Chennai Central – Just a Railway station?

The Chennai Central, erstwhile Madras Central, has got many different meanings on the formal and informal levels. The Central is the main railway terminus in the city of Chennai. In Wikipedia it reads, “It is the home of the Southern Railway and the most important rail hub in South India.” Apart from this, the Central has got many different other meanings, it is a meeting point, it is a working place for approx 2000 people, it is a place, where people gets connected with other parts of the county and with other countries too, it is also a shopping place, e.g. a place where people can buy food, papers etc., it is a waiting place and over all it is the symbol of the city of Chennai as well.
Henry Lefebvre understands space in three ways – as perceived, conceived and lived. He calls the first spatial practices, which means the physical or material part of space. The spatial practice of the Central is the building in itself, tracks and platforms, shops and so on. The second one refers the abstract plans and mental processes or the ideas, which he calls representations of space. Here, according to the second way, the focus lays on the meaning of the Central. Generally the Central has the meaning of a railway station. Apart from this it is the symbolic landmark of the city of Chennai and for people in South India as well. On an individual level it can have the meaning of the working place too; therefore the Central gets an existential meaning. The third way of understanding space, according to Lefebvre is the dialectical relation of the first two. This dialectic is actually a trailectic, because it exists in relation with the other two. He calls this third term spaces of representations. However, on a practical level the third term is the interaction between the building and the conceived. The physical or material side gets a meaning and the meaning becomes through the building a connection into the real world, into the space and hence, spaces becomes representative.
Chennai’s Central has in Lefebvre’s outlook – like any space as well – those three ways of understanding space. Here, the particular space is the main railway terminus in the city of Chennai. Those three ways of understanding the Central have been my glasses in order to write this paper.
However, for the purpose of writing this essay I went to the Central several times, there I observed the atmosphere, I was talking to people, I bought food and I also went to other shops, but most recently I spoke with the station manager several times. He gave me oral and written information about the Central, which helped me in writing this paper.

Historical development

The Madras Central was built in the Gothic Revival style in 1873; the original station was designed by George Hardinge. Originally the station was intended of just four platforms; today there are 15 platforms and 15 tracks. The Central was redesigned with the addition of the clock tower and other changes by Robert Fellowes Chisholm and completed in 1900. Parktown and later the Royapuram habour station were the first terminuses until the beach line was extended further south in 1907. All trains were then terminated at Madras Central. Chennai is the headquarters of the Southern Railway zone of the Indian Railways. The Southern Railway was formed on 14th April 1951 by merging the Railway systems administered by the erstwhile Madras and Southern Mahratta, South Indian and Mysore State Railways. Subsequently in 1966, with the formation of South Central Railway a portion of Southern Railway was transferred to South Central Railway. Again in 2003 South Western Railway was formed transferring two divisions from Southern Railway. Now, Southern Railway serves the entire states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Pondicherry plus a small part of Andhra Pradesh.

Chennai’s population has increased fast and extremely over the last decades. This development also effected the Central. Today and in future the main issues of the Central is how to cope with the increasing passengers, the Station Manager said during the interviews.

Transportation

How many passengers are transported every day?
Over all the Central transports around 320.000 passengers daily. The earnings are 10.000.000 RS a day. Around 180.000 people are transported into long distances by Mail or Express services. This trains offer the passenger different possibilities to travel, different comforts related to different prices. The possibilities varies from First Class - AC, Second Class – AC, Third Class – AC, First Class without AC, Second Sleeper Class and to Unreserved passengers. This variation, according to Lefebvre’s concept and ideas of social space, also show the society here in India. People how can afford will travel for example First Class – Ac and hence, will get more comfort and also more space for themselves. An example of this hierarchy in space shows a symbol, a sign, where exclusive passengers of the “Upper Class” can check their reservations.

With the suburban servers the Central transports around 140.000 passengers into local areas with local trains. Those trains don’t serve any class system of transportation, apart from separate parts, couches for ladies.
Every year, at least for the next five years, the amount of passengers - according to the Station Manager - will increase about 20%. This is a serious issue for the Central, which already affected the transportation, for example in terms of running late. In order to solve this problem the Central can employ more trains at all and also more coaches per train, which is - spoken in numbers - maximum 24 coaches per train. Another possibility is increasing the services, which runs daily. One of the main problems is, that the tracks and platforms didn’t increase in the same way the amount of passengers did. However, there are already planned a few measures like an additional terminal and additional tracks, a metro-service, etc.

People

My personal experience of entering and being in the Central was each time differently. Many people are waiting in the halls; many of them are sleeping, some eating, some buying things, etc. There are people on their own, whole families, business people, and security personal and so on. The situation and the atmosphere changed fast with getting dark, with the sunset. It felt more tens and not so safe anymore. Outside I could see how people arrive, departure, and wait, maybe of a customer, as an auto driver or I could see how some homeless were sleeping or begging. The Central has got for different people different meanings, for all, it is a place, it is the Central, a Railway station, but the meaning is each time differently. Some will see the Central as a place where they get transported, others as a working place, etc.
The Central seems to be a living organism, which breathes and is alive, some parts of the organism are wealthy, and some are poor and this entire organism seems to changes and move all the time.

