Ghost Villages Turn Into Industrial Hotbeds

Tamil Nadu is nudging investors to think beyond Chennai. It is working for now

- N. Madhavan

Chittar Chatiram, a quaint village comprising a few hamlets, on the banks of the Chittar river, in southern Tamil Nadu's Tirunelveli district, hides a dark history. In the 1990s, it was a hotbed for communal riots. Such was the frequency and ferocity of these clashes that residents of one of the hamlets, Karisal Kulam, chose to give up all their belongings and vacate the neighborhood en masse in search of peace.

For more than two decades, Karisal Kulam remained a ghost hamlet. Not any longer. Villagers have slowly begun to return over the last two years.

The reason: an industrial park. It has sprung up at Gangaikondan, a town just across the river.

Companies like Tata Solar, Yokohama Tyres, Britannia Industries, Bosch and First Solar have set up their units in the park. People around its villages have been offered jobs. Communal tensions have subsequently eased.

"Better law and order situation plus job opportunities are bringing back the residents of Karisal Kulam," K. P. Karthikeyan, the managing director of Elcot, Tamil Nadu's nodal agency for promoting, developing and implementing IT and e-governance initiatives, said. He was, till recently, the collector of Tirunelveli district.

At the other end of the state, in Krishnagiri district of northern Tamil Nadu, women were, till recently, seen as a liability. The district's sex ratio, at 963 women to 1,000 men, is lower than the state average of 996, the 2011 Census of India shows. Sex determination and abortion were rampant. Female literacy was a low 57% and girls were rarely educated beyond the 10th standard. Child marriage was common and so were teenage pregnancies. But a lot changed in the last few years.