Chennai is being governed on PowerPoint—plans shine on slides, fail on streets

The Print

12 hours ago

One must ask: how can a city that hosts global tech hubs flood at the first sign of drizzle?
The problem is not misgovernance, but choreographed decay — a deliberate model where the facade is prioritised over the fix, where perception is infrastructure and citizens are mere spectators.
For the past 1,500 days or so, Tamil Nadu's capital has been on grand display — not in outcomes, but in photoshoots, press conferences, and Instagram reels. Chennai was promised transformation. Manifestos spoke of new drains, roads, safety, and law and order. But this is not a city rebuilt; it is a city repackaged.
In May, the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) issued a work order for 18 new stormwater packages worth Rs 22 crore. The order for storm water drains has been issued several times. Yet many prime roads in Mandaveli, Washermanpet, and West Mambalam remain dug up, unfinished, or flood-prone. Even mild showers lead to water-logging.
Even in a high-visibility zone like T Nagar, footpaths were redesigned but crossings for people with disabilities remain unusable. The GCC's grievance portal has a long list of complaints stuck in limbo. North Chennai, once considered the backbone of Chennai's economy, continues to reel under poor sanitation, unauthorised constructions, lack of new infrastructure, and worsening law and order. Last year, Chief Minister MK Stalin inaugurated urban housing projects in the region. Yet families in Vyasarpadi still live beside sewage-filled lanes.
In what is branded as New Chennai — the stretches adjacent to Rajiv Gandhi Salai, erstwhile Old Mahabalipuram Road — the story is worse. Residents of Perungudi, Pallikaranai, Thoraipakkam, and Sholinganallur face persistent stagnation with drain water seeping into basements. Despite Smart City claims, drain mapping in these zones remains below 20 per cent as of late 2024.
A bin-free Chennai within a year was the goal in 2019, but garbage still piles up on every street corner. The Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (TASMAC) Limited continues to operate beyond permitted hours. Ward-level governance is invisible, except when there's an MLA's photo to be clicked or the mayor decides to stage a photo op. The public is left navigating a city governed by PowerPoint urbanism, where ideas live on slides but never make it to the streets.
The influencer republic
While the city rots, the government shines — online. Budgets flow not just into stormwater drains and flyovers, but into something more intangible: perception. The ruling DMK has created an ecosystem of influencer marketers, meme page operators, media contractors, and self-styled 'neutral' commentators. Between editorial tie-ups, influencer briefings, and digital campaign spends, Tamil Nadu has become the 'Reel Estate of Governance'.
It is hard to find a traffic signal that works, but easy to find a reel praising the CM. That is no coincidence. The governance model here does not prioritise fixing what's broken. It focuses on making sure you feel guilty for pointing it out.
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Lawless streets, silenced voices
The arrest of former DMK functionary Jaffer Sadiq last year by the NCB and ED in a Rs 2,000 crore drug racket spotlighted how organised crime has seeped deep into Tamil Nadu's political corridors. The ED seized over Rs 55 crore in assets and uncovered networks recruiting drivers and runners for international drug transit. Teachers in Royapuram and Choolai whisper about narcotics slipping into classrooms. They whisper, because speaking out has consequences.
In October last year, a DMK councillor was booked for allegedly demanding Rs 10 lakh from a contractor in Tambaram to allow work on a Metro water project—not an isolated event but part of a pattern where real estate clearances have become bargaining chips.
Gang murders and broad daylight stabbings now barely make it through 24 hours of news coverage. The brutal visuals from the 2024 murder of Tamil Nadu's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) president K Armstrong remain etched in public memory — a grim reminder that violence is no longer an exception but a broadcast. Public homicides, even when caught on CCTV, rarely provoke a sustained administrative or political response. Public desensitisation is not accidental. It's a strategic component of the Dravidian model. It allows impunity to thrive.
The political design of decay
The Tamil Nadu government didn't lose control. It handed it over. Civic contracts have turned into patronage pipelines. Law and order is weaponised selectively. Welfare is transactional. Accountability is rhetorical. The DMK's 2021 manifesto promised decentralised governance and citizen charters. But, 1,500 days later, we are left with AI edits.
About 97 per cent of Smart Cities Mission funds for Chennai have been utilised as of 2024. Contractors blacklisted in 2021 are back with fresh contracts. The case of PST Engineering Construction illustrates this pattern vividly. Despite facing severe criticism and a proposed blacklisting over substandard work on the KP Park tenements for economically weaker sections, PSTEC was later awarded a new contract for infrastructure development at Fintech City in Nandambakkam. Only those entrenched in power, and familiar with the opaque workings of the DMK–bureaucracy nexus, can truly answer how many more contracts have quietly made their way back to the proxies of previously blacklisted contractors.
There is a reason for this rot: the ruling party sees no electoral urgency in serving Chennai. The city is treated as a DMK stronghold — and therefore taken for granted, with citizens strung along on the assumption that loyalty overpowers accountability. But the people of Chennai have a different story to tell. They will no longer play background props in the DMK's studio.
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The next 1500 days won't begin tomorrow
These aren't missteps. It's a carefully designed model that benefits a few and fails the many.
As someone who contested the 2024 Lok Sabha elections from the Chennai Central constituency and continues to walk its lanes, I hear the same story in every ward. 'We don't need more promises. Just fix what's broken.' But the silence from the top is not an oversight. It's permission.
A city that once prided itself on civic order has been made to believe that dysfunction is normal. That accountability is too much to ask for. And that complaints should be whispered, not filed.
The next 300 days, leading up to the 2026 Assembly election in Tamil Nadu, will likely produce more content than correction, more PR than performance. That is the logic of politics when it loses touch with people. Which is why the next 1,500 days that truly count will only begin after Tamil Nadu sees a government that understands that governance is not theatre.
Because the people of Chennai aren't waiting for utopia. They just want a city that works. A street that drains. A school that's safe. A government that shows up.
And no, that's not too much to ask for.
The author is State Secretary of the BJP in Tamil Nadu. He was the party's candidate for Chennai Central in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. He tweets @VinojBJP. Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)