Station Manager

In order to understand the Central better I asked the Station Manager different questions. I asked him what he likes most on working at the Central and how many people are working there at all. According to the Manager around 2000 people work in different departments, for example in the department of security, traffic, commercial, and health, electrical, engineering and in the department of medical support. Further, he described the main issues he has to face every day; he told me that he connects working with the idea of service. Practically helping passengers, for example to find lost things, getting aid, if needed or providing accommodation and comfort are the tasks he is responsible for. Another issue I asked him was the security and safety situation at the Central, because I recognized this is a place with much security personal. However, at the Central employs two security companies, the Railway protection force and the Tamil government police as well. They work 24 hours a day and their task is to make sure that everything is secure and safe. The security services are responsible for the station itself and in the trains as well. Furthermore, at the entry are magnet detectors for the purpose to control people, who coming in and going out. In order to enter the station one must have a valid ticket, the Manager told me. Therefore homeless people can’t enter and are forced to leave the Central (both inside and outside the area). Last but not least at the Central is a Camera-watching-system, which observes the entire station and claims security.

Security personal

Another day I was speaking with two security ladies and was asking them a few questions as well. According to them they are working in 24 hours shifts and their task is to prevent harm and provide security. In order to do this they have to solve many problems. Issues might be catching thieves, murder, kidnapper, rapist etc. Generally more problems turn up during the night and also the issues are worst. I asked them for their nicest and their worst experience as well. Worse experiences are catching kidnapper, murder, rapist, especially catching people who abuse children and to deal with other really bad issues. On the positive side they really like working there, because of the variety of people, for example the tourists there, coming in contact with different nationalities and hence, different languages, this all makes it really interesting, they pointed out.

Dead man – homeless people

Train stations have got a magnetic ability for crime and poor people. Probably all over the world homeless, drug addicted, criminal and poor people are attracted by stations. One of the reasons might be that they assume the possibility of making money or just feeling a bit more secure there. However, once as I left the Central I watched a situation which made me thinking about all this. I walked out of the Central, just on the way to an auto, as I saw a man lying on a stretcher, two policemen beside and another man, who tapped harsh on the breast of the lying one. I thought this is quite harsh, but then I recognized that all over his body were flies. Just as I finished this thought one laid a cloth above the face of the man, and hence, obviously the dead man. Apart from family members I haven’t seen any dead people before; therefore this was irritating to me. I was questioning and wondering why this man was there, was he poor? - I assumed yes, where is his family and so on.

Conclusion

Chennai Central – Just a Railway station? No, there are three way of understanding space, of understanding the Central, according to Lefebvre. The Central has got the practical dimension of space. It is a railway station and therefore, the Central connects people, transports people from one place to another. The Central also gives meaning; it is conceived in the sense, that people are giving meaning through their particular thoughts and feelings towards the Central. This is maybe the symbol or symbolic landmark of the city of Chennai. However, this ways of understanding the Central have a connection to each other and therefore creates the third dimension of space, which is the lived one. In sum, the Chennai Central is not just a railway station, it is much more, for some people a working place, for some the place, where they meet their loved once again, for some the place, which connects them with other parts of the county or even connects them with another countries and for some, it is the place where they die.

T Nagar and Ranganathan Street – Chennai’s Commercial and Shopping Hub

Introduction

As a goal and task of our supposed essay about a place in Chennai, we were asked not only to state facts, give quotes and re-call theory from the semester’s lectures, but to tell a narrative, something which might go beyond the information one can easily find on the internet or the course literature. Approaching this quite unusual task, I first asked myself what this means and could then be in my case. These thoughts, I felt, made it necessary for me to start with this prolog-like introduction about the way I interpret the given task and the outline of this essay.

The key word to the character of a narrative to me is “perspective” – on an individual level. As the way we look at things determines how we perceive and conceive and therefore how we generate knowledge about the world and our environment, the unique character of every narrative, and so of mine, lies in the perspective of the author, who wrote it.

Many factors influenced the outcome of my investigation consciously or unconsciously. I being a foreigner to India, Chennai and the place itself and my European and German background certainly affected my view on the things I experienced and how I interpreted them. Furthermore the questions I considered important to ask myself during the visits and on whose basis I conducted my analysis, mirror my very personal perspective, and thus set the frame and build the character of my narrative.

So by this, the following essay is both - complete and incomplete - at the same time. It is complete as it gives a coherent picture of Ranganathan Street (and T Nagar) from my view and of what I considered important and worth of being part of my narrative. It is incomplete, too, as the statement in the sentence before already implies, since its very subjective character constrains it and makes a claim for objective generalization impossible.

The essay’s structural logic then can be seen as following the steps of one of my visits to the site as it addresses the topics and questions very much in the order they arose to me - from getting there (infrastructure & location), over engaging in the historical context for a better understanding in general, to the economic character of the place, the people at Ranganathan Street while engaging in a more social analysis, and finally to the issue of criminality.

Getting There - The Importance of Infrastructure and Location

Attempting to go to T Nagar and Ranganathan Street, my core locality of interest, from the IIT main gate, one has different choices. You can take a taxi or auto rickshaw for around 100 to 150 Rupees (probably prices Indians laugh at, but that is what we white folks have to pay), the train or the bus as the cheapest option. I usually took the auto rickshaw as a matter of convenience and laziness, when going to my site during the semester, but also used the bus twice together with my friend Kanaan, who has been raised in Chennai, speaks Tamil and served me as a translator during some of my interviews in case English, good will and hand signs had failed as means of communication.

