Illegal shops mushroom, turn Elliot’s Beach into Marina

CHENNAI: Feel like kicking back on the beach? Well, if it’s Elliot’s Beach on the weekend, you’d better make a break for it or the hawkers will.
With vendors taking over the beach in Besant Nagar on Saturday and Sunday, people have been arriving at least half an hour earlier than usual. People say they rather brave the sun’s harsh rays for a some time than be left with no space to sit.
They can hardly be blamed. The number of hawkers and stalls on the beach increased from 175 in 2012 to 250 this June. It has now crossed 300. This excludes the many ice cream, juices, mangoes and corn carts and vendors on the promenade.
“We used to come to the beach at 5pm on Sundays. We now arrive between 4.15pm and 4.30pm to ensure that we find some comfortable space from where we can get a glimpse of the water,” says Sarayu Sathish, a resident of Kodambakkam.
“We started coming here because Marina Beach has become so crowded,” she says. “But there are so many stalls now that they block our view of the sea. It’s getting as crowded as Marina.”
Corporation of Chennai has not enumerated the shops on Elliot’s Beach, so there is no list of registered shops or fixed number of hawkers. “The coastline does not grow, so the corporation should do something to regulate beach vendors,” says marine biologist T D Babu. “They’re turning a gift of nature into a food court.”
The 250 shops on the beach were earlier divided into two groups. The 70 shops to the left of Schmidt Memorial are run by women of Urur Olcott Kuppam and 180 shops on other side by fishermen’s families from Odai Kuppam and residents of settlements near Besant Nagar.
Now a new line of stalls has come up barely 10 feet from the waterline, connecting the two earlier lines of shops and almost forming a commercial square. “There are at least 50 shops along that line, some of them set up by people living as far away as Thiruvanmiyur,” says Devi Amma, who has been selling corn on the cob on the beach for the past 20 years.
Biologists say the new shops near the water pose the biggest danger to the environment. “They switch on bright lamps and tube lights that disorient turtles, dump garbage that attracts dogs and rodents. The dogs and rats kill crustaceans like crabs and molluscs,” Babu says. “The corporation should move all stalls to the promenade.”
Beach lovers agree. “We often find ourselves stepping on rajma or rotting food when we walk barefoot on the beach,” says Divya A, a young professional who lives in Adyar. “We don’t mind walking to the promenade to grab a snack before relaxing on the sand.”
The corporation, for which Marina Beach is hands off till further orders from the Madras high court, appears to have forgotten about Elliot’s Beach entirely. “Since Marina Beach is full of tourists, this is the only stretch of shoreline in the city where we can relax. I hope the corporation realises its importance,” says Shastri Shivraj, a resident of Besant Nagar.
Mayor Saidai Duraisamy says he understands the problem. “I will ask officers in the zone to check the number of shops and take immediate action if there are too many,” he says.