In 1985, in an attempt to beautify Marina Beach, the government forcibly removed fishermen’s kattumarams (catamarans), other boats and gear. Fishermen use the beaches not only for the boats but to dry and store their large nets. The agitation lasted a month. At least five lives were lost and several people were injured in police violence before the boats were returned after a Supreme Court order. The Supreme Court has acted similarly in other cases, using the legal provisions of the CRZ (coastal regulation zone).

As Nityanand Jayaraman writes, every decade thereafter has been marked by at least two failed attempts to free up and “beautify” Chennai’s beaches by "reorganizing" fisherfolk’s livelihoods and living spaces. Thus in 2008, central and state government authorities proposed building a maze of elevated expressways over the coastal city’s beaches and riverbanks as a solution to the problem of congestion in the city during peak traffic hours. A proposed 7.5-km Elevated Beach Expressway, which would have run from Marina Beach to East Coast Road (ECR) in Kottivakkam, was the most controversial. The expressway passed through ecologically sensitive areas such as the Adyar estuary and beaches used as nesting sites by endangered Olive Ridley turtles.

As reported in The Hindu on 4th August 2010, "in the recent history of Chennai, no development project has drawn so much public concern and protest as the elevated road proposed between Light House on the Marina beach and Kottivakam on the East Coast Road (ECR). Ever since this road alignment was finalised in 2008, a spate of protests has been organised against it. At the centre of the debate is the question of whether the huge investment on infrastructure to facilitate automobile movement is justified at the cost of displacing fishermen, affecting sensitive ecosystems and marring the beauty of the beach.”

The four-lane elevated expressway at a height of six metres, was to be built in two phases. The first phase (4.7-km) would link Light House and Besant Nagar at a cost Rs.430 crores. This, as the feasibility report states, would affect 529 houses, 14 commercial buildings and three religious buildings. It would impact the fragile Adyar estuary, demarcated as a bird sanctuary by the State Forest Department, and the Olive Ridley breeding grounds. The remaining five km of the stretch would be built in the second phase along the coast line connecting Besant Nagar and Kottivakam.

There was much opposition. For instance, in Febr. 2011, organised by the Save Chennai Beaches Campaign and Reclaim Our Beaches (ROB), a youth-run collective, a day-long fast involved the participation of nearly 200 people. In 2010, hundreds of men and women belonging to 14 fishing hamlets from Light House to Kottivakkam in the city formed a human chain demanding that the State government drop its proposal to construct an elevated expressway along the Chennai coast.

The sandy beaches and estuary are of ecological buffers that provide coastal areas with protection from erosion, floods, storm surges, salt-water intrusion, and sea level rise. The Elevated Beach Expressway would run through fishing villages on Chennai’s coast, and displace thousands of working-class families. In Chennai, as in many parts of Tamil Nadu, coastal commons are classified as poramboke (government land) by the revenue department. In colloquial Tamil, the word is used to refer to people considered to be worthless and useless.

By constructing the expressway over these commons, the government would be mobilising “valueless” lands to create “value”, while relieving urban congestion in the metropolitan area by transferring it to the coast. The worth of the lands to the fisherfolk, and their customary and traditional rights were not just hidden, but would be obliterated. This Elevated Beach Expressway project was defeated by fisherfolk using information obtained through the Right to Information Act, mapping their common lands, and building alliances with middle-class beach users, in addition to the threat of street protests. Campaigns such as Transparent Chennai and Save Chennai Beaches have helped in other confrontations such as that taking place when the Corporation of Chennai announced a Rs 55 crore beautification project for the beaches of Neelangarai, Palavakkam, and Kottivakkam. The project encountered opposition from fisherfolk from Palavakkam and Kottivakkam who prepared livelihood use maps for their villages. By superimposing the project map on their livelihood use map, they demonstrated that the beautification would come at the cost of their living spaces and livelihoods.

To conclude, Chennai’s fisherfolk have been successful in thwarting some government designs on their livelihood commons. However, they are rather silent spectators while private parties grab large chunks of coastal poramboke lands for urban developments for the rich. Seaside land prices fell immediately after the tsunami of 2004 that damaged some fishermen villages in Chennai. And this is exactly when many get-rich-quick speculators moved in. As a result, the last decade has seen even more construction closer to the sea than before the tsunami. All critical infrastructure – power plants in Ennore, desalination plants and oil refinery – is built close to the coast, not to mention the private buildings. The agencies responsible for the CRZ and for making Chennai more resilient to tsunamis or climate change are actively colluding with violators to make it more vulnerable, not less.