Though not yet in the area of investigation, the way and possibilities of getting there already reveal a lot about the reasons for success of this area, which is today at least one of the three and maybe the most important shopping and commercial district in Chennai. As Anita Berrizbeitia and Linda Pollak point out in their book “Inside Outside: Between Architecture and Landscape” about the importance of infrastructure:” Infrastructures acquire the spatial and functional characteristics of the places onto which they are grafted. They emerge as frame works for urban development.” Infrastructure therefore connects places and by this determines their importance in a city and the ways they can function. T Nagar and Ranganathan Street are located in Chennai’s Central South, only 10km away from Chennai Airport and 8km from the city’s center. They are well accessible by the above described means of public and private transportation as well as by car or motorbike. The close by bus terminal and Mambalam railway station, which borders Ranganathan Street to its one end, has made it a preferred shopping site, and like the whole of T Nagar made it attractive not only for people from Chennai, but all over Tamil Nadu, India and in most recent years even overseas from places like Singapore, Thailand or Malaysia as some of my interview partners alluded.

Due to discounts and special offers during the festival seasons the numbers of visitors easily reach the millions, but even during regular weekends hundreds of thousands visit the shopping district to buy everything needed. And though the quiet central location and excellent transport connection might seem to make T Nagar and Ranganathan Street a natural site for this kind of business, its history and original purpose has been quite different.

Engaging the Context - A brief History and an Example for Urban City Planning

“If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday” – Pearl Buck

To understand a place in its contemporary form, it is surly interesting to know its past and how it developed. T Nagar, or Theagaraya Nagar as its full name is, was named after Justice party leader Sir P. Theagaraya Chetty. The district was originally conceived as a residential area by urban and city planners and was constructed between 1923 and 1925 as a part of town planning activities initiated according to the Madras Town Planning Act of 1920. It developed very quickly and became popular even among famous Indians in the 1930s, while beside the living complexes and houses, parks and other sites of comfort were constructed to please the residents. As urban planning efforts aimed at supplying services and infrastructure to the area and by this accommodated growth, the framework was set that made T Nagar increasingly interesting for commercial and economic business. So partially following consequences of active urban city planning and partially an “organic internal logic”, the place developed to its contemporary form. Especially since the mid 1990s, as John, a 64 year old retail shop owner told me, the huge shopping complexes like Textile India, Saravana Stores or Jeyachandran Textiles emerged around Ranganathan Street shaping its today’s face.

This development appeared to me like a kind of contrary “broken window”-effect, to re-call a conceptual idea first introduced by William D. Eggers and John O'Leary in their article “Broken Window” from 1982. According to their theory, if one window in a neighborhood is left unrepaired, others will follow shortly. This means that the first obvious sign of decline will soon lead to a general apathy to take care and the whole vicinity will be caught in a downward spiral. For T Nagar and Ranganathan Street the opposite seems to account. The preferred location, good infrastructure and neighborhood attracted business and commerce, leading to economic accumulation in this area.

The Economic Character – Business and Bureaucracy

Latest since the 1990s, economic business has taken over as the prevailing force in shaping the character and face of T Nagar and Ranganathan Street. Before, as the earlier mentioned shop owner told me with a little anecdote out of his more than 40 years of lived experience at Ranganathan Street and T Nagar, there used to be cricket games as the major event on Sunday’s. After the turn of the tide the cricket fields slowly vanished and business took over as the prevailing activity, making the place a center of action every day of the week during the day and even most of the night.

Ranganathan Street is mostly constituted of retail stores and builds together with the enclosed fruits and vegetables market a unity within T Nagar. Other than for example Pondi Bazaar, which also accommodates more fancy and expensive shops for jewellery and silk, Ranganathan Street attracts with its low to medium prizes especially people from the lower-middle and middle strata. Complete sari dresses are already labeled for around 250 Rupees and other clothes for even less. Back packs start at 100 Rupees and some dishes can even be bought for less than 60 Rupees to give just some examples. Most prices are then even still open for bargaining. And ‘people bargaining with the shop owners’ is defiantly one of the most prevailing pictures. So it is of no surprise that when people comefrom far away to shop at Ranganathan and T Nagar they buy a lot since all they need from clothes to dishes, mobile phones, jewellery, toys, household articles, shoes and plenty more can be purchased.

All this reveals something interesting about the economic development around Ranganathan Street as some of my interview partners like the mobile shop owners Mohammed Riaz and Mohammed Iqbal pointed out. One the one side the business agglomeration increased the attraction of the site for buyers, thus increasing the business conducted. On the other side the explosion of shops – many of the same kind – has led to more competition and choice, leaving the buyers with more bargaining power. This to a certain extend might even lead to an overall increase in the sales volume from which the individual seller not necessarily profits. However all the shop owners I talked to stated that the overall and their personal business situation today is better than it used to be before the agglomeration. So apparently overall sales increases seem to overpower the negative consequences caused by it.

When it comes to the shops themselves, I basically recognized three different kinds – the big shopping complexes like Saravana Stores that dominate the street to its right and left, the small retail shops in the attached side streets and catacombs of the main buildings and the road-side shops in front of the facilities.

The shopping complexes sell either solely jewellery or household articles or pretty much everything on up to ten different stories. Their character as rather ‘conventional’ shopping opportunities made them actually of lesser interest to me.

More interesting have been the smaller retail and the road-side shops. The first ones were of importance to me, because the owners were mostly selling themselves and they served as main sources of information, giving me a better and deeper understanding of the spatial characteristics and social dynamics of the place. The second were interesting, because their existence and ‘status’ reveal a lot about the way things are handled bureaucratically and the spirit to do business. The existence of these road-side shops shows the will to do business and to use all available space for it. This might seem as a rather trivial statement in first place, but when I compare the situation to another country I stayed for a longer period – the Philippines – where a similar behavior is rare, I think, this reveals a lot about the economic forces working and the will to economic activity and maybe even progress and development. Space, originally conceived for a different purpose as a walkway for pedestrians, is re-produced and added to the economic space available. This is certainly a dynamic that follows an organic logic of development and is not a result of urban planning effort.

