The Hindu : Paddy farmers in Alappuzha district headed for crisis

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jan 21, 2004

Kerala

Kerala - Alappuzha

Paddy farmers in Alappuzha district headed for crisis

By A. Harikumar

ALAPPUZHA, JAN. 20. Paddy farmers in the district are headed for a crisis even as the State Government is considering a Rs.200-crore project to boost paddy cultivation in Kuttanad.

While intrusion of salt water is the most serious threat to paddy cultivation in Kuttanad, absence of labourers and scarcity of water are threatening the paddy crop in the punja fields at Mavelikara and Nooranad and some of the areas adjoining Kuttanad.

Paddy cultivation has been stopped in the lake paddy fields of Rani and Chithira in Kuttanad for the last several years.

A project launched by the Government in the late Nineties to introduce Basmati cultivation in the Kuttanad and Nooranad areas to make paddy cultivation profitable has ended in failure. Several farmers in Nooranad who took loans to cultivate Basmati rice are now facing the threat of eviction from their land owing to their failure to repay the loans.

Though the farmers of Kuttanad welcome the Government's assurance to help revive paddy cultivation, they feel that the need of the hour is to implement measures to save the farmers who had taken huge loans for paddy cultivation.

According to them, though the problem of intrusion of salt water into the fields of Kuttanad had been temporarily solved after the natural closure of the Thottappally bar, the salinity in the paddy fields resulting from the water which had already entered the fields continues.

The water released from the Moozhiyar dam to dilute the salt water in the paddy fields of Kuttanad has not been adequate.

The farmers want the repair works of the shutters of the Thottappally spillway -- which facilitates the outward flow of water from Kuttanad to the Arabian sea - to be done to solve the problem of intrusion of salt water through the spillway once and for all.

According to them, paddy saplings in large areas in Kuttanad had been destroyed because of the presence of salt water. This has resulted in huge loss.

They note that the absence of adequate number of labourers and opposition of trade unions to mechanisation have created a difficult situation in Kuttanad.

The cultivation of Mundakan variety of rice, which grows in saline water, had been virtually stopped in the fields adjoining the Kayamkulam lake.

A large part of the paddy fields had been converted into coconut plantations there.

Meanwhile, leasing and sub-leasing of paddy fields to marginal farmers by small-scale farmers -- which is similar to the system that existed in pre-land reform days - has become the norm in Kuttanad.

The farmers in the Nooranad area say that the paddy saplings in the punja fields are facing the threat of destruction because of the absence of proper irrigation facilities.

The canals built for ensuring steady supply of water for agriculture have not been found to be effective. Large areas of paddy fields are lying barren in the Mavelikara and Nooranad region.

Meanwhile, paddy cultivation had been virtually stopped in the Budhanoor and adjoining areas near Chengannur as large tracts of paddy fields had been mined for clay and sand there.

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Paddy farmers in Alappuzha district headed for crisis