CHENNAI CORPORATION: Edayanchavadi’s new honour

Pics by P Jawahar

By G Saravanan

Published in The New Indian Express, Chennai on October 22, 2011:

http://expressbuzz.com/cities/chennai/edayanchavadi%E2%80%99s-new-honour/325794.html

CHENNAI: Call it history in the making or simply a stroke of luck. Whatever you choose to call it, it is a new recognition for about 200 families in Edayanchavadi, a tiny desolate village located on the banks of Kosathalayar River in Minjur limits.

The village, along with a few more villages within the Edayanchavadi Village Panchayat limits, officially became part of the historic Chennai Corporation recently.

For the village, which lacks all basic amenities, including proper supply of drinking water, primary health centres and sanitation, the recognition has opened up opportunities. The village has become the Chennai Corporation’s northern boundary in the expanded city.

While the elderly residents of the tiny village were skeptical about speedy implementation of any development work on a par with other parts of the city, the young brigade in the village was jumping  with joy on becoming a part of the capital city and its Corporation, which has a chequered history of 323 years.

“The locals used to say ‘I am going to Madras and will return in the evening’. The usage will fade slowly in future as the village has very much become a part of the city,” P Suresh Babu, a youngster of the village, told City Express.

After its merger with the city, the entire Edayanchavadi Village Panchayat has become a part of Ward 15 of the Chennai Corporation.

“Until the 1990s, villagers had vast tracts of farmland and most of the families survived on farming and other cultivation works in the fields due to the sustained flow of water in the Kosathalayar river. But the scenario changed swiftly after the advent of private companies into the area, which bought their arable lands for setting up establishments to serve the nearby Ennore Port,” said M Rose, an elderly resident of the otherwise sleepy village.

Most of the residents in the village work as labourers in the neighbouring companies and a few families are engaged in milk and curd businesses.

Though the tiny village is located just one kilometre from the Thiruvotriyur-Ponneri-Panchetti (TPP) High Road, it is completely delinked from the network. It has never had an MTC bus coming into the village for decades.

For medical emergencies, the locals rely on share autos and private vehicles to reach hospitals located at Thiruvotriyur.

When asked for his view on his village becoming a part of the Chennai Corporation, M Srinivasan, a shop owner in the village, said, “As the village lacks basic amenities like other areas that were recently merged with the Corporation, the authorities of Chennai Corporation should look to develop them in a speedy manner.”