Lines in the Mud: Tank Eco-restoration and Boundary Contestations in Chennai

Abstract

This article analyses the politics of environmentalism revealed in struggles over the land–water boundary of an urbanising tank in Chennai. In contesting this boundary, property-less settlers on its banks called into question the tank’s ‘nature’ and functions in its urban milieu, and demanded a redrawing of boundaries to reflect the socio-natural transformations that had turned parts of it into land. Simultaneously, propertied residents, in concert with state eco-restoration schemes and court rulings, fought to restore the tank to its ‘original’ dimensions. In foregrounding the liminalities of the urbanising tank, this article suggests the limits of the contemporary property-determined eco-restoration discourse, premised on a return to pristine pasts and original boundaries. It proposes that the stand-off between water body restoration and the defence of working-class housing rights necessitates recognising the tank as an artefact assembled over time by socio-technical and natural processes.

URBAN WATERLINES: Socio‐natural Productions of Indifference in an Indian City

“…Water boundaries have historically vacillated in response to shifting drivers of urban transformation and changing values of nature (Swyngedouw, 2006; Goldman and Narayan, 2019; Coelho, 2020). In Chennai's watery territories, urban expansion over the past century involved the planned elimination of water from the landscape, accompanied by pervasive formal building and informal settlement on or alongside waterbodies (Bremner, 2020; Coelho and Raman, 2013).…”

“…The case studies in this article draw from ethnographic studies conducted by the author individually or with research assistants at different points over the past 17 years in Chennai. The next section reports on the study elaborated in Coelho (2020), which involved 18 months of intensive qualitative fieldwork in 2017 and 2018 around the Korattur eri (lake). We interviewed 20 residents as well as political leaders and eco‐restoration activists on the eastern side, and 21 residents and anti‐eviction activists on the western side, attended meetings and strategy discussions, accompanied residents on visits to local officials, court hearings and public consultations, and helped with the production of maps.…”

“…In Chennai's watery territories, urban expansion over the past century involved the planned elimination of water from the landscape, accompanied by pervasive formal building and informal settlement on or alongside waterbodies (Bremner, 2020;Coelho and Raman, 2013). However, the current turn towards rescuing and restoring waterbodies is built on ideologies of original boundaries, pristine nature, and notions of 'encroachment' defined by metrics of property rather than ecology (Coelho, 2020). The next section illustrates how boundaries--on maps or on the ground--are subjects of intense contestation.…”

“…6 6 A fuller account of this case is given in Coelho (2020). Much of the empirical material presented in this section, including figures and quotes and some of the language, is reproduced from that article. …”

Is it sustainable consumption or performative environmentalism?

“…Instead, they are framed as lacking the appropriate dispositions for good civic and environmental behaviour (Doron, 2016). The informal settlements where the working poor live are territorially stigmatised as unclean and razed to the ground, only to be replaced with shopping malls and gated enclaves that serve profit-making prerogatives of real-estate developers and the consumption desires of the well-off (Arabindoo, 2005;Coelho, 2020).…”