(A resettlement scheme for
tribals in Kerala goes really wrong, pitting humans and elephants in a conflict
that hurts everyone.)
301 colony, located on the banks of the
Anayirangal dam reservoir in Idukki, Kerala, derives its name from the design
of the government scheme which brought it into existence in 2001-2002: one acre
of land for 301 tribal families as part of a rehabilitation project. The scheme
was conceived following the Kudilketti Samaram (hut building agitation)
held by the Adivasis of the state under the leadership of C.K Janu. They had
come with their protest to Thiruvananthapuram where they built makeshift tribal
huts on the pavement outside the state Secretariat. The protest, which lasted
for 48 days, ended only when the government agreed to the demands raised by the
Adivasis, and set up a Tribal Resettlement and Development Mission (TRDM) with
the stated objective of allotting one acre of land for every single landless
Adivasi family and providing them with sufficient financial assiatance till the
point they were completely self reliant in their new environment. As part of
the project, various rehabilitation colonies were set up in the districts of
Kannur, Palakkad, Wayanad and Idukki.
Paraman was in his early twenties when
he first heard of the scheme. A member of the Hill Pulaya tribe, this stocky
middle aged man was at the time living in a tribal colony in Marayur, bordering
Chinnar wildlife sanctuary, about sixty kilometres from Anayirangal. Owning a
piece of land which he could call his own was a dream he had been nurturing
from when he was a child, and when the news of the TRDM scheme reached him, he
did not have to think twice about applying for it. The Pattayamela
(function to distribute title deeds) was held in 2003, and was attended by
tribals from various communities across the state who had agreed to relocate to
any place where they were allotted the land. None of them had previously seen the
land on wich they were supposed to build their future. “In any case, given the
circusmstances in which we were living we had nothing to lose, and so we were
least bothered about the kind of land that were given to us. All we needed was
a title deed”, says Paraman.
That title deed, however, was to come
at a very high price.
To those who relocated to 301 colony
and the nearby Vilakkupadam colony, the very first day of land surveying
informed them in no uncertain terms of the kind of life that awaited them. They
were welcomed by a herd of wild, marauding elephants who made the survey team
run for their lives and then went on a rampage. It was only then that the
Adivasis came to know that the land allotted to them was part of a thriving
elephant habitat: the name Anayirangal literally means Where the elephants
come down to. This area which was a pine plantation before the land was
taken up for the rehabilitation project was one of their favoured destinations
in the region for water and forage. What for a group of homeless human beings
was a rehabilitation project was for them a proposition of displacement from
their already shrunken habitat. Resistance, therefore, was only a predictable course
of action. And the mode they chose for it was to be even more aggressive.
Following frequent elephant raids that
sometimes lasted all day and all night, almost 100 of the 301 families chose to
abandon their land in the first week itself and went back to where they came
from. Nothing that they did to scare away the elephants had worked. They had
tried bursting crackers, making noise, lighting fire lamps; but all to no
avail. There was no fencing available and it would have taken a while to build
trenches. One third of the rehabilated families did not think that a struggle
of such magnitude was a worthwhile option.
Over the years, many more families,
unable to survive the fury of the elephants, left. Six have been killed, many
injured, in elephant attacks. Most houses have been destroyed, and they now
stand scatterred among the tall, topless pine trees as abandoned evidences of a
rehabilitation project gone horribly wrong. Acres of farming land were ravaged.
At present, only twenty families stay here on a permanent basis. Another twenty
families retain the land, but they come only for the farming season. Fifty
families of the Muthuva tribe too have retained their land, but they prefer, in
strict adherence with the culture of exclusivity that distinguishes the Muthuva
tribe, to stay in a Muthuva colony, five kilometres from 301 colony. The situation is even more bleak in
Vilakkupadam colony where out of the sixty eight families who were initially
relocated only one old man remains. And even he has abandoned the land
originally allotted to him and now stays on the fringes of the colony in an
encroached piece of land.
