Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Ryots to the aid of paddy fields

FOR A CAUSE: Social activists Sugathakumari and Sara Joseph join hands with farmers sowing seeds in the farming land at Erayamkudi, near Thrissur, on Sunday.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The farmers are coming back to the paddy fields. In a dramatic though isolated manner, they made a bid to sow the fields and protest against those destroying paddy fields at Erayamkudi in Thrissur district on Sunday. Ironically, the police stopped the farmers and a group of environmental activists as they marched to the fields with paddy ready for sowing. So, they had to carry out their demonstration in another paddy field with poetess Sugathakumari, writer Sara Joseph and others sowing the seeds.

Paddy cultivation had come down from peak coverage of about 8.81 lakh hectares in the 1970s to 2.87 lakh hectares in 2003-04. Government efforts to check the trend proved futile in the absence of sufficient incentives for farmers. High input and labour costs and shortage of labour added to the problem. Legal measures to check the trend failed.

In recent years, some farmers had been resuming cultivation in fields that had been left fallow. However, much of the paddy fields had been converted into residential areas in an almost irreversible manner.

The government’s latest effort to check the trend is the Kerala Conservation of Paddy Fields and Wetlands Bill, which is now before the Select Committee. The measure has attracted opposition from farmers who assert their freedom to choose profitable crops. For the government, it may be unrealistic to believe that it could force farmers to continue with paddy cultivation if it remains unprofitable.

However, certain factors are persuading the farmers to resume cultivation. One of them is the water shortages resulting from disappearance of the paddy fields. While cash crops will be much more profitable than paddy, they too could not grow without water. The recent increase in price of rice is also being seen as a positive sign. In some areas such as Piravam and Muthalakodam near Thodupuzha, farmers have now started opposing conversion of paddy fields. At Erayamkudi, the opposition was to brick-making units which used soil from the paddy fields. They destroyed the fields and brought down the water table. More than 1,500 people, including nearly 500 farmers, participated in Sunday’s demonstration. The agitation had the support of all political parties though the CPI (M) leaders were conspicuous by their absence.

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