Engaging with Sustainability Issues in Metropolitan Chennai

Chennai is the largest metropolitan city in South India (8.7 million in 2011) and the provincial capital of the large state of Tamil Nadu (population 72 million in 2011). Before that, under British rule, the city was the capital of the Madras Presidency and was known as Madras until 1996, when the name was officially changed to Chennai. Located on the east coast of India, on the Bay of Bengal, sea trade has been an important aspect of the regional economy since at least the colonial period. Still today, the city combines political functions with economic command functions for both manufacturing and services, reflecting the region’s diversified economy. The Chennai metropolitan area has witnessed strong growth over the last 20 years in automobile manufacturing, software services, hardware manufacturing, healthcare, and financial services (CDP 2009). However, it should be noted that only 30% of total employment in the city takes place in the formal sector i.e., is covered by contracts and labor laws, the remaining 70% falls in the informal sector. This underscores the importance of small and micro enterprises and self-employment for providing goods, services, and livelihoods in the local economy. It is indicative of a largely low-income economy, like most other Indian cities, which can also be inferred from statistics on housing (approximately 23% of Chennai’s inhabitants reside in informal settlements) and from maps of socio-spatial inequalities in access to amenities, called “hot spots” of deprivation (see Baud et al. 2009). Compared to Delhi and Kalyan, the two other Indian cities in the Chance2Sustain study, Chennai has some distinct characteristics. Like Delhi, it combines administrative and economic command functions, but the public sector tends to be less predominant in some important respects, notably land planning and regulation, leaving relatively more room for private sector actors.2 In absolute terms, Chennai’s urban region (including the adjoining districts of Tiruvallur and Kanchipuram) is one of India’s most dynamic regions, registering a total investment of Rs 522 659 crores (approx. 62 billion euros)3 during the period 1995-2010 (Shaw 2012: 37-8). In terms of risks, Chennai appears more vulnerable in many respects than both Kalyan and Delhi; it has the lowest per capita availability of water among India’s large cities, and its location on the coast exposes it to the effects of climate change.