Tamil Nadu   

Tambaram neglected in many respects zone in

TAMBARAM: For a town that boasts of pioneering an independent water supply scheme and claims an important place in the city’s history, Tambaram is several years behind in growth that it ought to have achieved long ago.

It is among the biggest shopping and commercial centres in this region of Chennai, but vehicles cannot be parked anywhere. It is an important transport hub, but there is no bus terminus and the generation of solid and liquid waste is phenomenal and there is no proper method to dispose it of properly.

Tambaram, the southern gateway to Chennai, is also dotted with residential areas that came up even before the Independence, but there are not enough parks for children to play and for elders to get a breath of fresh air.

This probably sums up in brief, the condition of Tambaram, once a village panchayat and constituted as a municipality in 1964 by amalgamating it with Selaiyur, Kadaperi, Pulikuradu and Irumbuliyur.

Tambaram was the first urban local body on the fringes of Chennai to get drinking water from the Palar in the mid 1960s, a good two decades before other urban local bodies began to receive the same. At present, a Rs. 36-crore Water Supply Improvement Scheme is being executed in Tambaram by the Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board.

It is an important rail and road hub and the movement of a phenomenally large number of people has not been matched by creating matching amenities to cater to the needs of the floating population, estimated to be more than one lakh a day. Toilet facilities around railway stations and near bus stands are scarce and the existing ones are poorly maintained. People arriving at Tambaram by long distance trains and buses hardly have decent washrooms.

Tambaram is probably the most important bus terminus outside city limits, considering that long distance buses towards all parts of Tamil Nadu pass through it. In addition, over 50 villages are covered by the Metropolitan Transport Corporation buses and yet, Tambaram lacks a bus terminus. Residents are of the view that the lack of a modern bus terminus has been the biggest failure of the elected council and the State government in the past couple of decades. Now, the municipality has managed to get a portion of land opposite the taluk office and it is expected to be used for mofussil buses.

The town is also an important commercial and shopping centre, but facilities to park vehicles, even two-wheelers, are lacking. Though there have been talks of building a multi-storey shopping complex to accommodate pavement vendors, there has been no progress. The service road adjacent to Grand Southern Trunk Road has been an eyesore for decades.

Parks in East and West Tambaram cry for attention and hardly serve their purpose. Pointing out to strides made by the adjoining urban and rural local bodies, members of civic groups in Tambaram said that growth in this town was in a reverse trend. Well planned and neat localities in East Tambaram were created during the British Raj and in the years soon after the Independence, but now, inadequate urban planning had taken much of the charm out of this important town, said activists, who did want to be named.

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