‘Systems set up at OMR in 2025 go into 2026 and beyond’

OLD MAHABALIPURAM ROAD, CHENNAI-CHENGALPATTU: If you live along OMR, you might see 2025 as the year residents quietly set up the systems that are going to make 2026 and beyond very different on this side of the city.

To get inked

Voter IDs first. FOMRRA and Karmayogam Trust spent the year untangling the great SIR mess so thousands of voters did not vanish from the rolls just because somebody mangled an address field. That RWA-by-RWA clean-up now becomes our standing playbook before every election, just in time for the OMR Citizens’ Mandate we are taking to political parties in early 2026.

Everyday hacks

A bus at OMR.
| Photo Credit:
KARUNAKARAN M

Our bus audit was classic OMR: sweaty residents, dusty bus stops, serious data. When we realised only a tiny slice of MTC routes touched OMR and workers were bleeding money on share autos, we did not send a rant; we sent a route map, and that is what helped bring in mini-buses and the airport-Siruseri service. The mid-year tanker crisis was another “fix the code ourselves” moment, where RWAs helped police, Metrowater and private tankers agree on delivery windows that can now be reused in every future water scare.

Lake watch

Eco-Watch turned residents into lake-side QA engineers, catching embankments that actually blocked water instead of saving it and pushing local civic bodies to move “on paper” restoration into real work, with more audits and reports queued up for 2026. On the roads, the same stubborn follow-up that got high-intensity LEDs on completed stretches is now being aimed at clearing debris and making sure service lanes are something you can walk on without risking your life.

Books and business

Not everything was complaints and committees. Bookworms kept thousands of books moving through swaps and meet-ups, while Music & Lyrics and “Radio OMR” made sure the corridor still had a soundtrack, not just honking and drilling. Behind the scenes, the FMS Vendor Survey and LEAP network started pooling RWA wisdom and local business energy so that 2026 committees are negotiating from data, not from guesswork.

(Harsha Koda who wrote this article for the IT Corridor edition of The Hindu Downtown is the co-founder of Federation of OMR Residents Association Residents Association that represents residents’ aspirations along Chennai’s IT Corrdior)