Chennai Times

There is a recent report that the first billion dollar home in the world will be that of an Indian in India . Nothing can more contrast the situation and prove the inequality in India than the fate of thousands of homeless and people living in poor conditions. The urban poor are the worst that way, they live in apalling conditions and most of them service the elite where they get to see the riches manifest in many ways. The condition of urban poor in terms of choice of habitat is limited by their affordability. Chennai real estate having hit its craziest best (Sri. Krishnamurthy a long time observer of real estate prices recently told me that those who were demanding price in lakhs till a few months back now talk only in crores, 'aniyayamga!' as he summarized it), the fate of the poor is even worse. No one, not even the government wants them in prime city property any longer, so, plans are afoot to displace slums into distant pheripheral areas through various means. Those who c...

CHENNAI: Houses of about three lakh people living along the city's waterways are facing demolition. Authorities are preparing for an all-out eviction drive against encroachers along the Adyar and Cooum rivers and Buckingham Canal under the Chennai City River Conservation Project ( CCRCP ). The official estimate of the number of families facing eviction is 33,313. Of these, residents of 8,164 tenements — nearly 40,000 people — who live in areas that hinder the ongoing desilting efforts will be evicted and resettled on the city outskirts. "Nearly 6,624 families have encroached upon the banks of the Adyar , 8,266 along the Cooum and 18,243 along Buckingham Canal. All of them will be resettled and efforts will be made to provide them alternative livelihood opportunities where they are relocated," Department of Environment officials — the nodal agency for CCRCP — told this newspaper. It is a grand move b...