Marina blues: aesthetics versus livelihood – The Hindu

It most likely is probably the most uncomplicated among the many a number of visitors bottlenecks that plague Chennai.

The 18.3-metre broad, 2.55-km lengthy Loop Road alongside the Marina seaside in Chennai, provides nice shut-up views of the Bay of Bengal in its many moods and hues. Near the bend nearer to the Light House, the fishermen’s households promote their each day catch to eke out a residing. For certain, they’ve their stalls on the highway, and persons are all the time milling concerning the highway, however that comes from a sense that it has been their hamlet for hundreds of years.

According to the Chennai Comprehensive Transportation Study, the height-hour journey velocity on Santhome High Road had diminished from 33 kmph in 1992 to twenty-eight kmph in 2008 and 19 kmph in 2018. But it’s principally those that come to purchase the fish that park haphazardly, inflicting the jams seen in that stretch of the highway, which nobody else bothered with until the Nineteen Sixties.

On April 11, the Madras High Court suo motu ordered the eviction of the fishermen from the carriageway. What ensued was stiff resistance, with the miffed fishermen blocking the highway with their catamarans. They prevented judges in addition to different motorists from utilizing the highway for every week.

While the fishermen asserted their conventional proper to occupy Loop Road, located adjoining to the busy however slender Santhome High Road, the High Court insisted on establishing a authorized proper to encroach upon a public highway maintained by the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC). The stalemate was suspended quickly after the GCC promised the Court that it might regulate the fishermen on Loop Road till the completion of a contemporary fish market.

The everlasting fish market is beneath development, however it’s at the least six months away from completion. It may have provisions for 384 distributors in addition to rest room and sewage remedy crops. The market additionally goals to unravel visitors congestion attributable to patrons by offering parking amenities for round 215 autos.

At the nub of the problem although, is a query of land and livelihood rights.

Stubborn streak

Kalki and Mohana, two girls who promote fish and have been a part of the latest agitation, mentioned many conventional fish markets within the metropolis had been misplaced attributable to urbanisation. “We cannot be moved to a common market since it will cause a lot of problems as the idea is to bring all the villages under one roof. Such built-up markets are only good for commercial use, not for people like us who sell fresh fish directly from the boats,” Ms. Mohana says.

Okay. Bharathi, a group chief of Nochikuppam, says the house occupied by the highway is a part of the village commons. “Our work is at sea and at shore. We don’t have any fixed timings and fish during the day and night. We park our boats on the sands and empty the nets on the road since it cannot be done on the sands. Residents in the village go to fish bang opposite their homes and sell them in front of their homes, which is common practice in each of the 500-odd fishing villages in the State. The road is part of our lives and our livelihood depends on it,” he says.

Ko. Su. Mani, one other group chief, fees that it was solely as a result of the GCC was unable to widen Santhome High Road, the place the federal government workplaces and different companies are positioned, that they’re very eager on troubling the fishermen. “Time and again they make plans to widen that road but give it up citing various reasons. They then lay their eyes on our land, and since no fishing village has pattas, we are easy targets.”

“Fishermen cooperative societies, through which we have been selling fish, have been in existence since the 1920s, but the department has no records of it. They have not even bothered to represent us in court. Fishermen have pooled personal funds to engage a lawyer,” says Kabaddi Maran, one other group chief. The Fisheries Department, which was renamed to incorporate fishermen welfare, has not even bothered to carry session conferences with them to discover a resolution to this lengthy-drawn subject, he provides.

History of judgments

This isn’t the primary time that the Madras High Court had intervened within the subject by itself movement lately. In December 2018, Justice Vineet Kothari took up cudgels after discovering that the maintenance of the Marina was less than the requirements anticipated of a world-class seaside. “We will not permit this beach to go to the dogs. It is a very beautiful beach and has to remain beautiful,” the decide advised the then GCC Commissioner D. Karthikeyan and started issuing a slew of instructions geared toward regulating the hawkers on the three.48-km beachline in addition to the fish distributors on Loop Road.

