On October 18, 2021, residents of Chittur-Thathamangalam, a small town in Kerala’s Palakkad district, received something the town had never had before in its 125-year history: a Master Plan.
The Draft Master Plan 2031, prepared by the state’s town planning department, outlined an ambitious vision for the town’s future. It proposed a wide range of infrastructure projects, including extensive road widening, four bypasses and ring roads, two lorry terminals, a new bus stand, and a terminal market, among 85 development initiatives intended to spur economic growth.
But when the town’s newly elected Left Democratic Front (LDF) municipal council and its roughly 32,000 residents examined the proposals closely, many were alarmed.
They concluded that, if actualised, the infrastructure projects proposed under the Draft Master Plan’s “pro-growth” paradigm could fundamentally reshape the character of their town. Local representatives argued that these proposals would wipe out nearly 80 per cent of the town’s retail economy, while also requiring the demolition of hundreds of homes, community buildings and acres of agricultural fields.
Residents warned that such development would inevitably lead to flooding, drought, unemployment, and displacement. They feared that any intervention altering their existing landscape—nearly half of which is under agriculture, mainly paddy, banana, and coconut cultivation, along with locally managed irrigation systems that shape water flows, ecology, and the commons—would jeopardise their future.
So instead of accepting the state’s blueprint, the town decided to challenge it.