The man who partly is responsible for converting Madras to "singara" Chennai, was on a sojourn to Singapore last week.I was closely following his trip in newspapers all 3 days when he was there.I was wondering why he was wasting taxpayers money touring Singapore.On reading down the article i found that he was not on a tour but on an ambitious project to clean up the koovam (Cooum) river in Chennai taking inspiration and plans from Singapore river.Why Singapore river. On doing a little background check i found that Sin'pore river was much worser than our cooum way back in 1950's.
Since Singapore was founded in 1819, the Singapore River had been the heart of trading and business activities. However, as population grew with urbanization, the waterways leading to the Singapore River and Kallang Basin became polluted with sewage, industrial waste, animal and farm waste, and domestic waste
In 1977, The Ministry of Environment in conjunction with other ministries and agencies, drew up a comprehensive Action Plan to clean up the river. The first task was to remove the sources of pollution by resettling more than 16,000 families into public housing estates with proper sewage, waste storage and removal facilities, and relocating and phasing out 2,800 industries, 5,000 street hawkers, 610 pig farms and 500 duck farms to other areas with proper pollution control and wastage management facilities
In the case of cooum,The study of the river was undertaken as part of a World Bank funded project and shows that it is 80% more polluted than treated sewer.The water has almost no dissolved oxygen, and instead there are traces of heavy metals like copper, besides sewage and sludge.
Sure it is an arduous and herculean task to clean up the cooum river,but on retrospecting, the successful cleaning of the Singapore river was achieved only due to the complete participation and support of the public and their selfless sacrifice for a greater and better future.
At a time when politicians use religious and caste calculus, it is refreshing to see some one, at least taking steps to do the Mission impossible.Let us hope that the process of cleaning up cooum begins,to make Madras truly and completely "Singara" Chennai .
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2 comments:
nice
Interesting name - AjaalGujaal. Your blog is much more serious and I appreciate your sentiment completely. I'm not a resident Indian, but hail from Chennai and I am truly appalled at the tolerance level of Chennaites and the like to Koovam. Govts. will come and go, but I truly salute the folks who undertake this initiative and accomplish the clean up. The one who commissions the project will surely be less popular in the eyes of the all those on the bank of the river who would be adversely affected. But I say to those overly tolerant souls... would you not want to wake up in the morning, and smell the coffee as a fresh breeze blows down the river. Tolerance should have its limits. Wake up Chennaites and refresh the sights and smells of Chennai forever.
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