Paraman was one of the few who chose
to stay on in 301 colony. The title deed, he says, is more valuable than life
itself. The hope that one day this piece of land will be a habitable place
clings on to him, even when he wants to wriggle out of it. “It might not happen
in my time, but at least if I stay put my future generations can live here. I
mean, I have to justify why I am still here, right? Even if it makes no sense”,
he says. He cultivates ginger and tapioca in his land, but does it more out of a
sense of obligation than with any conviction or a well defined plan. “I have
this land, and I need to do something with it, right? What’s the point in
planning against elephants, anyway? And as if that wasn’t menacing enough, we
also have to deal with acute water crisis—both for drinking and
irrigation—despite staying so close to a dam reservoir”, he says. His only consistent
source of income are the mandatory days of labour he gets as part of the
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. He also looks after a
herd of buffaloes owned by people from outside the colony who employ Adivasis
to manage their cattle farms and use their land for grazing. He gets paid Rs
150 per month for one buffalo.
***
More than ninety seven per cent of
Idukki’s land is made up by mountains and forests of the Western Ghats. The high
ranges of the district, populated mainly by tribals, estate labourers from
Tamil Nadu and migrant settlers from the plains, have always been arenas for
human-wildlife conflicts, in particular for human-elephant conflicts. The
problem has only aggravated over the years on account of various changes in
the pattern of land use. Vast areas of forest land have either been encroached
upon for cultivation or converted into plantations—mainly tea, coffee, cardamom
and pepper. The subsequent loss, fragmentation and degradation of the forests
are the major reasosns cited for the worsening of the issue. Various
eco-insensitive developmental projects and an unscientific tourism model that
has resulted in a mushrooming of resorts and home stays around the region have
further compounded the matter.
Chinnakanal, Anayirangal, Marayur,
Vattavada, Pooppara, B L Ram, Chembakathodukudi, Aaduvilanthankudi, Singhukandam
and Suryanelli are some of the worst affected regions. They are also the
regions with the most number of plantations and estates. Crops and farming
equipment are destroyed with such regularity that the farmers and labourers
are now concerned only about the degree of carnage. Even the prospect of being
killed by an elephant is one they now prefer to reconcile with rather than rage
against. “One way or the other you have to die, right?”, asks 87-year old
Eenasumuthu who lives in B L Ram. He had come to Idukki from Thirunelveli,
Tamil Nadu as a cardamom estate labourer in the early forties and had gone on
to become the president of Chinnakanal grama panchayat. Two of his sons and his
brother were killed by elephants. “What
can we do? I have been caught helpless in front of an elephant four times, and
yet nothing ever happened to me. “ He now lives alone and still goes out
occasionally to the cardamom farms, a site particularly favoured by elephant
herds on account of the lush forage it offers. “If I am meant to be killed by
an elephant, I can do nothing about it. It doesn’t matter if I stay at home or
go out to the forest”, he says.
In the last fifteen years, 29 persons
have been killed and more than hundred injured in elephant attacks. Most of the
attacks took place in cardamom farms; a few inside tribal colonies; a couple in
tea estates. Some of those attacked were on their bikes when out of nowhere a
herd of wild elephants appeared on a sharp hair pin bend winding up the hills. Most
of those killed in the farms were either Adivasis or hired labourers from
across the border in Tamil Nadu.
Thomas, a member of Malayaraya
(Christian) tribe, and a resident of Vilakkupadam colony had to bear the brunt
of what he perceives as “pure elephant wrath”, at three levels. After he had built
a house and started farming in his land, an elephant bgean raiding the crops
regularly. He then built a trench around his house. One day, when he was
returning from Chinnakanal to the colony, the same elephant attacked him.
