Now that Parandur, which literally means ‘the town that flies’, has been officially grounded, it is worth parsing the only thing that Chennai’s greenfield airport project successfully launched: controversy.
The censorious mudslinging e-controversy on social media over the recent scrapping of the project, cleared in 2022 under the DMK government, deserves to be ignored. But ironically, what shook out offline—in the Tamil Nadu Assembly, newspaper columns, and coffee-house contestations—revolved around its own Es. The ethical, the environmental, and the economic.
The last two issues have received much play. For instance, the environmental wisdom of identifying some 5,800 acres for acquisition in an area that is made up of a mix of fertile multi-crop agricultural lands and waterbodies is an issue that has been eagerly revisited. The argument that it is impossible to identify an alternative site near Chennai that is free of wetlands has been levelled as a counter.
The impact of the TVK government’s cancellation of the Rs 27,400 crore undertaking on Tamil Nadu’s long-term industrial growth, on its competitive standing with neighbouring states, and on general investor confidence has been trashed out. And the delay in going back to the drawing board to identify another site and restart the acquisition process, which was well underway at Parandur, has been highlighted.
The missing E: Why Vijay’s Parandur pledge matters
The material importance of these and related issues cannot be discounted. But the focus on these has pushed the issue of democratic accountability to the margins. Chief Minister Vijay has been flatly opposed to the Parandur project since January 2025 and cancelling it was one of the TVK’s signature election promises.
Apart from the issue of displacing protesting villagers and the wetlands, he could have been influenced by the barely kept secret that a clutch of vested interests, with direct links to the former DMK government, had secured parcels of land in the area before and around the time the Parandur site was selected. At least part of the chorus of opposition to the cancellation has been orchestrated by this insider trading lobby.
Given all of this, wasn’t Vijay merely doing the proper thing by fulfilling a campaign pledge? Ethical questions such as this may seem out of place in a world governed by outcomes and efficiencies, or the cold calculus of pragmatism. While asking what is right as opposed to what works optimally may have a terribly old-fashioned ring, it is instructive to examine how this unfolded in the raging debate, which continues to play out.
Critics of the cancellation have generally reacted to the TVK’s election promise by either ignoring it or minimising its importance. The latter argue, or at the very least imply, that vote-seeking promises cannot always dictate public policy. That it is very natural for politicians in our overheated elections to make overcooked promises. To expect all pledges to be honoured in this day and age is to be hopelessly quixotic or blindly utopian. Additionally, why even bother with a regressive campaign pledge that inevitably sets Tamil Nadu’s capital city and the state’s economy back?
There is a pragmatic ring to this, but it risks obscuring a fundamental distinction between a promise to do and a pledge to cancel. The former is a positive act, one of creation if you like, that opens a window for excuses. One may point to unforeseen economic circumstances, the lack of resources, or merely claim that the assurance, even if it was never meant to be fulfilled, is a work in progress.
The act of revocation is negative, one that does not generally allow for the same excuses. There is a finality to this kind of pledge, which precludes explanations that things are ongoing, underway or in the pipeline. This is probably why negative promises are kept more often. Former UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer kept the Labour Party’s pledge to scrap the Conservative government’s Rwanda migration deal, but its lofty assurance of not raising income taxes was broken in spirit if not in strict letter.
As in Parandur, Vijay’s choice was stark – either do or don’t. He chose the former, but this still leaves a question open. If he wanted to honour a campaign pledge, why didn’t he announce it right away rather than wait for more than three months after being sworn in? We will probably never really know, but government insiders swear that he never wavered on revocation, pointing to the fact that land acquisition was never resumed under his government.
The delay could have partly owed to the considerable pressure from well-meaning bureaucrats and sections of industry to keep the Parandur plan afloat. But if he did keep people guessing, it was largely because he wanted to demonstrate his friendliness to investors before he pulled the Parandur plug. It is probably no accident that the cancellation came on the heels of the much-publicised investment conclave, where 97 MoUs worth over Rs. 67,000 crore were signed.
What this revocation does is oblige the government to ensure that the already acquired land is preserved in its pristine state. The suggestion that it may be converted into an industrial estate runs foul of the TVK’s claim that Parandur was ecologically unsustainable.
Judging the Parandur cancellation would depend on which lens, or which ‘E’, you hold up to it. Economically, there is no doubt that it is a terrible decision. The jury is out on the environmental front; on the one hand, it would be impossible to find an equivalent piece of land near Chennai without agriculture or water bodies; on the other, it is possible to identify a site that would require less human displacement.
As for overlooking the campaign pledge or the ethics of this erasure, this is probably just in keeping with the times.
Mukund Padmanabhan is a Professor of Philosophy at Krea University and the former Editor of The Hindu. He is the author of The Great Flap of 1942, a narrative history of India and World War II. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)