Wanted: greater accountability for anti-social activity
Two separate incidents highlight how shockingly easy it is for some law breakers to cause immense harm, loss of income and general destruction to many. And get away scot free. All because we, as a society, don’t seem to be able to take severe action when warranted. Take the two cases of flooding in the last few days.
The first was the breach of the bund of the Vanaanthaangal lake in Tambaram by ‘miscreants’. By the time the Muncipal Authorities arrived to ‘inspect’ the breach, all the water in the lake had drained out. Residents of the area are, justifiably, furious as the lake was instrumental in recharging the ground water table in an area where water supply is not readily available.
The second is the flooding of the Ambattur Industrial Estate, because lake bed encroachers forced open a weir, leading to flooding of part of the estate. Resulting in disruption to the operations of the units in the flood hit areas by a week to ten days. As well as affecting transformers and the power supply to the area. The entire discussion seems to be on why the PWD did not deepen storm water drains after de-silting them, and the need to de-silt the Korattur lake so it can receive the run off and so on.
There seems to be no focus on the ‘miscreants’ and ‘lake bed encroachers’ who caused the problem in the first place. The last time this happened in Tambaram, the ‘miscreants’ were the lake bed encroachers who let the water out of the lakes by destroying the bunds because the water was reaching their premises. Without a thought in the world for the thousands they will cause damage to.
Consider this: they are ‘encroachers’, ie. They are occupying land that they should not. In other words, they are law breakers. What is being done about this? Why are they not being evicted and the lake beds protected from further encroachment? After all, this is the root of the problem. Remove them, and ensure no further encroachment, and the problem is prevented from occurring in future.
Secondly, how can a few people who are breaking the law hold so many people to ransom, and cause such a huge amount of loss and harm with out being held accountable? Both the articles in The Hindu detail what the authorities are doing about the flooding, the preventive measures they could have taken etc.etc. Not a word about what the authorities are doing about the perpetrators, or what they should be doing about them!
Go in and remove them, once and for all. And to prevent this happening in future, make them pay damages for the destruction and harm they have caused. Or jail them for wanton destruction of public property. Unless we hold people accountable for their anti-social actions, whether it is occupying land they should clearly not have occupied, or causing destruction to thousands of fellow citizens because of selfish interests due their illegal presence, this is only going to continue.
I can’t understand why the mainstream media is silent on this subject.
Chennai is full of anti social activity from Spencer Plaza to Tambaram the whole city is infested with criminals from other parts of India who come and breed and ruin the lives of locals. Areas like Sowcarpet are an example almost all the shops there are illegal buildings with no permits and they continue to remain open. They should be shut down permanently and demolished, Chennai is full of fools who can’t plan a city let alone take care of one area that is so troublesome. I have pity on Chennai authorities they are helpless to clean up the city of anti social elements. I think we need to apply principles that Anniyan shows then only will Chennai improve.
Educated and responsible people are only interested in finding lucrative jobs and earning huge amounts for their family.They do not play an active role in elections and think its for the lower classes to vote. Now the lower classes think its a matter of life and death to vote and bring their own representative to power so that their illegal activities like encroachment can be condoned.Elected representatives of such people will be uneducated or semi-literate goondas with a criminal history.How can we expect such people to be upholders of law and justice? Such people finally control the lives of all educated people however rich they might be. The only solution would be active participation of educated middle class to play a responsible role in elections and vote for a deserving candidate irrespective of which party to which he/she belongs.