But developments of the kind seem at least not to be hindered from official side. Since most these road-side shops are illegal, they are still tolerated as long as they do not disturb anyone. This, as I was told, mainly means that they are getting removed, when political cadres are about to pass. Also beside that, the shop owners spoke much in favor of bureaucracy and official intervention, which they said was very little. Only the level of taxation would change every year, causing some inconvenience.

Furthermore both types of shops are interesting when it comes to a more social analysis of Ranganathan Street.

The Social Context – The People of Ranganathan and the Sense of Community

The most prevailing difference in the way the shop owners and I perceived the place, to borrow a term from Henri Lefebvre’s conceptual triad of space, got obvious when I asked them about their opinion on negative and positive developments in the last decades around Ranganathan Street and T Nagar. I posed the questions in a rather suggestive manner, assuming certain kinds of answers according to my own observations. While I expected them to name the economic progress as a positive aspect, I was convinced that they point out pollution, bad waste management or over-population as negative consequences as for me they were two sides of the same coin in an urban environment of a development country like India. In this I was surely being affected by my Western and academic background. But even on enquiry, none would recognize any negative appearances as worth mentioning, at least not in the interviews with me.

They solely spoke of the positive aspects as the place developed economically and so did their personal situation. In this context the notion of “habitus”, first introduced by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, came to my mind. The term describes how people in a certain place, especially in an urban environment, adjust their behavior and adapt to a specific attitude and way of thinking unique to this space. According to this idea, I felt that the overwhelming economic character of their inhabited space totally aligned and even narrowed their perspective to this one aspect. By this, the spatial meaning of the place enforced its influence on the people constantly working there and in reverse gets further approved and shaped by them.

But for me the most astonishing finding about the character of social relations at my site of investigation was only revealed to me by talking to the shop owners and salesperson inhabiting it. When I walked the place in the first couple of times only watching and observing, I had the feeling there were rather less strong bonds between the different working people, as many were sitting alone in their shops. The extent to which the different shop men know one another at least seemed not to go further than a couple of neighboring stores. According to Ferdinand Tönnies’ ideas in his work “From Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft”, I assumed that the pressure of the urban forces the people in a rather anonymous co-existence. Furthermore the prevailing economic character ought to impose a high degree of competition among the different stores, thus leading to a further alienation in social relations. But the conversations with the shop owners proofed me wrong, revealing a highly dynamic and comprehensive net of social relations among the sales people. They stated that at the respective site everyone would know everyone and newcomers would be widely introduced within less than six months. This establishes a sense of community, which opposes Tönnies’ idea of anonymity within an urban society and that even lead to a high degree of solidarity and reciprocal help. Instead of increased conflict caused by the increased competition, the local people managed to reconcile their needs and arising tensions by increased patterns of cooperation.

Criminality – A concluding punch line

At the end of my personal narrative around Ranganathan Street I want to share my findings on criminality around the site which, though serious in nature and consequence, are nonetheless quiet amusing. First I talked to a road-side shop owner about this topic with the help of my earlier mentioned friend, who needed to translate. In his “official” answers to me the shop owner solely mentioned the improvements achieved in recent years by the police. But what he only told my friend then in Tamil was that though the threat of street criminality may have declined the need to bribe the police forces to maintain one’s business has thus put an ever-increasing economic burden on the sales people of Ranganathan Street. Later I talked to some police women via my translator. They confirmed the successes in the fight against street criminality, which they said was mostly achieved by an increased police presence around the place at day and night times.

Hearing that, I couldn’t resist the thought that the decrease in street criminality and the economic benefits it bears, may well be eaten up by the need to bribe the increasing police force, which achieved this decline.

Conclusion

The study of Ranganathan Street has been an interesting endeavor for me, resulting in this very personal narrative about the place and the aspects I considered to be important. As some of my pre-investigative expectations were met, others were altered or proofed to be wrong. In any case I learned a lot about its historical context, economic character and social relations, which make it an interesting object of study as a dynamic example of urban development. It is also a very unique site as the special sense of community is surely not an ever integral part of an economic and commercial hub like this, which is ought to be characterized by high levels of competition and therefore conflict.

The only question that really interested me and which I could not answer to the end is how high the bribes actually are shop owners need to pay around Ranganathan and what determines their rate. When I told Kanaan to ask the police woman on how much bribery she actually takes during one shift, he surprisingly denied. I think for a short moment even his heart stopped beating!

Pondy Bazaar

Geohistory of Pondy Bazaar:

Chennai, the capital city of Tamil Nadu, a few centuries ago, was nothing more than a few fishing hamlets and villages with port facilities that existed from the time of the Pallava reign. Soon after the commencement of British trade in India, Madras, or Madrasapatnam as it was called, became important for trade with East and South East Asian countries like Indonesia and Malaysia primarily because of its location on the South-Eastern coast of India. Over the years, these small villages and temple localities were brought under the British rule as a town and later became a city. 

In the early 1920s, the boundary of Chennai which had till then included the localities of Mylapore, Triplicane, Washermanpet, Purasaivalkam, Egmore, Nungambakkam, Teynampet and Parry’s Corner expanded to include the villages of Mambalam, and Saidapet which till then were part of the Chinglepet District. This expansion to the west (for Chennai’s eastern boundary was fixed by the Bay of Bengal) while making the city larger also moved its centre to the west. The Long Tank that had till then formed the Western boundary of the city was drained during the expansion for the development of primarily residential localities of Thyagaraya Nagar, Mambalam and Saidapet.

