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Vol XXXI No. 20, February 1-15, 2022
Archives: Vol XXXI No. 20, February 1-15, 2022
When river restoration becomes cosmetic beautification
by The Editor
Let us all rejoice! For if the newspapers are to be believed, the Government has just announced that its Buckingham Canal Beautification Project is nearing completion. The fine print of course carries all the details – it is just a 2.1 km stretch in the Adyar Taramani area. To put matters in perspective, the canal has a length of 31 km within city limits. And the beautification is just improvements along the banks. The water will remain as degraded as ever. It is in short, yet another cosmetic exercise over which Rs. 20 crores have been spent. To what purpose is all this if the canal remains the degraded gutter it has been reduced to?
The idea it seems, as per The Hindu, is to “make travelling on the Rajiv Gandhi Salai a pleasant experience, as the project involves setting up of a Miyawaki forest, installing bright streetlights, wall paintings, and laying a paved footpath.” While any attempt at making travelling on Chennai roads a pleasant experience is commendable, it should be pointed out here that the total length of the Rajiv Gandhi Expressway is 43.7 km – so what happens after the 2.1 km of pleasant experience is over? Will we therefore be soon spending similar amounts on the rest of the length of the road? And therefore will Rs. 400 crores (@ Rs 20 crores for every 2km left) be spent on beautification when all along, the core problem of the canal remains unattended to? Yes, the eye may delight for 2.1km at the Miyawaki and other things but what of the nose?
Building houses on wetlands
by A Special Correspondent
That Chennai has several colonies built without permission and later regularised is well known. But sometimes the law does catch up though it is only the buyers of such properties who are made to pay the price while the original perpetrators of such land grabs escape.
Thank you, Donors
We today, publish donations received with thanks for the period upto December 2021.
– The Editor.
Rs. 100: Bhamini Shankar
Rs. 400: N. Anantharam, Amirthalingam Venugopal, K. Ramesh, R.A. Jatesan, Suryanarayan Sinha
Rs. 500: A. Sankaralingam, N.Raghavan
The Bhishma Pitamaha of archaeology
by R. Gopu
I first came to know of Dr. R. Nagaswamy by way of newspaper articles about archaeological or historical discoveries. In 2009, I read his path-breaking 1962 thesis on Mamallapuram. In this, he proposed that Rajasimha Pallava was the creator of all the monuments of Mamallapuram. Until then, the consensus among historians was the one proposed by Jouveau Doubreil in 1915, that three Pallava kings, Narasimha Pallava I, his grandson Parameshvara and the latter’s son Rajasimha were each author/patrons of different monuments in Mamallapuram, over a century.
When Nagaswamy retrieved Nataraja
by K.R.A. Narasiah
Dr. R. Nagaswamy, the eminent archaeologist passed away last week at the age of 92. This tribute to him has been penned by KRA Narasiah.
Dr. R. Nagaswamy, the Padma Bhushan recipient for his contribution to the department of Archeology in general and for his professional competence in retrieving the Pathur Nataraja idol from the UK in particular, was born on August 10, 1930. After obtaining his master’s degree from Madras University in Sanskrit,
