Social activist Medha Patkar joins protest against new airport for Chennai

Alongside Patkar, other activists such as Geetha Ramakrishnan and S P Udhayakumar participated in the protest. Addressing reporters, Patkar asked how people who depend on agriculture for their livelihood could survive if it was destroyed in the name of development.

“The people cannot be a victim of imposed development. They do not require an international airport for livelihood,” she said, adding that provisions under Article 243 of the Constitution clearly gave the right to gram sabha to plan its own development. “However, in an undemocratic manner, the airport project is implemented forcefully to destroy this region of Kancheepuram district,” he said.

Patkar said that agricultural land could not be the first preference but only the last alternative. She said the collector and the government administration had a duty to search for barren land for non-agricultural purposes like industrial estates and airports.

“We don’t know why the Stalin government is keen on having this area for the airport. Thirteen villages are going to be affected. It is clear that the impact is not assessed. The social and environmental impact is a must. The role and rights of the grama sabha is important and needs to be respected, which has not happened here. People were not informed here. How can they not feel threatened? They (government) invite tenders but have not told the people here anything and that is why the struggle has been there for the last 219 days,” she said.

Patkar said Chief Minister Stalin should urgently change the site of the airport and quoted from an open letter written by residents of areas near the Adyar basin as well as social activists to the Tamil Nadu Disaster Management Authority last December. It stated how an airport in Parandur would adversely affect the region and detailed the risk it posed to areas downstream of the Adyar river, particularly the floodplains and low-lying regions.

The proposed greenfield airport is aimed to be set up at an estimated cost of Rs 20,000 crore by the state government.