The Modern Genocide in Chennai City

When you roam around in Chennai, you can find sugarcane juice available to cool down your thirst. Where do they throw the remaining of the sugarcane after the juice? The situation is the same for Chennai Tamils who have built the beauty of Chennai with their hardship and dedicated work building the buildings and structures of the city. The slum dwellers of the city were chased out of the city denying a place for them to live within the city limit.

Fallen prey to flyovers and metrorails and other modernization of the city, these daily-waged poors were thrown out of the city 40 to 50 KMs away. “The Modern Corporate Slum” is their living place now. On the Old Mahabalipuram Road, Okiyam Duraipakkam is one among these places where more than one lakh people live in Kannagi Nagar.

We were all dumped like wastes here with no basic amenities or living facilities. Daily, we are all dying to live here, says the people who live here & their life is miserable. These people have managed to live near Koovam, Buckingham Canal, Mambalam Canal in their huts for years together whose earnings are seldom and are daily waged Chennaities. For the modernization of the city with projects in the name of “Flying Roads/Flyovers, Flying Train/Metro Rail, IT Corridors, Road Expansion, etc during the last 10 years these people were thrown out of the city limits. The first thing with which these people are affected by the distance is their jobs & earnings and their kids education.

We were before living near Mylapore Sileterpuram. During rainy seasons, drainage water use to flow behind our houses. Then, before 8 years they had brought us here. Our houses here are very small with 150 square meter. Thought that we were given with concrete houses but there is no basic facility for us to live here. No water, hospital, bus, electricity, school, road….nothing we have here. Though in Mylapore we were to live near the drainage canal, it was ok for us to live with unavailable facilities here. There, we were not affected with all such diseases here what we experiencing. We are easily affected with all sort of diseases here. There I was earning at least 900 rupees a month doing household jobs, here even that possibility is not available. This is Saritha’s story which common to everyone here.

For about 1,00,000 people living here in Kannagi Nagar has got just one Higher Secondary School, One Middle School and One Primary School. Due to this, the schools are overflowing beyond its limit. Most of the kids from here have to travel for about 100 KM daily to study in the same school where they were before, in the city. Lots of other kids are not even going to schools due to these risks and unaffordable situation.

Kannagi Nagar doesn’t even have a single Government Hospital and no police station. People who have been thrown out of the city for various reasons recently, counts to 3 lakh numbers!

“This will not end here. Government has announced to make Chennai as a slum-free city before 2013. From now only our huts and living places will start to get demolished in full swing”, says Isaiyarasu of this area. Isaiyarasu is the organiser of “Slum Peoples Right to Live Organization” (Kudisai Makkal Vaazhvurimai Iyakkam) who has taken a documentary titled “Engal Nilam, Engal Uzhaippu, Yaarukaaga Singara Chennai?” (Our Land, Our Efforts, Whom for Modern Chennai?).

“Very soon the Modern Chennai’s black marks (slums) will be washed off. Slums will be cleared from their places and beautiful parks and gardens will be made, but what will happen to the people who lived there for years? Middle-class people justifies this by saying that all the slums have occupied the public places and nothing is wrong in clearing them. Rich people’s entertaining places like “Madras Boat Clubs” are registered campus or place? On the bank of Coovam river lots of business campuses have occupied government’s land, have we ever demolished them? If we ever protest to get away from our places, “sudden fire accidents” (?) occurs. Between last June and July months alone, 20 slums have gone into fumes in fire accidents(!). Immediately, very soon after the fire accidents, we will given with tokens saying that we should not build houses in these areas again and we are all thrown from there out.

We are appealing for our basic demands. Instead of fulfilling those, government is targeting us and concentrating to chase us away which is not lesser than Hitler’s genocide in Germany and Rajapakse’s genocide in Srilanka. This is similarly a modern genocide having no other words to say, bursts out Isaiyarasu.

Translated from Anandha Vikatan, Tamil Weekly. Dated 12.1.2011