URBAN CHAOS: Shopping turned out to be a nightmare for many as complexes provide no parking space. A view of Flower Bazaar on Monday evening. — Photo: M. Vedhan

CHENNAI: Tens of thousands of shoppers at T. Nagar and Parrys Corner were at their wits end this festival season trying to negotiate crowded streets, platforms and passages in shopping complexes.

Most of the big shops and commercial complexes that earn crores during festivals have provided little space for parking on their premises. Also, many of these buildings have flouted urban development laws.

But the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) and the Chennai Corporation seem to be making little attempt to rein in them, civic activists say.

The result: residents of T. Nagar and George Town as well as shoppers suffer not only in the crowd but also stand exposed to grave risks.

It is left to the police, who play little part in city planning, to manage the traffic crises everyday, especially during festival seasons, and to come up with crash solution and ad-hoc measures that are hardly sufficient for the occasion.

Pleas unanswered

Members and organisers of grass-root bodies such as street Exnoras say they have given up hope on the authorities making an intervention. None of their pleas has been answered.

There is little or no parking space in any of the shops. Very few follow the rules of fire safety.

The passages are narrow and ventilation and fire escapes virtually non-existent in shops that spend princely sums for publicity and television advertising.

A former national president of the Builders Association of India, R. Radhakrishnan, says when someone violates FSI (floor space index) and builds three or four times more than what is allowed by the development control rules and building laws, and the enforcers failed to curb the violations, "who does one turn to?" he asks.

He says it is well within the powers of with the local corporation engineer, councillor, the local police, and the CMDA planners, to stop any building that violates the sanctioned plan.

"When they do not act even though the blatant violations are taking place in full public view, it means the obvious," he asserts.

He recalls that when the "totally regressive scheme like the regularisation" was announced, many builders went ahead `regularising' even future buildings.

Unscientifically built

A former office-bearer of the BAI and flat promoter in T. Nagar says: There is science behind the floor space index and development control rules.

In case of an accident, a fire or a terror attack as in New Delhi, the kind of casualties that can occur in these crowded and unscientifically built structures is unimaginable.

Exnora organisers such as Govindarajan say that several buildings in commercial districts do not follow fire safety norms, or any open spaces.

"When an ordinary citizen who defaults on water tax payment by a few days he is threatened, and a person who constructs a small house is harassed by corporation officials for small deviations, the bigger complexes seem to get away with huge violations."

Mr. Radhakrishnan wonders whether is it time to announce a moratorium on construction of special buildings in the core city and relax norms for townships outside the city.

"Only then can we think of improving secondary cities in the State."

Solution

Exnora activists say a solution could be to work in a public-private partnership where the CMDA helps businessmen to pool their available open spaces and create dedicated parking lots to be shared by all shops.

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