CM Vijay’s Parandur decision | India’s new anti-reservation drama | South Central 90

South Central explores the withdrawal of the Parandur Airport project, as well as the recent anti-reservation movement.

Published on:

28 Aug 2026, 12:28 pm

Was scrapping the Parandur airport project the right call for Chennai, or could the Vijay government’s decision hurt Tamil Nadu’s industrial ambitions?

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In this week's South Central, hosts Dhanya Rajendran and Pooja Prasanna discuss the Tamil Nadu government’s decision to scrap the Parandur airport project and the growing debate over India’s new anti-reservation movement.

They are joined by aviation safety consultant Captain Mohan Ranganathan and K E Raghunathan, national chairman of the Association of Indian Entrepreneurs, to discuss Chennai’s airport plans and what the cancellation could mean for the city’s environment, connectivity and industrial growth.

Captain Mohan Ranganathan says that the Parandur site posed serious flood and aviation safety concerns. He says filling around 4,000 acres with concrete could leave floodwaters with nowhere to drain.

He recalls writing in 2008, when discussions first began, that "if any obstacle or obstruction is put across the river, any flooding will affect areas south, southeast and west of that”.

He says that the 2015 flood was a result of this.

He also flags that the soil isn't suited for a runway, and that concretising 4,000 acres would leave floodwaters nowhere to go, warning that building the airport could mean "you can forget about Chennai existing, it is going to be completely wiped out."

He argues that Chennai’s existing airport could instead be made more efficient through better planning, redesign and coordination.

Raghunathan counters that Chennai has needed an additional airport for 16 years, for industrial cargo and passenger traffic, noting the current airport's limited international options and slow taxi exit times. He adds that acquiring land elsewhere would be costly and time-consuming, and would result in a lot of lost industrial revenue.

The discussion also examines the concerns of farmers and residents who could be displaced by large infrastructure projects, with the panel debating whether governments are adequately consulting all stakeholders before taking major decisions.

In the second part of the episode, the hosts discuss the recent anti-reservation movement and what it reveals about caste, merit, social media and contemporary right-wing politics.

They are joined by Professor Ravikant Kisana, who examines how the movement has evolved from an anti-reservation campaign into a broader “quota reforms” platform.

Ravikant argues the protests resemble "a fan meet" more than genuine activism, closer to Comic-Con, driven by opportunistic right-wing figures chasing social media clout amid enduring "savarna anxiety" over reservation.

“I don't think of it as a protest. Very honestly, this is not a protest. It's more like a fan meet and a political cosplay,” he says.

He says these online networks have been building an audience around anti-reservation arguments for years, and that the current movement has brought many of them together.

The discussion also looks at the hostility directed towards Dalits and other marginalised communities during the movement, and whether dismissing these voices as fringe online influencers risks overlooking a potentially larger political trend.

Tune in to the full episode here.

Audio timecodes:

00:00:00 - Introduction

00:02:27 - Headlines

00:09:12 - Scrapping of Parandur Airport project

00:45:09 - Anti-reservation movement

01:19:53 - Recommendations

References

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