Though he tried to run, the elephant got hold of him and, in his
words,”mercifully spared me with just a shattered right shoulder” which he
still can’t hold up. Not stopping at that, the same elephant would after a few
months go on to cross the trench and destroy Thomas’ house completely. He now
lives in a ramshackle shed he has built on an encroached piece of land on the
outskirts of the colony, and earns his living from a small shop he has set up
at Chinnakanal with the help of the government scheme for the differently
abled. He is certain that the same elephant is still “thirsty for revenge”. His
understanding of the attacks on him is based on an image that has a mythical
status in this part of the world: the image of the elephant as a creature with
the wildest of rage and a massive memory that perpetually fuels this rage. “It
is not my fault”, he says, “nor is it the elephant’s fault. The place where I
built my house must have been special for the elephant. He doesn’t know that
it’s the government which put me there”.
Thomas, and everyone else here, also
know the reasons for this rage: 1) encroachment of elephant habitat and its
subsequent shrinkage which inhibits a vagabond creature whose movements are by
nature uninhibited 2) shortage of water and forage in the forests 3) threat to
life due to poaching. They also agree that they understand where the rage comes
from, but like Thomas, they too prefer to put the onus on the state to devise a
solution. Until such a point arrives, Thomas, like Eenasumuthu, thinks it is better
to reconcile with the perils of this co-existence, philosophizing it as the
“life he was meant to live.” He even cracks a joke at his plight: “But I hope
the elephant doesn’t think so.”
Though there are a few electric fences
around human settlements, people say they are not effective. To protest against
political and bureaucratic apathy, they often hold blockades on NH-49
(Kochi-Madurai-Dhanushkodi). Except for five mass lights between Pooppara and
Anayirangal, nothing has so far come out of those protests. The elephant squad,
they say, is ineffective, and invariably comes to a place of conflict only
after the elephants have moved away. The squad is also mocked for the way they
use artificial tiger sounds to scare away the elephants. “If they had done
something and then failed, we would have still understood”, says Thomas. “But
they just don’t do anything. They don’t make trenches for us. They don’t even
know how to properly scare away the elephants by bursting crackers. They say they
will put some collar on the elephants, but its only talk and no action. And on
top of all this they don’t allow us to do anything.”
With increasing cases of
human-elephant conflicts reported, the wild life department has now set up a
rapid response department. One of its objectives is to educate the people about
the gravity of the menace, and to inform them about the dangers of their usual
practice of blocking the way back to the forest for a wild elephant herd
trapped in a human settlement. For this, they plan to hold workshops in the
region and form people’s vigilante groups. Thomas has a pamphlet which the
department had issued. The pamphlet describes in detail the various preventive
measures that people need to take. As he reads it aloud in his typically
insouciant manner, it is difficult to interpret the emotion in his voice.
***
The twenty families that now remain at
301 colony have formed an Oorukoottam—a self governing body of the
Adivasis. Its purpose, according to its Secretary Samuel Issac, a member of the
Malayaraya (Christian) tribe, is to ensure that they manage to get from the
authorities what is legimitately theirs. The three immediate demands are: 1)
proper water supply for purposes of drinking and irrigation. 2) build a road
instead of the narrow mud track that runs through a portion of the colony. 3)
evict all those who by manipulating the Adivasis who had left managed to get
their land for lease at cheap rates and use it as farmlands
.
The first two of these demands are
grievances common to most of the tribal settlements in Kerala. The third,
however, is a problem specific to tribal colonies that were set up as part of
the TRDM mission in 2001-02. Like 301 colony, a fair few of these settlements
were built in regions through which active elephant corridors passed, and as a
result a lot of the families were forced to abandon their allotted land. This land would then be taken for lease at
cheap rates—a recent deal at 301 colony, according to Samuel Issac was closed out
at Rs 50,000 for a period of 99 years-- by non-tribals even though the title
deed clearly defines it as an illegal act. In 301 colony, Samuel Issac says
that the habitual offenders come from the neighbouring regions of Suryanelli
and Pooppara, and they are mostly small
and midle scale farmers. “For those who abandoned the land, a sum of Rs 50,000
is a big amount, and they easily fall for the bait”, he says. “These land
grabbers would then keep pestering those of us who have stayed back too. I have
even been threatened a couple of times. Their grand plan is to take over this
entire colony by evicting the few left.” Despite his many attempts to raise the
issue with forest and tribal attempts, Samuel says the grabbing has only gained
further momentum.
