Time to revive call for Singara Chennai – Times of India

CHENNAI: Around 25 years ago, a pioneering initiative to beautify the city and turn it into a Singapore was introduced by M K Stalin as Chennai mayor. An efficient mix of branding and well planned projects, ‘Singara Chennai’ was devised with an eye on the much needed infrastructure development to match the growth of the city as it emerged as a key metro in the south at the turn of the century.
Its essence was to make Chennai not only beautiful but also liveable with clean waterways, proper waste management, better green cover, clean air and smooth traffic. Privatisation of garbage collection, new flyovers and beautification of beaches were some of the biggest gains of the project.

A good beginning was made, but Chennai still needs to travel some distance as its waterways are still stinking and solid waste management is yet to happen as attempts by the AIADMK government did not become a success.
There is a renewed hope among the residents that the city would become truly a Singara Chennai, both beautiful charge as chief minister of Tamil Nadu last week.
“It was the first time in the country a civic body privatised garbage collection in 2000. Onyx, the private company used compressor trucks to avoid spilling garbage on the streets. Till then, garbage used to be carried in open trucks. Officials from several municipalities across the country visited Chennai to learn about this new initiative,” says health minister Ma Subramanian, who was also Chennai Mayor from 2006 to 2011.
As part of Singara Chennai, Chennai Corporation built 10 flyovers to ease traffic congestion. The 10th flyover, at Perambur, was completed in DMK’s next regime.
also involved civic organisations such as Exnora and the general public in keeping the city clean.“One of the main focuses of Singara Chennai was waste management. The current waste management is a flop as there is no waste segregation happening at source level,” said M B Nirmal, founder of Exnora International.
“They have built flyovers and parks under Singara Chennai. But, other projects such as cleaning the waterways and increasing green cover of the city and creating parks in OSR lands were not completed,” said S Mangala Raj, former councillor of Chennai corporation.
When the Singara Chennai project was launched, the main slogan was changing the city like Singapore. As Stalin said in 2010, the project only achieved 50% of its goal in making the city beautiful. As chief minister, he now has a chance to fulfil the promise he made a quarter century ago.