A map of Chennai in 1922 prior to the inclusion of Mambalam, Saidapet and other neighbouring villages into the city. 

Pondy Bazaar, T. Nagar:

Much like the twelve roads that lead away from the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, half a dozen major roads branch from the Panagal Park, T. Nagar, in Chennai. This is not to say that T. Nagar is anything like the 8th Arrondissement in Paris. For one, it does not see as many tourists on a daily basis as the Arc de Triomphe nor does it symbolise the sacrifice made by the Unknown Soldier as is the case in Paris. However, just as the Champs Élysées branches out from the Arc de Triomphe so does the Thyagaraya Road, a stretch of which is popularly called Pondy Bazaar initially named Soundarapandian Bazaar after the Justice Party politician W. P. A. Soundarapandian Nadar, from the Panagal Park. 

Thyagaraya Nagar was named after the Justice party leader Sir P. Theagaraya Chetty  and a park developed which was named after the then Chief Minister, Raja of Panagal, as Panagal Park. However, the locality did not remain the quiet residential locality that had been envisaged by the planners. Commercial shops and outlets began to spring up in this area primarily along the Thyagaraya Road in the stretch that is now known as Pondy Bazaar.     

Well connected to the rest of the city by train, bus and other means of transport, this stretch – Pondy Bazaar – has been and continues to be a popular shopping destination for all of one’s needs and wants in Chennai. This highly commercialised area houses hundreds of shops of varying sizes, selling a wide-range goods – from the cheapest quality to the high-end brands – within a few metres of each other. One can find many shops dealing in the same line of merchandise and shops selling complementary products and services all located quite close to each other, thus, providing the customer with something close to a one stop shop. One such case would be with respect to clothing; there are shops selling saris or dress materials, some others dealing in others in related items such as blouse material or petticoats with tailoring facilities and others in accessories such as jewellery, footwear and bags. Thus, one’s clothing and complementary needs are taken care of. Pondy Bazaar is, in that sense, something like a megastore with everything under its roof.

In addition to the commercial outlets, there are also platform shops selling cheap jewellery, toys, bags, plastic ware, books, footwear and clothes. These platform shops can be found side by side the internationally and nationally branded outlets and local footwear and apparel shops selling cheaper versions of the branded products sold in these air-conditioned outlets. These platform shops are most famous among college students and young professionals looking for wide variety at minimum cost to them.

Moreover, the owners of these platform shops are all a part of the T. Nagar Traders’ Association and elect their office bearers. With hopes of educating their children and making them politically active citizens, all members of this Union send their children to schools and support them in their higher studies. One such platform owner said, “All Union members send their children to school and educate them. After all, we don’t want them to end up like ourselves...working on the streets. One of my nieces is now working in a software company, and my son is doing his Plus-2 (12^th Standard in school). He wants to do engineering at Anna University and is working hard towards getting a State rank.”

Pondy Bazaar, in the last decade, has seen tremendous growth in the number of commercial outlets and there has been a significant increase in the procurement of goods from other parts of India as well. This change has taken place in the post-liberalisation context of India with geographically distant regions getting increasingly integrated with not just other regions of the country but also with the rest of the world. 

However, while the platform shops in Pondy Bazaar deal in pretty much uniform goods, the character of the platform shops on either side of the road is different from the other. While the platform shops on the Southern side of the road tend to be more aggressive in marketing and selling their products, the ones on the opposite side are not that pro-active. That is not to say that they do not sell goods of the same quality as the ones on the side opposite to them. Consequently, one can see that even the platform on the Southern side is used more by the shoppers rather than the one on the Northern side. One reason for this could be that shops – most of them are small – are aplenty on the Southern side while the opposite end hosts bigger shops like Naidu Hall and Levi’s.

The flower sellers and garland makers on the one hand prefer to buy their flowers individually from the Koyambedu flower market in the morning before they set up shop at 6 a.m. While they purchase their flowers from the same place, their purchases are made separately at the rates fixed in the wholesale market and there is no opportunity to bargain for a discount. There is, thus, no occasion for the garland sellers to operate as a united group and exert their power to avail of agglomeration economies. Similarly with platform-shop owners dealing in cheap jewellery, the procurement is done from one shop within Chennai but each shop-keeper places a separate order for their shop. The method used by those who sell footwear on the platforms is quite different from the one just explained; these shop-owners who procure their goods from Bombay, come together as a group and make a single order comprising of all their orders, and on arrival of the goods, separate it on the basis of the quantity ordered. Thus, these shop-keepers are able to reduce the cost on transportation by ordering as a single group rather than individually.    

While some of these platform shop-keepers reside in central Chennai, many of them travel from as far as Tambaram and Gummidipoondi on a daily basis to open shop taking advantage of the lower rental rates there. They feel that travelling to and from the city every day for work is better than setting up shop in their area of residences for T. Nagar being a central locality is more accessible to customers. They can in and indirectly more revenue. Land prices have gone up in T. Nagar, especially near Pondy Bazaar, with the mushrooming of shops on an almost fortnightly, if not weekly, basis. There is perpetually at least one shop getting renovated or rebuilt at any point in time in Pondy Bazaar. Faced with intense competition, not only with each other, but also with hypermarkets such as Big Bazaar, these shopkeepers try to find innovative methods to face the competition. Discount sales have become a regular feature today not only during festive season but also in the name of clearance sales, annual sales, etc. This tactic is one used by most big shops to attract new customers and retain regulars. Pondy bazaar, in the last couple of decades, has seen an increase in the number of multi-storeyed stores which include Naidu Hall, Rathna Stores, Levi’s, Sri Krishna Stores, Wranglers, Instore, Diva and Nalli. 

