An ‘office’ operates from a flat at Cambre East, an apartment in downtown Egmore, and it is devoid of the accoutrements of officialdom. No paper rustling, no attendance tracking. In fact, there is no staff around to do a head count of. This is the contact address of CETAAC, which powers the eponymously-named website on the Pallikaranai Marsh. The group’s engagement with the marsh goes beyond running the website: it offers the lowdown on the marsh with inputs from the forest department and the Conservation Authority of the Pallikaranai Marshland (CAPML). Members of CETAAC engaged in the project root for the marsh with the enthusiasm of sports fans. Long before the pandemic, this team has been working remotely, and there is no debate on whether it will continue in this mode after the coronavirus fades away.
That is the only way they can work, having been distributed across Chennai and focussed on professional engagements that keep them distributed. CETAAC expands to College of Engineering Trivandrum Alumni Association Chennai. Besides the website, they also handle social-media pages for the marsh. The alumni offer this free service as repayment for the “debt of gratitude” they owe Chennai.
“There are more than 500 CETAAC alumni in Chennai, from the 1950s onwards. It is one of the oldest engineering colleges in India and it has alumni in senior positions in many industries and the government. Even in ISRO, there is a good number of CETAAC alumni. There is a lot of experience and potential available here,” says Biju Abraham Thomas, president.
When a job needs to get done, the team trawls its vast net — sometimes, beyond Chennai — and finds the person, one who seems to have been fashioned just for the mission.
“We managed to get satellite maps of the marsh — organising it through ISRO — which we gave to the forest department.
Rakesh Sasibhushan (who was at the time the head of Antrix Corporation Limited, attached to ISRO), is a College of Engineering alumnus,” notes Biju. We have in-house expertise in many things, especially of the technical kind; and we make use of that while furthering the interests of the marsh.”
Biju paints a picture of the alumni association’s massive networking advantage: 40,000 alumni across the world.
“In India, the chapters in Trivandrum, Cochin and Calicut; Chennai and Bangalore; and then those in Delhi and Mumbai are huge. The biggest chapter is probably the one in Dubai; and there are other prominent chapters in the middle-east. In the United States too, there are three big chapters — East, West and Central.”
The fact that CETAAC can make informed suggestions about the marsh gives them a significant standing with the forest department.
“We had even met Supriya Sahu, Additional Chief Secretary, Environment Climate Change & Forests, Government of Tamil Nadu and presented a vision document on the Pallikaranai marsh, which had been prepared by architect Benny Kuriakose, also a College of Engineering alumnus. The vision document illustrates how Pallikaranai can be turned into a world-class observatory,” says Biju.
With alumni ranging from Baby Boomers to Gen Z — the youngest alumni to join the chapter are from the 2020 batch, notes Pramode Mathew Alex (from the 1990 batch) who is currently handling the Clean Pallikaranai Project — CETAAC seems to be as much at ease discussing the marsh with the general public as it with the officials.
Says Biju: “CAPML wanted to establish a proper public interface. We set up the Pallikaranai Marsh website, and Facebook and Instagram pages. We did a series of radio campaigns — through Fever FM. We did sixteen weeks of programmes during the lockdown time. We got in touch with various bird-loving groups and photographers for information. The forest department had done a coffee table book and that helped us immensely in getting the information that ought to be shared with the public. We also got in touch with residents’ associations in the Pallikaranai area and built a network.”
During the launch of the Clean Pallikaranai Project, founder-member and ex-president of CETAAC Sunil Varghese stole the show pulling out magic tricks from his always ready quiver.
He waved two sashes with contrasting colours to illustrate how removed CETAAC and the forest department are from each other in terms of their calling. A bit of mumbo-jumbo and a wave by Sunil united the two sashes into one piece, with the colours alternating in a design that suggested both diversity and unity. The message: with the right focus and attitude, a partnership can be forged — and CETAAC seems to have done just that with the forest department.
Biju explains that in the years that the CETAAC alumni have interacted with the forest department for the Clean Pallikaranai Project, they have received great encouragement from those in charge: first it was V Karunapriya and now it is K Geethanjali, as conservator of forests, Chennai.