Madras Day - 375th Anniversary of the metropolis

Last week, millions in the city celebrated Madras Day, renamed Chennai by an Indian government act of decree in 1996 to remove the yoke of British and European colonial history on city names.

Back in 1639 the East India Dock Company which has since become synonymous with British rule of India bought a 3 mile stretch of coast in South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Here they built a fort, naming the area Madras. Over the past four hundred years parts of Madras have gone back and forth in battle and conquests between the French, Portuguese, Dutch and British. Whoever won each battle, it was always the indigenous Indian population that were the losers.

Chennai (Madras) is a coastal city older than Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) or Mumbai (formerly Bombay). It’s famous for its beaches, one of which Marina runs at over 8 miles and is longer than all urban beaches exempting Rio; its religious sites including the Kapaleeshwarar temple that is over 1300 years old; and more recently for Indian Premier League fans it is the home of local 20/20 cricket team Chennai Super Kings.

Since the ‘discovery’ of Chennai in 1639 and subsequent Independence 300 years later in 1947 the city like much of India has moved on economically, in leaps and bounds. Labelled the Banking capital of India, the World Bank has its largest base here outside of Washington D.C; electronic and automotive manufacturing is an economic giant; and it is one of the super hubs for software and IT technology.

The urban poverty rate is one of the lowest in India’s urban centres. Dr M.Satish Kumar of Queen's University, Belfast believes ‘Chennai like many cities has a Master Plan, but there is a huge dissonance between regional and national urban policy planning in India’.

Despite this, while visiting the city you’d have to be blind not to see amongst the breathtaking beauty, the crushing poverty that still blights the country. In a population of approximately 5 million: there are tens of thousands of homeless families; beggars with limb or eyes missing; and half the population still openly defecating, causing major issues in public health.

These images seared into your mind are a regular reminder that there are those that are beyond the reach of the prosperity that has been brought to many in this new century.

Madras Day, I suggest, should therefore be a annual rebuke of not just the British rule of this great city, but a rebuke of the needless abject poverty that still dominates the lives of half her population and ensures that they - like the those under the yoke in the Colonial days of old - remain losers.

Ashok Viswanathan