While I have already described two types of shop-keepers – the platform shop-keepers and the flower-shop owners) in Pondy Bazaar, I shall describe two kinds of salesmen next. One can find a sizable number of salespersons, predominantly male, selling, primarily, musical instruments such as dholaks and, nowadays, toy guitars. These salespersons are largely North or North-Eastern Indians who have migrated to Chennai in the hopes of earning a livelihood to support their families back home. They sell these goods either on behalf of their employer or on their own. Selling their wares on the move is a more fruitful alternative to putting up a stall or shop on a platform waiting for consumers to come one’s way and buy it from oneself. Their major buyers are foreigners who come to India and, more specifically, to Pondy Bazaar, and Non-Resident Indians. 

Pondy Bazaar’s platforms have seen a cropping up of small eateries including those selling baked corn, sandwiches, chats, lime soda, chocolate covered foods (with the help of a small chocolate fountain)and soup in the last five years. These provide the shoppers with a wide variety of light snacks to eat while shopping (especially on the platform) and are easy on their wallets and purses. Ranging between 10 and 40 Rupees, these salesmen know how to make money out of the lack of street food in Chennai, especially in Pondy Bazaar. 

Stalls selling light snacks right on the platform have become quite common in Pondy Bazaar over the last few years. 

The narrow roads combined with street parking, often free, makes traffic jams a common feature of Pondy Bazaar.  

Roads are very congested in T. Nagar and Pondy Bazaar because of their being predominantly retail shopping areas and an increase in private vehicles plying on city roads which is a result of the boom in the economy post-liberalisation. There is no scope for the further widening of these roads. There is no organised parking system for vehicles which adds to the problem of road congestion and traffic jams. The emergence of hypermarkets with no parking facility attached has compounded the problem of congestion. This results in long traffic jams that are not resolved quickly. 

Application of Spatial Triad to Pondy Bazaar:

I believe I can apply Henri Lefebvre’s spatial triad to my chosen location, Pondy Bazaar. Pondy Bazaar is spatial practice: the activities that the traders and shoppers and residents engage in on a daily basis forms the first component of the spatial triad; these are influenced by the geohistorical context in which development has taken place in this locality and its location near the centre of the city. The Chennai Municipal Corporation has certain ideas and plans for the improvement of Pondy Bazaar and conversion of the Panagal Park into a parking lot which has been criticised and objected to by resident groups in Chennai; this is the representations of space by two different groups of people. The last component of the spatial triad: Pondy Bazaar is representational space for Pondy Bazaar symbolises and signifies something deeper than just a commercialised locality to each and every individual who is a part of it: to the traders, it is a source of income, to the shoppers, it is a source of their pleasure, to the residents, it is home and security. All these come together to form the spatial triad that is Pondy Bazaar. 

Conclusion:

There are several shopping localities characterised by shops selling local goods on the platform, coexisting with shops dealing with national and international branded goods, and Pondy Bazaar is one such area. Despite the congested roads, the poor parking facilities and the lack of walking space for pedestrians who try to weave their way around the vehicles on the road, the experience of shopping in Pondy Bazaar is only one of its kind for most shoppers. 

Ritchie Street

Introduction:

Ritchie Street, or Richie Street is located at the very center of Chennai- in fact, roughly opposite to the Central Secretariat building. It is located adjacent to Anna Salai, the arterial road of Chennai.

It is very easy to access, located about five hundred meters from the Chintadripet MRTS station, and about two kilometers from the Chennai Central railway station. A number of buses also go past the area, and there are three bus stops from which Ritchie street is less than a hundred meters away.

'Ritchie Street' is a flexibly used name, in fact used to connote four different streets, them being Narasingapuram Street, Wallers Road, Ritchie Street and Meeran Sahib street.

The area is home to almost a thousand stores specializing in electronics. The daily footfall in the area is estimated to be about thirty to fifty thousand- the area attracts this amount of attention due to the fact that the stores charge extremely competitive prices as compared to the rest of electronics stores in the city; additionally, it is due to reasons of convenience.

Firstly, it is in the center of the city, easing access.


Fig. 1 The central secretariat is visible at the end of the road

Secondly, a person wishing to buy, say, a computer and peripherals can be sure that he can get everything he needs in the same area- starting from the CPU to the additional graphics card, sound card, speakers, printers et al.

The nature of Ritchie Street shall be discussed further, following a short account of its history.

History:

The first electronics stores opened on Ritchie street in the year 1970; five shops, dealing in electronic components & spares. In the years following that 25 shops had opened up, and had become a very important market for electronic parts- people from all over Tamil Nadu used to use the market for their needs relating to electronics.

The area developed rapidly, but the sales tax structure hindered growth to a large degree for a few years.

A large number of un-billed sales resulted in a high quantum of losses to the government, so they enforced stricter regulations, conducted raids and increased the sales tax to 12%.

Despite this, the market progressed, and the sales tax ended up reducing drastically with changes in the political environment of the country. Between 1982 and 1990, 125 more shops had came up in the area, as sales tax continued to fall, eventually ending up at 1%- prompting many more people to set up shop in the area.

