It’s 5 p.m. on a Thursday and Thiruvanmiyur beach is gearing up to take on the weekend crowd. The promenade is being swept; plants lining the sidewalks are being watered; and garbage is being collected in numbered bins placed at specific points. It’s almost as if the members of a household have come together to do some spring cleaning. It’s a similar spirit that prevails, thanks to the efforts of Chander Swamy and team.
It all began in January 2015 when Chander Swamy, who runs Rialto Enterprises, a business partner of Procter and Gamble, brought together some of the residents of New Beach Road and its adjacent streets, to do something for their locality. Chander, who lives on New Beach Road, started off with clean-ups of the quaint Thiruvanmiyur beach. “We once collected 25 tonnes of garbage,” says Chander.
But any citizens’ initiative will not succeed without the support of the Corporation and Chander knew this. He says that the trick lies in working together. As part of his company’s CSR initiative, he created a model that brought together residents and civic authorities to spruce up the beach.
Today, Thiruvanmiyur beach is among the cleanest in the city — the three-km stretch from Sea World Drive to Kottivakkam Kuppam is cleaned from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day; there’s even a night clean-up that happens from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. “We regulate traffic on the beach road on Fridays and weekends,” explains Chander. “Four-wheelers cannot enter beyond a certain point so that the roads are free for children to play.”
His team has also convinced food vendors to concentrate their sales along one street. Garbage bins dot the stretch of sand and the newly-planted poovarasu plants stand tall by the promenade. Among their best initiatives is a well-maintained bio-toilet for visitors. Then there’s the rain water harvesting system that has been set up on New Beach Road. Chander’s team maintains a record of everything — from the attendance of those employed for their activities to a ‘garbage bin tracker’ that keeps track of when each of the bins is cleared.
Chander hopes that this model is replicated along adjacent stretches such as Neelankarai and Kottivakkam. He believes that it is people’s initiatives such as these that can bring about a change in our country. “Wouldn’t it be nice if people got together to do something similar for each of their localities?” he asks. For, it’s these little things that can make all the difference.
