CHENNAI: After Chief Minister MK Stalin made a socially significant announcement in April in the Assembly to remove the term ‘colony’ from the names of habitations of SC people in official records and public usage, the government machinery is now preparing for its implementation. The humongous exercise not only involves renaming lakhs of streets across TN, but also making changes in government records of individuals to capture those alterations.
Sources said discussions are under way at the level of senior officials in formulating a plan and guidelines. The government is inclining towards constituting a committee, which will include the ministers for municipal administration and rural development and senior officials from the departments concerned, to implement the work.
Deliberations are under way on whether to seek suggestions of names from people living in the respective localities through the staff at village panchayat, the block development officers and other revenue officials, who could then shortlist or choose one in accordance with guidelines to be suggested by the government.
“To guide this process, officials may provide a framework outlining certain conditions for suggestion of names. One such condition could be that the new name should be neutral and non-identifiable in terms of the residents’ social background,” a person involved in the discussions shared.
In addition to this, villages with names containing an explicit identifier of any of the SCs, especially in an undignified manner, are also expected to be renamed.
An alternative idea being floated is for officials to suggest a broad list of names, from which the residents can choose one for their street or locality.
The removal of the term ‘colony’ also involves the extensive process of updating addresses in all official documents of residents, including ration cards, Aadhaar cards, voter IDs, bank passbooks, etc. When contacted by TNIE, writer Imaiyam, vice-chairperson of Tamil Nadu State Commission for SC and ST, said, “The new names could be inspired by flowers, ancient Tamil poets or even renowned scientists like Newton and Edison, and philosophers such as Socrates and Plato.”
VCK MLA Sinthanai Selvan said, “In no way can the term ‘colony’ be justified. But the new names should not be common across the state. They should vary from village to village. Perhaps we can simply name the streets using their directions, under the name of the specific village unit.”