Samuel and other members of the
Oorukoottam believe that the only possible way to meet all their demands is by
persuading those who abandoned their allotted land to come back to the colony. “If
they come back, the issue of land grabbing can be tackled without much fuss. ”,
Samuel says. The other two issues—that of water and road—too can be dealt more
effectively if the colony has sufficient strength in terms of sheer number of
people. “Now no one takes us seriously because there aren’t many of us here. So
it is easy for both authorities and politicians to shun us”, he says. More
importantly, he feels that the only lasting solution to human-elephant
conflicts is to increase the population strength in the colony. “We can then
set up strong vigilante groups and manage them. Elephants will also gradually
shy away from entering thickly populated regions. It will also increase the
efficiency of farming. What happens now is that all through the night we stay
awake guarding our land, and when it is time to work in the day we are just too
numb with sleep.” He points out the example of the nearby Muthuva colony where
fifty families who have land in 301 colony live. There have been very few
instances of elephant attacks in that colony which Samuel says is because of
their strong community sense. The same example is also used to expose the utter
lack of thinking and planning that went into the TRDM plan at the time of its
conception. According to Samuel, if various tribal communities were allotted
separate and distinct blocks of land instead of randomly mixing them up, the
initial exodus would not have been this massive. “Whoever devised this plan did
not understand that within Adivasis the sense of community acts in a
territorial manner. It is very difficult for one tribal community to mix with
another so freely.”
Efforts have already been made to
realise the objective of getting people back to the colony. But Samuel feels
that it is going to be a tough ask. He is disappointed by the fact that despite
various awareness and mobilization campaigns at a political level, Adivasis
still do not recognize the value of a title deed. “If they understand what this
title deed means, not just for them but for their future generations, elephants
will never scare them away from their habitat”, he says.
***
Unscientifically conceived and
executed tribal rehabilitation projects are the latest in the list of reasons
that lead to human-elephant conflicts in the region. The 1600-sq km long
stretch from Thekkady-Periar tiger reserve to Chinnar wildlife sanctuary was at
one point in time filled with lush evergreen forests, grass banks and shola
forests. The first threat to that ecosystem surfaced with the arrival of the
British who cleared large areas of the forest and built tea estates. Since
then, plantations, farming, various developmental projects (hydro electric and
irrigation dams) and massive growth in the tourism sector have resulted in a
substantial shrinkage of elephant habitat, forcing the creature to withdraw to
tiny, isolated patches.
According to Dr P. S Easa, former
director of Kerala Forest research Institute (KFRI) and an expert on the
subject of human-elephant conflicts, it is not the plantations or
rehabilitation colonies that trigger the conflict, but their faulty design
plans which hamper the free roaming of wildlife. He cites the example of
Mattupetty Indo-Swiss cattle project. “They went for a barrier to protect the fodder
for cattle, thus forcing the animals to seek alternative routes for their
movement which resulted in frequent conflicts. Remember, elephant is a vagabond that requires large areas of land
for forage and water. A herd may need about 300 to 700 sq kilometres as home
range. Therefore, whenever they are deprived of their freedom of movement,
there is every chance of the scenario escalating into a conflict.”
Dr Easa points out that the most
important measure to tackle the issue is to have a landscape level management
plan which needs to be developed with the active involvement of all the
stakeholders. “The present methods of mitigation—solar fences, trenches etc—are
ineffective because the beneficiaries are not interested in maintaining them.
Government spends crores of money and all of that go to waste”, he says, and
adds that “once proper mitigation measures are in place, no ex gratia for crop
damage should be paid. Each human death due to human-elephant conflict should
be analyzed, and if the death has taken place inside the forest where people
are not allowed entry, then no ex gratia should be paid.”
Dr Easa also feels it is imperative
that steps are taken as quickly as possible because with each reported instance
of a human-elephant conflict, a dangerous sense of anti-conservation attitude strengthens
in the psyche of the society. His claim is validated by both the tribals and
non-tribals who ask whether the government is more interested in elephants or
in human life.