It was solely after the court docket’s nudging that the GCC got here up with a plan to register hawkers, subject identification playing cards and supply trendy pushcarts. The civic physique additionally agreed to assemble a contemporary market to relocate the fish distributors from Loop Road.

Then, a Division Bench led by Justice Kothari had explored the opportunity of setting up a stroll-over bridge in order that fishermen might use the bridge to move their catch with out disturbing the free motion of autos. However, the GCC reported that it might require clearance from the Tamil Nadu Coastal Zone Management Authority (TNCZMA) for such a venture.

The civic physique additionally advised the court docket that it was dropping its beautification plan for Loop Road as a result of your complete stretch had Olive Ridley turtle nesting websites. The TNCZMA granted permission for re-laying Loop Road in 2014 on the situation that the prevailing road lights be switched off between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. throughout December-February yearly, the nesting interval of the turtles.

The High Court additionally requested the GCC to think about the feasibility of reconstructing a vehicular bridge that after linked Loop Road from Pattinappakam to Besant Nagar however had collapsed throughout heavy rain within the Nineteen Seventies. It got here up with a ₹411-crore venture, topic to Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) clearances.

Before the venture might take off, Justice Kothari obtained transferred to the Gujarat High Court in January 2021 and alongside along with his switch all efforts taken by the court docket obtained grounded.

In July 2021, Justice N. Kirubakaran (since retired) took up the problem by increasing the scope of a batch of writ petitions in search of licence to promote ice cream on the seaside. Then, he needed to know the opportunity of constituting a committee headed by an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer. However, his effort too was quick-lived as he retired from service in August 2021.

Cut to the current. As the Corporation in addition to the police remained mute spectators to the heavy visitors congestion on the carriageway, the Madras High Court judges, who use the Loop Road frequently to commute between the High Court and their residences, started cracking the whip by taking on a suo motu writ petition.

‘Unethical to take a stand’

The CRZ notification of 2011 protects the livelihood of fisherfolk, and Loop Road can’t be privatised for the good thing about these with autos, activists say. “How can a judge have a suo motu attitude regarding this issue? It just indicates a way of thinking that comes from a sense of privilege,” says Nityanand Jayaraman, a social rights activist.

According to him, the GCC and the High Court have twisted across the Coastal Zone Regulations. “The fisherfolk have a reason to be on the seashore, and this common property is their territory. There needs to be functionality in beauty and to ensure this, the fisherfolk must be consulted,” he says. Sundar Rajan from Poovulagin Nanbargal, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that works on socio-environmental points, says Chennai isn’t nearly lovely issues similar to filter espresso and sambhar but additionally the “salty sea spray and smell of fish”. “It is highly unethical for judges who find it difficult to navigate their cars while passing through Loop Road to take a stand on this issue,” he says.

GCC Commissioner Gagandeep Singh Bedi says the civic physique’s stand is to each regulate visitors and defend the livelihoods of the fisherfolk. “We are trying to arrive at a balance by considering the opinions of all stakeholders and taking the fisherfolk into confidence,” he provides.

Beautification drives

Over the years, Marina seaside has been subjected to quite a few beautification efforts. Several administrations of the GCC have appeared in direction of the seaside, the satisfaction and pleasure of Chennaiites, to make it cleaner and extra lovely.

The civic physique has now targeted on seaside cleansing, with employees combing the sands for plastic and waste. Even the meals distributors on the fringe of the seaside have shifted to utilizing glass or leaf plates consistent with the State’s ban on single-use plastics. The promenade is effectively-maintained and cleaned recurrently, the lawns bordering it have a lush inexperienced hue and shrubs are pruned recurrently.

There had been proposals prior to now to have a flyover from Manali to Adyar after which construct sea-entrance excessive-rise buildings at Pattinapakkam in public-personal-partnership mode. Both confronted opposition and by no means went past the proposal stage. Even now, the DMK authorities is eager on constructing a memorial formed like a pen for former Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi, on the different finish of the Marina.

(With inputs from Malavika Ramakrishnan and Aloysius Xavier Lopez)