Published in Dwarka Express on 15.11.22

The farmers are fuming. Women are weeping but the project is all set to take off. The Parandur Airport at Tamilnadu’s Kanchipuram district, not very far off from Chenni Airport  is being promoted as a Greenfield project and farmers, environmentalists and women are raising their voice. “Raise your voice, it counts” the popular saying has gone with winds and the green fields which was the livelihood of thousands of families are expected to be in crossroads. Compensation, resettlement and the like are the normal garb under which decision makers hide themselves and make tall claims that the development projects are being impeded by the NGOs in false plea. Farmers and locals from 13 villages will be losing their precious agricultural lands. Nearly 3000 families are depending on the agriculture income in this area. About 4500 acres are farming area will be converted into airport and soon the land will be handed over to adanis and ambanis under the guise of greenfield ventures. A 1000 houses will be razed down. The DPR is being ready for a project cost of Rs 10000 Crore and the feasibility reports envisage that for every Rs 100 spent, it will fetch Rs 300. Another argument in favour of an airport seems to be that the present airport at Meenambakkam Chennai which is just 60 KMs away from the proposed one will not be able to cater to the need of ever-growing air traffic which is expected to grow to 3.50 crore from the present level of 2.2 crore within next 7 years. Any everyone knows that the present airport was modernaised and expanded recently. Why the planners could not envisage the growth potentials at that time? This question remains unanswered. Environmental NGOs like Poovulagin Nanbargal say that Tamilnadu has many airports which could be developed into international airports to address the growing traffic. They also say how an airport at Parandur will not only destroy agricultural lands but also evaporate the natural waterbodies in the identified areas. Already Chennai faced the devastating floods in 2021 and before also, and one of the reasons was poor augmentation of water sources in the nearby districts.

Ekanapuram, the worst affected village among these 13 notified villages will completely vanish from Indian Map soon. 2000 locals from this village are planning to conduct a protest march to the Secretariate on 17^th Oct 2022. Will the policy makers listen and change their stance?

We have seen that in the history of Independent India, the policy makers never listen to common man but they comfortably ignore the fact that nature does not listen to anyone and when it shows, the damage will be too late and irreparable and irrevocable