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Tamil Nadu

Where demand for housing space goes up Zone in

K.Manikandan

Sholinganallur has developed from sleepy village to fulcrum of Information Technology

Photo: A. Muralitharan.

MAJOR IRRITANT: Garbage disposal continues to a major problem in the Shonlinganallur town panchayat. —

TAMBARAM: Some decades ago, Sholinganallur was just another dusty, sleepy village. Now, it has been put on the world map with most of the developments in the information technology industry in Chennai centred around the cluster of which Sholinganallur is the fulcrum.

The Rajiv Gandhi Salai, popularly known as IT Corridor, which was made a toll road recently, is among the finest roads in the city.

Multi-storey buildings housing offices of every leading player in the software industry is a pointer to Sholinganallur’s contribution to the growth of the IT sector in Chennai. But, just like many other urban local bodies flush with funds and yet face challenges when it came to implementing welfare works, Sholinganallur too has its own.

The town panchayat, no doubt, has come up with pioneering novel schemes, like the kitchen garden that has become a catchword among administrators and elected representatives of urban and rural local bodies. It gets an annual revenue of nearly Rs.15 crore, many times more than other town panchayats can even imagine, thanks to the software industry. Street-lights are bright and roads well-laid, but not all of them.

The geographical variations within the town panchayat — from the fishing hamlets along the coast in Akkarai, Panaiyur and Kudumiyandithoppu to the areas sandwiched between East Coast Road and Rajiv Gandhi Salai and also some places adjoining Buckhingham Canal and the massive software complexes — make it a unique urban pocket.

The population has grown from 15,557 in 2001 according to the census, to about 35,000 now. A substantial portion of its annual revenue comes as professional tax levied on the 18,000-odd software engineers and associated staff who come to Sholinganallur for work everyday.

“Yes, the IT revolution has improved quality of life to a large extent, but there is also another side to this story,” said S.V.Prem, an entrepreneur and a resident of Ponni Amman Koil Street. The demand for high-rise buildings to accommodate software companies has led to the influx of a few thousand workers from other parts. “We are not complaining, but the demand for housing has mounted a pressure on the environment just like it is happening in nearby Perungudi or Thoraipakkam,” he said.

The need for vast open spaces for housing and disposing of garbage has resulted in a severe strain, including on waterbodies. The dumping of garbage in an open space next to the Buckhingham Canal and alongside Kalaignar Karunanidhi Salai connecting Rajiv Gandhi Salai and ECR was threatening to make it another Pallikaranai, Mr. Prem said.

The town panchayat originally had a dozen water sources and half of them were rendered unusable post-tsunami. Now, they are continuing to tap drinking water from the existing six sources and supplying the same to residents. The town panchayat is hopeful of getting water from Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board soon. A considerable amount of the population is concentrated in the fishing hamlets and amenities there need improvement. Collection of toll for using Rajiv Gandhi Salai has come in for sharp criticism from residents of Sholinganallur.

Authorities said the quality of basic amenities in the town panchayat was far better than in other local bodies in the city’s fringes and they were not stopping with that. A lot of thrust was being given to equip each of the 15 wards with the necessary basic infrastructure to make sure they were content and self-reliant.

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