Pollution is not just a set of statistics. It is the daily struggle of not having clean air to breathe, or losing a livelihood because the lake where prawns were once caught is now being filled to make way for factories. It is the anger and exhaustion of families who have been resisting this version of development for years, where jobs are promised but no real support ever follows. In places like Ennore and Manali, this is not an abstract crisis discussed in meetings and reports. It is part of everyday life.
It is this reality that Vettiver Collective, a voluntary space in Chennai wants to highlight through their Toxic Tour. Social activist Nityanand Jayaraman has been conducting toxic tours since 2009. “But more seriously from 2013,” he says. The tours begin early, before the city wakes, and thread their way from Besant Nagar up through the factory lines and ash dykes around Ennore and Manali.
For Nityanand, who has written and reported on environmental injustice in Tamil Nadu for years and works with Vettiver Collective, the inequality of the city is visible in its air and soil. “The environment in the city is highly uneven, and that unevenness is mediated by the caste and class of communities that inhabit different parts of the city,” he says. He describes how in areas where residents are relatively privileged, “the garbage infrastructure is better, the roads are better, the air quality is better.” And then there are places where heavy industry nests close to homes and schools, where children cough and nebulizers sit on bedside tables.
In the past, many people in southern parts of Chennai did not grasp what life looked like near chimneys and coke ovens just a few kilometres away. “When you read newspaper, you can see that Ennore has been a hub of industrial development,” says Dhaarani, a member of Vettiver Collective. But that read-about becomes something else in the flesh. “We are taking people from south Chennai to experience what people from the other part of the city are facing,” she says.
For years, this exposure work has been about perception. Nityanand says the tours cut against the idea that development is an even process. “This toxic tour is to help people understand the impacts of industrialisation,” he says. The word industrialisation, in that context, is also a shorthand for who pays its costs and who is asked to absorb them. The tours are an invitation to step into an environment most of Chennai never sees.
This year, the tour also carries another layer. In early February, Vettiver Collective will host a series of days focused on art and air. “There is way too much data, way too much science, way too many experts talking about air pollution, and very little room for ordinary people and their experiences of pollution to be able to affect us and inform policy,” Nityanand says. Ahead of that, poets are being invited to join the Toxic Tour route and write what they witness, or feel, or remember. It is a small experiment in expression and connection, a belief that verse can travel where numbers cannot.
When asked what Vettiver Collective hopes people take from these journeys, Dhaarani says, “We want the government to take proper measures…to stick on to the emission norms,” she says. It is a practical plea and also an echo of the unease felt on the streets of North Chennai.
Vettiver Collective’s Ennore Toxic Tour
Call for poets to join
When: January 11, 6.30 am
Pick up location: Thalapakatti, Besant Nagar
Registration link in bio: https://forms.gle/bGtkKEZjranniJxe7
For details: DM on Instagram @vettiver.collective