Ramesan M and Jayasuryan K K,
researchers at the Environmental studies department at M G University,
Kottayam, have identified four major reasons for the present situation in and
around Anayirangal dam reservoir. 1) In 1897, Udumbanchola taluk in the region
was announced as a cardamom field research
area. In 1935, it was handed over to private individuals for lease. As a
result, the elephant habitat shrunk to the tiny Mathikettan forest region. The
natural elephant corridor was also severed. 2) The planting of pine trees on
the banks of the Anayirangal dam propmpted the elephants to perceive the region
as a safer habitat. The decision to convert these pine forests into tribal
rehabilitation colonies was taken without conducting even a preliminary
feasibility study. 3) The windmills constructed by the Tamil Nadu government on
the grass banks of Chathurangappara have also inflicted irrepairable damage on
a prime elephant corridor. 4) The electric fences which protect the cardamom
plantations pose a major impediment to elephants.
Having lost their connectivity with
Periar tiger reserve and Thekkady, the elephants in the Anayirangal region have
now become more or less genetically isolated animals. The only way to preserve
them is by rebuilding the original elephant corridor. Of the 1600-sq km long
stretch from Thekkady-Periar tiger reserve to Chinnar wildlife sanctuary, only
365 sq. km now comes under the category of the protected area. A standard
elephant herd typically requires around 500 sq km for its normal life.
***
Kumareshan, a member of the Hill
Pulaya tribe stays with his wife and two children at a house right at the edge
of 301 colony, about 50 meters from the banks of the reservoir. The house belongs
to his wife’s brother who was killed by an elephant. Kumareshan, who like
Paraman was at the time living in a tribal colony in Marayur, came here in
2010. Neither his nor his wife’s family was in favour of relocating. But
Kumareshan, who used to visit his brother in law had already made up his mind.
“I just liked the place. Cannot really explain why. Maybe it’s the lake. Maybe
it’s these grass banks. I don’t know”, he says.
During the day, Kumareshan herds the
buffaloes of a cattle farm owned by a non-tribal. There are 12 buffaloes that
he takes care of. He believes buffaloes are helpful in keeping the elephants
away because elephants are finicky creatures who wouldn’t dine on food pissed
and defecated upon by a herd of buffaloes. He leads his buffaloes through the
pine trees, among the abandoned derelict houses, to the grass banks by the
lake. It is these grass banks, contiguous with the forest land, that the
elephants too come down to most often. Yet, Kumareshan is unfazed.
By the banks of the lake, he lies
down, thinking about nothing, though he is fully aware of the travails of his
and the colony’s hazardous existence. “When I am here, I just try to listen to
the stillness of these waves and to birdsongs”, he says. Across the lake is the
popular tourist destination of Anayirangal dam. A couple of resorts can be seen
which Kuthiresan says have been been built on brazenly encroached land. ‘Nobody
asks these resort people anything”, he says and wonders why the government
cannot make a law that would make it mandatory for resorts in tribal areas to
employ Adivasis.
It is from this lake that people of
the colony take water for drinking and irrigation. The water is carried as
headload. The same lake is used for bathing and washing clothes. On its banks
lies a damaged steamer boat which was provided by the government to the
Adivasis to travel across to Anayirangal. Once the boat was damaged, it was
never repaired or replaced. Now, instead of a five-minute ride across the lake,
they have to walk five kilometres and then travel a further eight kilometres by
bus to reach Anayirangal.
Once the buffaloes have had their
fill, Kuthireshan guides them back to the cattle shed. There is pretty much
nothing to do for the rest of the day. His is the only house that does not have
electricity in the colony, but even that doesn’t seem to deter him much.
Occasionaly, he walks all the way to the other edge of the colony, and goes to
Singhukandam. If it is a lucky day, there would be tourists roaming around
waiting for a glimpse of a wild elephant. He would approach them and somehow
convey across the fact that he knows the exact location where elephants come
down to.
***
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