Yesterday I participated in one of the TNUHDB audits that Arappor Iyakkam does periodically. This was at K. P. Park on De Mellows Road in Pulianthope that is also famous for the abysmal plastering and finishing work for which Arappor Iyakkam had previously raised a complaint with DVAC.

As the other volunteers gathered at the meeting point, we could see the towering buildings painted in bright inviting colors, looking better than I had imagined. We entered the site and went into nearest block. The more experienced volunteers immediately chose to survey the lifts, since it had become a concern after a person lost his life inside it due to an accident around a year back.

We approached the lift operator who was quite friendly and he told that only one of the lifts was working. The other one had not been funcitoning for the past 3 months. A quick enquiry with other residents waiting for the lift and we got numbers like 1.5 years. The lifts in the next block we visited was in a worse situation. The operator said only one of the two lifts functioned. But when we tried to press the button to summon the lift, he said, "Sir, wait, I will go to the second floor and bring it down. The button doesn't work". He was telling the truth. The lift works. Only the button doesn't work.

These towers had something like 10 to 12 floors and lifts were absolutely essential. Only one of the towers we visited had a working generator backup. The other one was supposedly under repair after rats chewed away the wires. This was on a Sunday evening and I can only imagine the chaos on during rush hours on a working day.

As we came down the stairs from the 10th floor, we saw the other stark problem of K. P. Park. Garbage was strewn all over the stair case. We continued descending, placing each step with caution. Suddenly we stepped on a landing that was unusually clean. Someone wise, had pasted a wall paper with Mother Mary holding Baby Jesus in her hands. A makeshift shrine on the vertical roadways of K. P. Park.

Coming down we couldn't stop noticing garbage that followed us everywhere we looked. The OTS areas were the most affected with more than a dozen roats making a happy meal out of it. Talking to the residents, we came to know that the conservancy workers clean it every day, but it gets filled very soon by residents in the top floors dropping their daily waste directly out of their windows. There have also been accidents where someone had inadvertently steped under such a falling bag. The conservancy workers have all been given helmets to safe guard their heads as they go about cleaning the area.

We had learnt in the audit pre-brief that many of the TNUHDB tenements had Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) that ran the maintenance and were also responsible for spending the fund allocated. At K. P. Park, none of the blocks had one.

There also seemed to be vertical segregation happening with the less previlieged people relocated recently from nearby areas like Egmore put up in the top floors. While the people who had been living in the previous settlement that had been demolished to build this highrise, put up in the lower floors. One of the residents put the blame for the garbage squarely on "...those uncivilized people living on the top floors. What can the government do?".

I wondered if mixing the less previliged people across all the floors would help the situation. But the same forces that end up pushing people dispersed throughout the city into this single town within a city, are also likely operating within this town.

More than anti-corruption activists, what this settlement needs are community organizers. Will we be able to fill these shoes?