracenic, Colonial, Classical, Gothic, Romanesque and other architechtural styles, Chennai has a diverse range to offer.

A walk down the memory lane: revisiting the past

Cities like Ahmedabad, Surat, and Lucknow have begun heritage walks for residents and tourists.  Can Chennai also similarly replicate and restore its own pieces of history and showcase them to the world?  After the restoration of Senate House by INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage), Rippon building and the Victoria Public Hall are now being restored. But is this enough? One problem is that Chennai’s heritage is spread all over the city, making it less amenable to a walking tour than the clusters of buildings in the other cities.

But the main problem is that the CMDA (Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority) is still in the long process of identifying heritage buildings to compile a list of the city’s protected structures while the conservationists are fighting legal battles to protect them from being demolished, sometimes by the government itself. A mass protest by the students and activists saved the Queen Mary’s college, where the then chief minister J.Jayalalitha wanted to build the new Secretariat. Today, the Bharat Insurance building on Mount Road owned by LIC (Life Insurance Corporation) and Gokhale Hall on Armenian Street are saved only because of heritage enthusiasts who have been waging a battle in court.

Though the government made an announcement in October 2010 about finalising a heritage bill, it is feared that it may not see the light. Meanwhile, the CMDA can take a decision to demolish old buildings which are not covered by the Archaeological Monument Act.

Following are some of the heritage buildings in the city:

Areas Buildings
Old Madras Chennai Central building, Moore Market, Victoria Public Hall, Rippon building, Vetinary Hospital.
Egmore Egmore Railway Station, Museum theater complex
Mount Road Thousand Lights mosque, Cuddons complex, Victoria Technical Institute, Higgin Bothams,  Botanical Garden,  Thousand Light Mosque, Anna Salai Mosque, Bharat Insurance Building
Mylapore Kapaleeshwar Temple,
Beach Front and surrounding Santhome Basilica, Police Headquarters, Presidency and Queen Marys college, Madras University complex, Napier’s bridge, War Memorial, Fort St. George, PWD Complex, Parthasarthy Temple,
Parrys GPO building, SBI building, High Court,  Parrys building, Gokhale Hall
Adayar and Surrounding Theosophical society,   Anna University,

We need to protect, promote and create awareness amongst us about our glorious heritage which showcases the city’s inherent charms. Please help us create a list of heritage buildings which can be seen as the public face of this city.

Roshan Toshniwal

Most of us inherently trust maps, but maps are actually ‘manipulated reality,’ reality as the map-maker wants us to see it. In India, we go one step further. For a map-maker working with government data, maps are the reality that we can piece together from the clutter of government data sources.

While working with maps for several projects, including with the Transparent Chennai project (www.transparentchennai.com), I too am forced to try and represent reality or come as close to reality as possible. However, when working with Indian data and maps, even without discussing technical issues such as different projection and coordinate systems, more often than not, the simplest task becomes a headache. As a simple example, try ‘googling’ the number of districts in India. From various sources you would come up with 593, 596, 626, 631, 640, 642 etc. While we are familiar with some of the changes our government has made, such as the creation of Uttarakhand (or is it Uttaranchal? more on names later) and Chhattisgarh, most of us would not know of the many changes happening to districts in the country. Taking just the census years from 1961 onwards, the number of districts increased from 339 in ’61 to 359, 414, 472 and finally 594 in 2001. The number today in 2011 could be 600 if you go with the Department of Land Resources, Ministry of Rural Development[1] or maybe 626 or 627 depending on which page of the SAME government owned website[2] you want to believe!

So what does one do when there is data pertaining to a particular year which is to be displayed thematically on a map? Take a dataset of any year and Murphy’s Law will ensure your map is of another year. What do you do with a district such as Ariyalur in Tamil Nadu which features in Census 2001. If you have data pre-2001, you will spend hours figuring out that Ariyalur was part of Tiruchirapalli in 1993 which was then split into 3 districts in 1995 (Karur, Tiruchirapalli and Peramblur). Come 2001 and Peramblur was split into Peramblur and Ariyalur so the once single district in 1993 is now four districts in 2001. But its now 2011 so why look so far back, you say. Fair enough. We have Ariyalur in 2001. Now 2002 comes along and we go back to a combined Peramblur! So Ariyalur disappears! What do you do now with your latest map? You can’t even map the most basic of data sources, the census! But wait, Ariyalur is making a comeback! Forward to 2007 and it reappears! Match your data to your map or your map to your data or just give up?

Let’s take a break from boundary issues for a while and look at names. District names are well… just names right? But if you are trying to automate the matching of data, the name of a district assumes deadly headache-inducing powers. We have already seen how using district codes from Census data is pretty pointless, so we are left with only district names to work with. Anyone who has done a bit of work with maps/ data would have suffered through districts which could be prefaced with West, Paschim, Paschimi; or East, Purbi, Purab, Purba; North, Uttar, Uttara; or South, Dakshina, Dakshin. One could say, no big deal – we know north, south, east, west, just use find-replace operations, problem solved. But what do you do with Alappuzha, Aleppy and Alleppey, or Kannur, Cannanore and Kanoor, or Kollam and Quilon, or Kozhikode and Calicut, or Thiruvananthapuram and Trivandrum, or Thrissur and Trichur? And that’s just from the state of Kerala. In our very own Tamil Nadu, that southernmost place that every 12 year old knows of could be written as Kanyakumari, Kannyakumari, Kanniyakumari if we stick to official names. If the creator of a dataset has split the name into two words or misspelt it, then there are many, many more permutations! But at least they sound similar. What about Sivaganga? It could be Sivagangai or (get this) Pasumpon Thevar Thirumagan or Pasumpon Muthuramalinga Thevar!!

