Author Katherine Boo in her book Beyond the Beautiful Forevers wrote about the contrasting economic lifestyles of those living in Mumbai. While the bourgeois lived in upscale apartments, the downtrodden section of the society continued to live in abject poverty, entitled to few amenities. Both, however, suffered collateral damage.
Madurai’s Ellis Nagar fits the above description perfectly. One can often see tall apartments and hotels along ward 17’s main roads but the real story lies in the bylanes. Filth, construction debris, animal and human waste line the small streets along the Krithumal river that flows through the area. An unpleasant smell often occupies a motorist along this stretch.
Residents of Gandhi Colony, a small but prominent residential area, say that they have been ignored for several years. Rahman Beevi, a worker who lives in this poramboke land-turned-colony, says that their situation is similar to that of Athipatti gramam, a fictitious village that appears in the Tamil movie ‘Citizen.’
Open defecation is still a point of concern here as the nearest integrated toilet complex is located 4 km away from the colony. There are about 160 families in the neighbourhood but most do not have toilets inside the house.
“Every year, Corporation officials visit our households to get a rough estimate of the number of toilets in the area. They demand photocopies of our Aadhaar and ration cards but nothing happens after that. It is a charade,” says Ms. Beevi.
She adds that it is especially difficult for women during the day. “Are we not human enough?”
There are no underground drainage lines in this area. Several petitions have been filed by resident C. A. N. Sundararajan to clean the Krithumal but authorities have not even visited the area, he says.
There is no space for an ambulance to travel through the stretch because the lanes are very narrow.
Come evening and Ellis Nagar is alive with mosquitoes. The menace is difficult to control as fogging does not occur often.
The garbage is also not collected on time, residents complain.
T. Vijaya, a resident of Sarvodaya 2nd Cross Street, says that there is dog menace in her neighbourhood. “We are afraid to send our children out to play because these dogs have bitten them in the past. They sleep under cars and bark at our pets. In the evenings, they even growl at residents. It is really difficult,” she says.
A sanitary officer from the health department of the Madurai Corporation assures that he will immediately look into the stray dog menace issue and ensure that fogging is done regularly.
He claims that conservancy workers regularly pick up garbage. The Assistant Engineer of the ward says that underground drainage is a problem in the area but cleaning of the Krithumal is being done regularly.
The ward is located very close to the heart of the city. It is about 1.4 km away from Periyar bus stand and 1.3 km from the railway junction.
