The Hindu : Kerala / Kochi News : Development comes at a price to Kumbalanghi

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, May 20, 2005

Kerala

Kerala - Kochi

Development comes at a price to Kumbalanghi

Anand Haridas

Water bodies being filled up in village

KOCHI: Development has come at a price to Kumbalanghi. The ongoing Model Tourism Village programme at Kumbalanghi has done a lot of good to the panchayat.

On the flip side, however, the drive has shot up the land value in this village on the suburbs of Kochi city, which has led to more and more water bodies in the region being filled up.

"During my younger days there used to be a nattuthodu (canal), which was double as wide as MG Road, across our ancestral plot. Boats used to travel along this canal. This has now reduced much to a drain," said K.V. Thomas, MLA, who hails from the village.

Cause for concern

The trend has caused concern among environmentalists and those involved in the project. As part of this trend, the village has lost most of its ponds and canals.

"We have identified around 300 ponds, which needed to be repaired and maintained as part of creating the ambience for endogenous tourism," said Muralee Menon, coordinator of the tourism project.

Neither the panchayat officials nor the project people have a solution to counter this trend from spreading. "These are individual attempts and we have absolutely no control over their activities. People ask us in what way cleaning ponds will benefit them. Now we planning to evolve an awareness campaign against filling up of ponds," said Dr. Menon.

In the first phase, the project will try to clean 30 ponds and make people aware about the virtues of having a water body on their premises. On their part, the panchayat had been actively promoting the public to clean up their ponds, as part of the rainwater harvesting campaign.

"During the last financial year, we could clean up around 250 ponds. This year, just above 100 ponds were cleaned. It is directly related to drought. As this year, the drought was not severe, people were not serious about cleaning the ponds," said M.P. Sivadathan, Kumbalanghi panchayat president.

Even the panchayat members expressed helplessness in preventing canals and ponds being filled up to construct roads. In Ward 1, a canal is being filled up using MLA's fund to construct a road.

"The panchayat committee has passed a resolution last year against reclaiming land from water bodies," said Mr. Sivadathan.

It has also been suggested that Kumbalanghi should be brought under the purview of the Conservation and Preservation Bill, which will require the Department of Tourism to be informed before centres identified as tourism hotspots are altered.

"Awareness programme might not be enough to counter this trend, we might need to frame proper laws," said Prof. Thomas.

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