As mentioned earlier, the area is now home to over 900 shops.


Fig. 2

Demographics:

The owners of most of these shops hail from all over the country- a good number of them are from the North Indian Marwari community, while many also hail from Gujarat. The rest of the North Indians appear to be from the North East, but they seem to be occupying the secondary and tertiary posts in the shop, and are not too many in number.

North Indians in Ritchie Street are not a recent phenomenon- when they realized the economic opportunities in the area, they migrated south, some even over thirty years ago.

The area has Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and Jain proprietors- a large number of the Muslims are from Kerala. The Christians appear to be predominantly from Tamil Nadu, and the Hindus are from all over the country. Jains, of course, belong to the Gujarati community.

There are some proprietors who are fairly elderly, though most appear to be middle aged. Very few seem to be very young, and these younger people tend to own the shops that specialize in things such as the unlocking of iPhones, the sale of pirated games and so on.

The proprietors generally appear to be well off, judging by the amount of gold some of them wear, and their expensive watches.

Almost everyone working in these shops, that I observed, have fancy cellphones, but as a cellphone is a status symbol in our country, I hesitated to make generalizations about the economic status of all these people.

It must be noted that the older proprietors TEND TO have larger shops than the younger ones. The use of 'larger' is relative- these shops are all very small.


Fig 3. As illustrated by this building, space is utilized to the maximum for the setting up of businesses.

Nature of the goods sold:

Almost all the brands people aspire to own are available, with, for example, Apple products readily available, and there is also a plethora of cheap brands and fake products available.


Fig 4. an example of a product trying to cash in on the brand equity of a completely different product

It was interesting to note that shops on Wallers Road tended to sell mobile phones, and Narasingapuram street and Meeran Sahib street predominantly had shops engaging in the sale of computers and computer peripherals.

Ritchie street, on the other hand sold miscellaneous electronic equipment- largely public address systems and related audio equipment.

Ritchie Street in relation to Chennai:

Without doubt, the area is the center at which most electronics are sold, and the place which gets most customers for the same.

In the evenings the area is inundated with people, and it is advisable to be VERY careful with one's belongings at the time- this is largely the reason why my photos have been taken at a much safer hour, at around ten in the morning on a weekday. As one can see, it is still very crowded at this time, so one can be sure that the estimated average daily footfall of 30-50,000 by the Chennai Police is not too far off the mark.

As the information age progresses, areas like Ritchie Street end up benefiting a great deal. There are always new gadgets, on a somewhat painfully regular basis, and this is probably why they seem to have good business all the time.


Questions arising from the nature of Ritchie Street:

Firstly, one can ask why there are so many shops in the same area, dealing in the same sorts of goods. This appears to be the result of favourable conditions for the supply of these goods- as these goods all have to be supplied to one area in Chennai, the resultant transport costs are lower, hence enabling them to charge lower prices than dispersed stores.

Secondly, one can ask how all these shops seem to be sustaining themselves.

The force of synekism (as Soja defines it, the force of urban agglomeration leading to synergies resulting in positive outcomes for most part of the time)- appears to be active; the area has established itself as, apparently, the second largest hub for the sales of electronics in Asia. This is not only manifested in lower transport costs due to all the shops agglomerating in the same area, but through some more factors.

My answer for this is admittedly a little more vague, but it appears that they have a degree of social capital established, and they tend to cooperate in many ways.

If, for example, someone does not have a working credit card machine, or a certain type of printer, his neighbouring proprietor is always happy to lend a hand.

One other thing noted was that prices are roughly uniform through all the shops. So, by some form of implicit collusion and by not undercutting each other, nobody loses out.

One must of course be wary of the high-mark up- bargaining in this area is a necessity. A bulk of profits are probably made through selling products to the unwitting.

To conclude, it appears that a number of factors are operating in favour of these proprietors to continue their businesses- I asked a few whether they knew of any that had been closed down, and their standard answer was 'yes, two- three'. I take that as an indication that business model adopted has been largely successful.

Palavakkam: A Village No More

Palavakkam: An Introduction

Palavakkam, in real terms, is a suburb of Chennai, located past the locality of Thiruvanmiyur on the East Coast Road, around 6 kilometres from Adyar. However, in administrative terms, Palavakkam is a census town coming under the Kancheepuram district, Tamil Nadu. The 2001 census data pegs the population of Palavakkam at 14,369 but this data, ten years down the line seems redundant. Literacy rates are unsurprisingly healthy, and in terms of human development, its situation is fairly respectable.

History

Based on the information I gleaned by way of casual interviews, this place doesn’t have much of a history per se. This particular zone used to be, for all intents and purposes, a fishing village that came under the Palavakkam Panchayat (still does) and was composed of mostly poor to lower middle-class families belonging to the Dalit and Nayakkar communities.

Current Scenario


This is where things get as interesting as they can possibly get for an exercise of this nature. If one casts a glance at the way this area has developed over the past decade and a half, it will be difficult to believe that this used to be a fairly (economically) insignificant settlement consisting mostly of fishermen living in semi-permanent dwellings. This erstwhile village has, in a manner of speaking, become a satellite town. The observable changes are in terms of:

• Retail Stores and Showrooms

Branches of well-known retail chains are popping up along the Palavakkam stretch of the ECR – apparel brands like Puma and Reebok, departmental stores like the Aditya Birla Group’s More and Singapore Shoppe, Cell-phone retail chains like UniverCell as well as cellular service providers, automobile showroom franchisees like those of Bajaj Auto Limited and the Hyundai Motor Company, etc.

