The author of the article, Ajay Kumar, is a reader of IBNLive.com and has been staying in Chennai for the last three years. He writes that having stayed in many South Indian cities, he feels that Chennai is indeed, the most unfit city in India. He has tried his best to highlight the civic problems of Chennai, things that people in the state are just used to.
A few days back there was an article on CNN-IBN website "Most unfit city in India - Chennai". I even saw a cyber war going on among the net savvy people from all over India. Of course I did not comment at that time but I was doing an analysis how someone can conclude this statement?
In last few years I have stayed in Hyderabad, Bangalore, been to Delhi several times and currently staying in Chennai for almost three years. This experience gives me a feeling that it is quite easy to say that "Chennai is the most unfit city". I have few points to prove the same.
- Number of parks in the city we can count on our fingers
- Road conditions are really bad
- Bus routes passes through narrow residential streets
Now I will explain them one by one how it affects the health of people in the city. First there are numbered parks in the city; everyone can not go there for morning walks. That forced people to take membership in clubs or college campuses like IIT etc. for morning walks.
But selected few can have these facilities, all can not afford or these clubs or campuses can not afford to give more than a limited number.
Next choice of the people will be to take their morning or evening walk in the colony streets. But here again very few people can do that, reason being either roads are bad or buses will start plying from early morning from these residential streets. Nobody would like to get into the dust when they are working out for good health.
I have no clue why these bus routes are defined like this when it has to pass through these narrow (10-15 feet) roads. Because of these buses, morning walkers or evening walkers can not come out of their houses. This also affects the health of the indirectly as they can board into the buses right in front of their houses whereas they could have walked for half or 1 km at least to catch their buses.
Same is not the case with other cities; I have stayed in Hyderabad for 4 yrs and I think bus routes are sketched strategically as it should not get into the dense residential colonies and disturb the peace and calmness. Of course they have more number of parks and road qualities in residential colonies are comparatively very good. Same is the case Delhi and Bangalore.
I think Chennai should take this in the right spirit and work towards improving the surrounding environment and not shout at those people who are showing the scars.
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