Name-games over, let’s get back to our boundaries, but this time going down to lower levels of administrative boundaries to face some more conundrums. Even if you manage figuring out the difference between blocks, taluks, tehsils and mandals you can rest assured Mr. Murphy and his law will be around to see to it that you have block data and taluk maps. Go down a level or two more to city level and you are guaranteed to have to choose from two or more sources. First, one has to understand the difference between zones, divisions, wards, assembly and parliamentary constituencies and various other terms for varying urban entities and their classifications. For e.g. try to get ward boundaries of Chennai. The Census ward boundaries and the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) boundaries are so vastly different that there is no reconciling the two. Visit our ‘build a map’ page <http://www.transparentchennai.com/buildamap/> and select ‘Census data by ward boundaries >> Ward boundaries only” and “Ward Boundary (from 2008 CMDA Second Master Plan)” for instant confusion! Obviously, if one is trying to show census data thematically on a map one can’t use the CMDA boundaries even though they seem to correspond better to other sources.

Or try to figure out assembly constituencies. Earlier, the Election Commission helpfully published constituency shapefiles on their site but has now discontinued the practice. So one has to either digitize from other pdfs or jpegs or try to build up shapefiles from published information. One such source is the Chennai corporation website[3] which provides a table listing which wards fall into which assembly constituency. Another source is the website of the Office of the Chief Electoral Office, Tamil Nadu which publishes a pdf giving the same information – which wards fall under which assembly constituencies[4]. So we proceeded to make maps using both sources. The results are below.

Each colour in each of the above maps represents an assembly constituency. So ideally, both maps should look like similar sets of a jigsaw puzzle – even if different colours are used for each piece, their shapes and sizes should be the same. Just one of them – Saidapet towards the lower left corner – looks similar in both maps, but closer inspection reveals a difference of one ward between the two maps. Thus, if one derives maps from the two sources, not a single constituency has a boundary which can be accepted as confirmed from two sources. An attempt to triangulate using a third source may very well throw up a third unique map! Factor in the fact that the city of Chennai is currently in a phase of expanding its city limits to include various village panchayats and all you can do is hope you have enough aspirin to deal with the headache that is sure to follow.

Akshai Abraham with inputs from Prabu R.

[1] http://dolr.nic.in/hyperlink/distlistnew.htm

[2] http://districts.nic.in/ and http://districts.nic.in/dstats.aspx

[3] http://www.chennaicorporation.gov.in/zone/zoneAddress.htm

[4] http://ceotamilnadu.nic.in/forms/int3.pdf

Meryl Sebastian

It is being increasingly recognised that the overt emphasis on expressways and flyovers has resulted in a transport infrastructure that leans towards being motor vehicle friendly. The authorities seem to agree with this. The National Urban Transport Policy, CMDA’s Second Master Plan and Chennai’s City Development Plan recognise the need for pedestrian infrastructure and better public transport as an answer to the city’s road safety and traffic problems. But, this recognition has yet to translate itself into real action. On paper the authorities wax eloquent about centering transport policies around pedestrians, cyclists and frequent users of public transport. There are comprehensive ideas, plans and targets laid out to boost public transport.

But the Second Master Plan[1] reveals that the planned expenditure on medium-term transportation schemes is as follows-

Rs.6200 crores on 8 elevated highways,

Rs.850.12 crore on 18 flyovers,

Rs.45 crore on bridges,

Rs.1993.84 crore on link roads, and

Rs.3514.44 on improving the existing roads.

The plan estimates Rs.209 crore will be spent on pedestrian infrastructure, of which Rs.48 crore is for footpaths, the rest being spent on escalators and subways.

In May 2010, the Highways Minister told the Hindu[2] that ‘since 2006 a total of 104 ROB and rail underbridge projects to replace level-crossings, at a cost of Rs.2,246 crore, had been initiated.’

Highways Secretary G.Santhanam said that ‘tenders would be floated for 69 such projects in 2010-11 involving the Railways and in 2011-12 40 more had been planned’.

Pedestrians and cyclists form more than 40% of the average person trips. The Master Plan points out that 42% of road accidents involve pedestrians and 10% cyclists. Yet, the administration’s spotlight remains on flyovers. Currently, there are 14 Flyovers under construction in the city, of which the construction of 8 began in 2010. Several projects have been fastracked with flyovers at Nerkundram and Porur expected to be completed in 13 months instead of the standard 18. Flyovers at Maduravoyal, Koyembedu, Porur, Vadapalani, Mint and Moolakadai are slated to be completed by May 2011. [3]

One wonders at this sudden spurt of energy, one wonders at the frenzied constructions, then one thinks of the Assembly Elections of 2011. Flyovers are obvious signs of infrastructure and development activities taking place in the city. The authorities may hope that these flyovers cheerlead their achievements but whether the people are convinced is to be seen.

[1] Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority, . “The Second Master Plan for Chennai Metroplitan Area 2026.”. CMDA, September 2008. Web. 3 Dec 2010. <http://www.cmdachennai.gov.in/SMP_main.html>.

[2] “Overbridge to be ready next month-end.” The Hindu, 21 May 2010, <http://www.hindu.com/2010/05/21/stories/2010052159990300.htm>

[3] “7 FLyovers to be ready.”  The Times of India 16 Feb 2010, <http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Layout/Includes/TOINEW/ArtWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=TOICH%2F2010%2F02%2F16&ViewMode=HTML&GZ=T&PageLabel=2&EntityId=Ar00200&AppName=1>