• Essential Amenities

Doctors’ clinics, dentists’ clinics, salons, medical stores, electrical stores, hardware stores, smaller grocery stores, three petrol bunks, automobile repair garages like that of Bosch, Ltd. which caters to owners of imported cars on request, numerous eating establishments like the noted Chinese restaurant The Cascade and KFC, among others.

• Connectivity to Chennai proper

The East Coast Road is like an artery that links Chennai proper to these parts, autorickshaws ply on these roads regularly, and buses link this zone to the Thiruvanmiyur bus depot, which in turn is connected to other important bus-stands across the city.

• Residential Areas

Palavakkam is home to several members of the staff of the University Of Madras, who live in a colony, and the huge stone arch at its gate is a major landmark – there are over 200 houses for these people. In addition, there is a lot of private property owned by the upwardly mobile who are not employed by the University of Madras. These are the ones who have plush and swanky, well-appointed (usually) two-storey houses and villas, mostly facing the beachfront or located thereabouts. Also, there exists a branch of Kaakkum Karangal, a home for the aged, the destitute and the orphaned.

Some of the houses close to the beach

• Places of Worship

There is a Ganesh temple close to the entrance to the University Colony. Palavakkam is home to the Seashore St. Anthony Shrine, Diocese of Chingleput – which is an imposing structure. There is another smaller church, the CSI Church of Jesus Christ on the main road, as there is a mosque around 500 metres from it.

CSI Church of Jesus Christ, Palavakkam

• Leisure

Palavakkam, of course, is next to a beach – early in the morning one can see middle-aged to elder people sweating it out jogging and exercising; wannabe cricketers invade the roads in the evenings; and in the weekend one can see hundreds of people thronging the beach and it has become quite the popular evening haunt. Also, there are a couple of private beach resorts – one among them being the Green Meadows Resort and a tennis academy in the area. Further down the road on the ECR, slightly beyond Palavakkam are the VGP Golden Beach, the Mayajaal Movie Theatre and MGM Dizzee World, an amusement park.

The Curious Case of Palavakkam’s Development

It is not very difficult to conjure up an image of the way things stand in this locality if one takes into account all the above factors. On the face of it, it would seem that explaining these developments is fairly straightforward – the city expanded, swallowed this village and consequently, these changes have been brought about.

However, a closer look reveals that that hasn’t been the case: this has not been the case of the city growing outwards and incorporating the settlement into itself, but this has been a scenario where a small, relatively low-income settlement has seen a burst of expansion, and has gradually integrated itself a part of the main city. Chennai has become quite a congested city over the past decade –even though it is still a long way behind Kolkata and Mumbai. My own explanation for these state of affairs is Palavakkam as well as more such coastal locales down the ECR (like Neelankarai and Injambakkam) are witnessing these kinds of expansions because of the fact that the financially well off are seeking to live in relatively pollution-free and pleasant environs, away from the bustle of the city: and these beach-facing localities are giving them the opportunity to do just that. The distance from the main parts of Chennai is not an issue anymore, because of the improved road network. Property prices were much lower back in the nineties, and those who bought plots of land or built houses in an area like Palavakkam have been laughing all the way to the bank – in one case, a 2-storey house in the VGP Layout, Palavakkam was built sometime in the early nineties, sold for around Rs. 35 Lakhs in 2002, and then resold recently for close to Rs. 2 Cr. Classified ads in newspapers will tell us that a plot of land measuring 2400 square feet is quoted at Rs. 1.5 Cr. Also, if we observe the land use patterns, we’ll see that some have opted to purchase plots of land and leave them unused – because there’s no foreseeable depreciation on the property.

So much for the way the rich are shaking things up – what about the fisherfolk who were after all, the original inhabitants of this area? Well, things may have marginally improved for them (better sanitation, steady water and electricity supply), but they have been completely marginalised in so many ways. These people have been pushed farther and farther away by the massive real-estate boom, living in small semi-pucca houses and in shanties – several of them have quit fishing and found other jobs within the city. Plus, the construction of these new houses has meant that there is a significant migrant population (primarily from Assam, Bihar and Orissa) that works here and has, to some degree, increased congestion in those low-income residential areas. In a way, this can be termed as gentrification, which refers to ‘the changes that result when wealthier people ("gentry") acquire or rent property in low income and working class communities’. Because of gentrification, the average income increases in the community, but the situation of the poorer initial residents of the area becomes worse – they are unable to pay rents and property taxes, and usually end up displaced. New businesses catering specifically to the needs of the affluent consumer base move in, further skewing the situation against the relatively poor. Ecologically, the overall general influx has meant that the erstwhile pristine beaches are being laid to waste – by garbage and sewage dumping (waste water from septic tanks is released onto the beach sands – this seems to be common elsewhere in Chennai, or for that matter, other coastal cities and towns in the country).

Voluntary beach cleaning effort undertaken by the residents of Palavakkam

If we look at Henri Lefebvre’s framework as explicated in ‘The Urban Revolution’, he talks of exchange and trade being the primary reasons for kickstarting the process of urbanisation: here, though, it seems to be a case of the affluent seeking out areas of relative peace and quiet in the periphery of an urban settlement., and in the process the area is gradually becoming they very kind of area they wanted to stay away from in the first place. But I guess the beachfront location ensures that the area remains in demand for a while.


PS: Due to the fading light by the time I got there this Saturday, there were not many decent photos I could click with the sub-par camera on the phone. I will upload better pictures on Friday.