Chennai: Not yet ready for Metro

Last week, my friend came to Chennai from Bangalore for official work.He is not a native of Bangalore( like the 60% people in Bangalore) but he got settled there from past three years. He stayed here for a week and on weekend,he was sharing his experiences in our city, i.e. Chennai . The first thing he told me that Chennai is not yet ready for the metro revolution as well as globalisation. As it is perceived by the outsiders Chennai is still conservative city. Although Chennai is a Metrocity, and there are all the big corporate offices here, still it doesn’t appear like a Metro, as my friend was telling. People over here are very traditional, but they seem to be overpossesive about their culture, so much that they are averse to the changes that globalization is offering. Language is just one of the factor. Otherwise it’s a sheer surprise that even the autowallahs in Chennai don’t understand any other language than tamil, however the reality is that most of their customers are outsiders. But the autowallahs will take advantage of this situation by charging you more than any that from any local person as there is no meter system in Chennai unlike all the other major cities.But the autowallahs not going by meter is the fault from TN govt. side, they have not increased the auto meter fare time to time,that is why autowallahs are doing anarchy. Anyway its waste to expect from govt. as they r busy in doing very very important things like distributing TVs(so that more n more people can watch their SUN Network) and changing the language of proceedings in Courts to Tamil(Of course to get votes).
And as one of my friend told @ taking bus,then sorry its for local people who can vote. So Cheap(in price n service too) n that is why so crowded that we cant even breathe inside. In all the buses be it an LSS, or an Express or an ordinary one, the Gangway is so broad that double the sitting passengers can stand in the bus. So even if you take an express you can’t be sure of a comfort travel. And there is the same common bus for everybody, so u can find all the drunkards n ragpickers traveling there along with you. Also you won’t find a METRO bus facility in this METRO CITY Called Chennai. So traveling in Chennai for an outsider like my friend was even worse than in the local trains in Mumbai.So my friend who went back to Bangalore a couple of days back wrote me that Tamilnadu is not only the most conservative but also the poorest state in INDIA. And Chennai is the most conservative and Poorest Metro(though it's not a fact).

By Atul R. Thakare, Chennai
atulrt@gmail.com