Kumarakom – Kuttanad

Kumarakom – Kuttanad the reclaimed and converted land

Kumarkom is a part of greater Kuttanad. Kuttanad is a low-lying area with backwaters, canals and stream networks extending over 874 sq.k.m. There are garden lands of average elevation of 1 m. above Mean Sea Level (MSL) covering an area of 304 sq. km. About 599 sq.km. is 0.6 to 2.2 m. below MSL. Four rivers feed this unique basin. The lake Vembanad extends from Alappuzha in the south to the harbor Kochi in the north where it opens out to the Arabian Sea.

The word Kuttanadu derived from Kuttuka the old meaning of which according to the oldest Malayalam – English Dictionary by Rev. H. Gundert published in 1872 is kuthuka- digging clay from the lake bed and Kuttan is the person who does this work. Kuttanadu may therefore be the land made by Kuttans who formed the land by digging the soil by hand often from below the surface of water and carrying it by head load or by country boat. Researchers found that about 23,105 ha land has been reclaimed from the lake during the period 1834-1984 from the lake. The reclaimed area was converted into vast paddy fields (polders) and garden lands. During olden days, all the land in the country belonged to the King or to the feudal lords. Many people acquired from government marshy lands at nominal price and created cultivable land. The newly created land did not belong to any feudal lords and the new ownership system gave way to capitalist system of agriculture.

Kuttanad is a fertile tract of land. Being replenished by the silt brought by the river systems, the area was found to be highly suited to rice cultivation from early days.

Historically, Kuttanad was a thickly populated area because of the scope for multifarious economic activities like rice

The lake Vembanad is a vast work place for fishermen,

and collectors of limeshell, clay and sand cultivation, fishing, coir making, etc. The traditional agrarian structure was hierarchical and caste-based, land being owned or possessed only by upper caste Hindus or Christians. Tenants undertook the actual cultivation. The agricultural labourers who tilled the land and harvested the crop were of Scheduled Castes and the backward communities. The characteristic feature of this system was that it was inherently coercive in nature, and perpetuated itself by trapping the poor and the weak in a vicious circle of poverty, debt and bondage.

From the last century onwards, the initiative for institutional reforms came from the monarchy. Consequently, by 1850 a major share of the cultivated land and the whole of the wasteland came under the State. This led to the emergence of a class of independent peasantry, who reclaimed the backwaters of Kuttanad for rice cultivation through operations that required substantially large capital investments.

The increasing pressure of population on land during the last century and the exhaustion of shallow backwaters for reclamation purposes compelled the people to venture into the deeper waters of the Vembanad Lake. These are known as the `New reclamations’.

Without a discussion of the class dimension of the people who ventured this, it will be seen that these are land-hungry peasants in search of extending the margins of agriculture for subsistence farming. Unlike the European and Japanese reclamations, undertaken with the aid of the most modern techniques and backed by all the financial and organizational resources of the State, the reclamation of the Vembanad Lake in Kuttanad was a masterpiece of private entrepreneurship undertaken by adventurous farmers with slender resources and crude techniques.

The very first experience of reclamation, which was the general pattern of the enterprise, is described as follows: `Whole stems of coconut trees were piled into two rows on the bed of the stream. A broad corridor, which was formed in this manner, was cemented with garbage, river sand and clay and it emerged as a bund. The ring bund rising from under the water was like a dream come true. It was indeed a remarkable engineering feat, though a risky and expensive operation’.

Let us examine the story of the first reclamation in Kuttanad to understand the social relations of its origin and the active role of the state.

The pioneer in Vembanad reclamation was one Eravi Kesava Panikkar belonging to the Chalayil family, one of the leading landed aristocrats in Kuttanad. He was `an unusual person who commanded great respect and influence’. His very first effort bears an eloquent testimony to his innovative genius. It was a project to reclaim that portion of Vembanad, which was situated at the mouth of the Cennankari River… He proceeded to erect a barrier across the river at its mouth with local materials and manual labour……… He had to face the opposition of the local population who filed a case against him for diverting the course of the river. Sir Raja Rama Rao, the then Dewan Peishkar, conducted an enquiry and personally inspected the site. But the farsighted Peishkar was more impressed with the potentialities of development, which this flash of genius had opened up than outraged by the offence of law. Fully alive to the problem of land shortage and food scarcity in the State, he saw in this novel adventure a new vista of possibilities.

Contrary to all expectations, instead of reprimanding the offender, the Peishkar congratulated Mr. Panikkar and blessed his adventure… Encouraged by the success of his first venture, Mr Panikkar set about other reclamation schemes also. The legal proceedings against him proved to be a blessing in disguise, for he found in the person of his defence counsel Mr. Kavalam Neelakanta Pillai a worthy partner in this enterprise. The next block which he reclaimed was called after the statesman Peishkar Raja Ramapuram…This is the beginning of the history of kayal reclamation which is not only highly romantic but from the point of view of economic development one of the most important things in the history of Travancore.
Dr.Ayyappa Panicker, the famous Malayalam poet who belongs to the present genaration of Chalayil family wrote a poem’Kudumba Puranam’ (family story) in which he remembers his great grand father who completed the reclamation venture as in the following lines.

“Kesava ninte karangal policka
Policka, chiramjeevikalam chindakal
Mannin punyamathallo, dhana-dhanyangal
Puzhpabhaladikalal neeyivale
Vasundharayakkuka, Kesava
Ninte karangal policka. ”
(Kesava, let your hands prosper,
Prosper too, eternal thoughts
that are the earth’s virtues.
Make the earth plentiful
with wealths, grains, flowers and fruits
Kesava, let your hands prosper).

