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Tamil Nadu
HARDLY AN EYE CANDY: Puddles seen in an area in the Ullagaram – Puzhuthivakkam Municipality. — 
TAMBARAM: Several thousands of residents living in the low-level areas close to Pallikaranai Marshland are dreading rains. A majority of residents who have constructed houses in Ullagaram-–Puzhuthivakkam Municipality would vouch for this. Over the past couple of weeks, the suburbs have seen sporadic showers, and already residents in this municipality are fearing inundation. Water stagnation is probably the most pressing problem in the municipality. Residents spend considerable sums on reaching their homes in bullock carts and catamarans that are deployed every year as the Madipakkam-Velachery Link Road and interior streets come under a couple of feet of water. Inadequate basic infrastructure, an acute mismatch between citizens’ services and actual requirements, poor roads and the close proximity to the Pallikaranai Marshland have all combined to ensure that woes overflow in Ullagaram-Puzhuthivakkam Municipality. Upgraded as a third-grade municipality from a town panchayat in 2004, this town with a population of more than 50,000 has a variety of problems. Water stagnation around houses in localities close to the marshland had assumed such proportions in the past that the Police and Fire Service had to initiate massive rescue operations to pull people out to safety and some families had to stay elsewhere for nearly a fortnight, waiting for the water level to recede. Municipal authorities said that in the past one year, the Veerangal Odai was desilted and deepened and the State Highways Department had constructed minor bridges near the marshland and hoped problems of stagnation this year would not be as acute in the past. The Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board, which fills up a huge sump in Annai Teresa Nagar built in 1998, supplies the municipality’s drinking water. Strikingly, Ullagaram-Puzhuthivakkam is among a few local bodies in the suburbs, which lack individual drinking water connections and public fountains. Water from the sump is transported through lorries and roadside plastic tanks are filled up for use by residents. Poor roads have always been a problem in this municipality. Bagat Singh, a resident of Ponni Amman Koil Street and a functionary of the Congress, said the municipal administration hardly seemed to focus on improving quality of road surfaces in interior residential pockets. A. Jayachandran, Municipal Chairman, pointed out that underground drainage network and a water supply improvement projects were drawn up at a combined cost of Rs. 52 crore. Once completed, it would solve problems of sewage disposal and they would also be able to give individual water connections. In the past couple of years, thrust was laid on public projects including the now completed bus terminus and burial ground. The municipality also wants to carry out improvement works on Ullagaram ‘Chitheri’ — the last among waterbodies in the local body — but is unable. as it is maintained by St. Thomas Mount panchayat union, said J. K. Manikandan, vice-chairman and son of the Mr. Jayachandran.
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