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CAMPAIGN ROB’s fundraising concert kicked off the initiative to show that beaches are OUR property. NIHARIKA M.

Youth initiatives have always been ideas of significance and Chennai is leaving no stone unturned when it comes to these. ‘Reclaim Our Beaches’ is one more such start, contributing to the cause of the environment, but with a difference. Forget the days of old activists and veteran organisations that struggled for years together to make an impact. Here is the Gen-X that knows how to make it tick.

Environmental hazard

This group, which very symbolically calls itself ROB (Reclaim our Beaches) organised a fundraising concert with Junkyard Groove as part of their campaign that took shape in November. The work will be a massive cleanup of the Elliots Beach on January 30 followed by a celebration of beaches on the following day. Sharadha from ROB believes that since the beach is public property and no one claims ownership for it, the Government makes ambitious but potentially destructive plans and goes ahead with them. This explains the massive Rs. 1000 crore project to construct an elevated highway from Marina to Kottivakkam.

The project will cause the demolition of a number of houses, commercial buildings, places of worship and public utility buildings. Besides that, numerous people will be rendered homeless, not to mention the severe damages to the natural eco-systems. Expressways are meant to be connecting interstate highways and not for congested cities. Environment and social disruption will be the most obvious repercussions if this project takes off.The bottom line is — India will be India; there is no necessity to create a Singapore or a San Francisco here. Therefore, we are exercising our right to reclaim the only open spaces left in Chennai for the public — the beaches.

Free dumping ground

Apart from that, the littering of beaches is one of the other major concerns of ROB. Approximately 16,000 bits of plastic and almost 1800 pieces of glass were found during a recent clean up. But what is done after this kind of careless littering is insensitive. The Government orders school children to clean up the beaches naming it ‘augmenting the society/environment’. Or the collected waste is dumped at unsuspecting communities near Perungudi and Pallikaranai. The message we are spreading here is that it is okay to use children to clean up the beaches only to dirty some one else’s neighbourhood. It is also perhaps that it is acceptable for mindless people to use the beach as their garbage disposal can while some innocent individuals will sweep the litter of their actions?

ROB thus proposes a ‘RIGHT CLEAN UP’ plan which will include residents, visitors to the beach, vendors, fisherfolk and all the other users. They will also be visiting schools and colleges to educate children to ensure sensitisation at a young age. As for the adults, potty-training is the solution to our woes! It seems like environmental interests are the top priority of citizens. Whether these are the after-effects of “2012” and the Copenhagen dilemma, only their sustainability will tell!

Niharika is a II Year student of BA Literature at Stella Maris College.

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