Roads from two corners, but joined at the hip

Link Road in Egmore and TNHB Road in Sholinganallur suffer from the same anthropogenic activity and attitudes

These two roads may be significantly separated by distance — they are around 20 kilometres apart — but are hardly distant from each other.

Link Road in Egmore-Anna Salai and TNHB Road in Sholinganallur are united at the hip like cojoined twins. They suffer from the same anthropogenic activity, one buttressed by an attitude that views spaces along waterways as “dispensable” and an unofficial dumping zone.

Hardly a kilometre long, Link Road is a helpful option for motorists to bypass rush-hour traffic on a section of Anna Salai. Unfortunately, the road that languidly stretches along Cooum, linking Ethiraj Salai in Egmore and Dams Road in Anna Salai, is viewed as useful in a sinister way.

It comes in handy for those who would not take responsibility for the waste they generate. On any given day, the side of Link Road that wraps around the buttress zone of Cooum would be erupting in unseemly pimples of garbage. The variety of offscourings would be staggering.

This side of the road only mirrors the squalor presented by the so-called buffer zone along the Cooum.

N Mahesan, chief engineer, solid waste management, Greater Chennai Corporation notes that it has to do with people’s unhelpful tendency to dump discards along waterways.

“Despite continual efforts to clean the space, the problem persists. We want to put an end to this scourge through a surveillance system. On both ends, we have put site restriction barriers [which restricts the use of the road by heavy vehicles to certain hours]. Despite that, unauthorised dumping happens here and there. We will tighten the system by ensuring the barriers are operated as they should be, having an effective surveillance mechanism and a hefty fine slapped on those found dumping on the road,” says Mahesan.