Renowned social activist Medha Patkar on Friday slammed the Tamil Nadu government’s elevated expressway project from the Chennai Port Trust to Maduravoyal and along the beach.
“Express highways are considered by many in power and the middle class as an infrastructural solution to the problems of transport and communication in the city. But, they are taking large chunks of land, killing public transport and facilitating the agenda of the private car industry,” she said.
The project, which the National Alliance of People’s Movements estimates would displace 3.5 lakh slum dwellers, was evaluated without public consultation and will not solve the root problem.
Ms. Patkar, who was speaking in Chennai on climate change at Guru Shree Shantivijai Jain College for Women, said that those who lived in harmony with the earth’s resources – slum dwellers, adivasis, weavers, farmers, labourers – had simple lifestyles and technologies needed for humans to successfully mitigate and adapt to climate change.
Deeming the Copenhagen summit “a lot of waste for little result,” she said before India engaged in dialogue on climate change with the international community, Indians should engage with each other to find development solutions that were “justifiable and sustainable.”
Otherwise, inequity would increase at the hands of private industry, she warned, pointing at Africa and Latin America.
“Chairman of the International Panel on Climate Change R.K. Pachauri should himself come down to earth and talk to farmers, fishermen, social organisations and Adivasis,” she told The Hindu, discussing the controversy over the IPCC’s modelling of climate change.
There was always debate about data, but may be new methods of gathering information through people living on the ground could be developed, she said.