This story, apart from the romance, reveals some politico-economic dimensions of the early reclamations. The `influential leading aristocrat’ diverts the course of a river on which `the local population’ depends for their needs. The Dewan (Prime Minister of the then princely state of Travancore) makes personal inspection, and then congratulates him, leading to more reclamation with another `influential’ person who is a lawyer too. Naming the project after the Dewan was a way of showing gratitude. There was a repetition in the early 1940s when Mr. Thomas Murikkan was given permission to reclaim 1,800 acres of backwaters into three polders. He named these polders after the Queen Regent and her two sons.

There is no doubt about the adventurous nature of farmers’ economic rationale behind this enterprise. The reclamation of land from water turned out to be more economic than the purchase of cultivable rice fields at high prices. The cost of reclaiming land in those days of cheap labour was much lower than the soaring price of rice fields and the entire initial investment on a reclamation project could be regained from the net income over one or two crops.
The initiative came from a few individual entrepreneurs with slender resources. The only aid at their command to conquer the invincible Vembanad consisted of crude indigenous implements and flimsy materials. It is a miraculous feat that they conducted the extracting operations of bunding, draining, ploughing and irrigating this lake area with the help of country canoes, wooden wheels, ancient ploughs and emaciated bullocks.

Water was drained by manually operated water wheel. An array of wheels of different sizes was used, arranged one below the next. Planted at the extremity on the outer ring bund was a wheel with 8 to 12 spokes to operate the installation. (SeeV R Pillai and PGK Panicker (1965) Land Reclamation in Kerala, Asia Publishing House, Bombay and Report of the Kuttanad Enquiry Commission, Government of Kerala, Government Press, Thiruvananthapuram.)

The penetration of capital into Kuttanad agriculture and the attendant technological advancements led to a decline in the use of labour. Rice cultivation, which is a labour-intensive activity, became uneconomical owing to the shattering of traditional labour relations consequent on the emergence of a labour market and the rise of labour militancy due to unionisation. Change in the society, particularly the ramification in Kerala society brought about with the spread of education led to a tendency among all sections of people to move away from traditional agriculture. The possibility of greater occupational mobility that unfolded after 1970 also led to this tendency. The tenancy reforms of the 1970s and the subsequent fragmentation of land holdings made the average holding size `uneconomic’. New institutional arrangements like concealed tenancy are becoming increasingly prevalent among owners of land who have other occupations and find no time to manage their lands.

State interventions in the Kuttanad system in Kumarakom

Almost all the State interventions in Kuttanad were oriented towards achieving a single objective – to boost rice production. The earlier ones were aimed at intensifying cultivation by conversion from single crop to double crop rice. Studies identified two preconditions for achieving this goal in the region.

(i) Speedy drainage of the flood waters during the north-east monsoon, and

(ii) Prevention of saline water incursion into the Vembanad Lake during summer.

Two engineering structures were suggested for these purposes:

(i) A spillway at Thottapally the southern end of Kuttanad, meant to drain off flood waters to the sea, and ii) A regulator at Thanneermukkom, the northern end of Kuttanad, to check the incursion of saline water from the sea.
Strengthening the bunds of padasekharam under Kerala Land Development Corporation (KLDC) schemes were also suggested to safeguard rice cultivation from natural calamities.

The spillway, reported to have been designed after detailed hydrographic and hydrological studies, is draining only less than one-third of the envisaged capacity. The Thanneermukkom Regulator, 1402 metres in length located at about 22.5 km north of Alappuzha has also proved itself to be disastrous.

However, these developmental activities have reduced the risks of natural hazards like flood and saline water intrusion for Punja crop and helped extension of the area under cultivation. Now the entire Kuttanad area is under high-yielding varieties of rice. Owing to the elimination of the risks from natural hazards, the discipline observed in earlier times in respect of agricultural practices during seasons of rice cultivation has disappeared. With the use of High Yield Variety (HYV) seeds having only low resistance to pests and diseases, high seed rate, non-judicious fertiliser application and plant protection measures, the incidence of pests and diseases and consequent crop losses have become quite common.

Ecological consequences in Kumarakom

All the above institutional and economic interventions had their ecological consequences too in Kuttanad. The estuaries and the backwater systems of the Kerala coast are the nurseries of several species of marine shrimps. The construction of the regulator has reduced severely the backwater area available for the prawns to spend their larval and growing stages of life. The prevention of the flow of seawater into the lake during summer has led to the decline or disappearance of several fish species that grow in saline water. Decline in the catch of fish has resulted in decline in the opportunities of employment for the fishermen and in their consequent impoverishment, particularly since alternative employment opportunities do not exist for them.

Apart from cultivation of rice and fish, there are other important occupations in Kuttanad:

(i) Lime-shell collection from the Vembanad lake, and

(ii) Retting and defibering of coconut husks to cater to the raw material requirement of the coir industry.

The fishing resources of the Vembanad Lake also include shellfish (mollusc). All species of molluscs require optimum ranges of salinity for their breeding. The changing conditions of salinity are likely to affect their life cycles adversely. In considering the impact of the regulator on coir processing, it must be noted that, while retting of raw-husks takes three months in saline water, it takes 10-12 months in fresh water. Hence, retting has been hampered by the operation of the regulator.

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