Houses reduced to rubble, residents in tears

CHENNAI : V Kanniappan (55) stood his ground, but it was a wasted effort. A giant earthmover pulled down his home in less than a minute. The house, just a stone’s throw away from the gushing waters of the Adyar river, was the first to be brought down in the operation to demolish unauthorised structures along the river. “I have been living here for 50 years. Now they have promised me a much better home, but I am yet to see it,” he told Express before climbing on to a light commercial vehicle deployed by the government to help families from Anakaputhur reach Perumbakkam.

He lived with his son K Nagarajan in the now demolished house. Both are daily wage labourers. Like Kanniappan and his family, a majority of those evicted from Anakaputhur are daily wagers working in factories and construction sites. Some, after education, found lucrative jobs elsewhere.

“I was born and raised here and was married into a family living here. Anakaputhur is the world for me. After 40 years, they are uprooting hundreds of families and that too to a remote location where there are no job opportunities. What will happen to our children’s schooling? We have built our small homes out of our savings of a lifetime. All was lost in less than a day,”said an anguished Radha Pandian. She works in a garment factory and her husband is a mason.

The couple have two children, Praveen (7) and Deepika (4).
Women residents said the families were just beginning to stabilise after the 2015 floods and the cyclone last year. “We spent whatever little money we had to carry out repair works and many of us had whitewashed our homes only before Deepavali. The happiness did not even last till Pongal,” remarked Latchmi, an elderly resident.

“The government action is very cruel. We have never been affected by water overflowing from the Adyar except in 2015. How can they blame us for flooding?”asked M Dhanapal, a resident for over 50 years. 
M Shanmugham, another resident, said all these years, the State government had done nothing to deepen, desilt or strengthen the bunds of the Adyar river. At least the anti-encroachment drive could have been done in March or April after the school season ends.