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A festival sans harvest

In the countryside around Thiruvananthapuram, Onam, a harvest festival, is fast moving away from its agrarian roots, reports PRAKASAM K. UNNI.

RECOUNTING TALES of the harvests of the past, Ponnamma warbles a few lines from a timeworn harvest song, Punjayil koythumelam, Nadinu poothali charthunna melam ...

Her voice reminds us of the tang of wet earth and evokes memories of lush crops that had bowed to her sickle.

Since her wedding half a century ago, Ponnamma, 73, has worked in the fields of the Udiyannoor Devi temple in Maruthankuzhi. These fields provide the grain for pongala and nivedyam for the Goddess. "In those days it was Iruppoo (two harvests a year)," she reminisces.

This Onam, Ponnamma will celebrate the festival with her memories. For many others, TV, the one-stop shop for entertainment, would be the pivot of festivities. With TV channels priming for the event, a senior professor at the College of Agriculture, Vellayani, sums it up, "Most of the villages are asleep. No harvest. No flowers. No Onam. A better way to celebrate Onam, they feel, is to watch it on TV. The media reaps a rich dividend by playing on an old sentiment," he says.

Still, the myth and magic of Onam live among the young. Malu, little over three years old, is helping cast figures of Mahabali in clay. Her weeny hands smeared with clay, she lisps, "This is Maveli Appoopan. Amma says, we should be good children and dress up to welcome the king". In Malayam, Raji, 13, wakes up early every Onam and gathers, with friends, flowers and helps lay out the pookalam in the village temple.

In some nooks of Vilappilsala panchayat, as in a scene from a Malayalam film of the Sixties and Seventies, children carry baskets of Chembila (broad leaves of a species of yam) and clamber over hedges and plunge into bushes to pick flowers. They scamper for the brightly coloured blooms to spiff up their athapookalams.

Today, most of the pookalams - traditionally laid for 10 days from Atham to Thiruvonam - are the handiwork of youth clubs. The clubs collect money and buy flowers from the market. In some places, rock salt has replaced flowers in pookalams. The Kanjirampara youth club has done so. Sumathy, a resident, takes a dig at the fad. "Do you call it a pookalam? I'd say it is an uppukalam," she scoffs.

Nanu, a farmhand at Vilappilsala is not carefree as Malu is. "The rains let us down. This year's Onam looks bleak," he complains.

The monsoons had not graced the district this year. "Rainfall has been 37 per cent less than normal," says S. Sivaprasad, Principal Agricultural Officer, Thiruvananthapuram. And, farmers here, especially those who grow paddy and vegetables, feel the pinch. "The expected reduction in the yield of paddy this year is 30 to 40 per cent," says Sivaprasad.

For S.D. Chandrakumar, from Pallichal, near Nemom, his cucumber crop has been the worst hit. He had received the State agriculture award for `Yuvakarshakan' for 1999-2000.

Paddy cultivation in Thiruvananthapuram district, except Nedumangad taluk, is rain-fed. Only 19 per cent of the cultivated area receives irrigation during the two main crop seasons, virippu and mundakan. A little over one per cent of the area is farmed during summer.

Paddy cultivation in the district has seen an unrelenting slide. During the fourth quarter of the last century, the area under paddy cultivation came down by a whopping 77 per cent - from 41,399 hectares in 1975-76 to 9598 in 1998-99. For the whole of Kerala, the decrease was 60 per cent. But, the production of rice in the district slipped from 66,042 tonnes in 1975-76 to 17,550 tonnes in 1999-2000, a drop of 73 per cent, whereas, for the State, the fall was only 44 per cent.

Dwindling profits have forced paddy-growers to shift to coconut, plantain and non-food crops. The district, unlike Palakkad, Alappuzha or Thrissur, is not deemed a `paddy tract'. So it loses procurement schemes and support prices. Naturally, paddy growers avoid a surplus in production. Sivaprasad says, "Without a support mechanism, marketable surpluses leave the farmer to the mercy of a `buyers' market."

"Conversion of paddy fields is widespread," says Sivaprasad. "Paddy fields are being leased out for banana cultivation as it is more profitable to do so. The rate of conversion is very rapid in Parassala," he adds.

Glimson in Kakkamoola, near Vellayani, switched to plantain and vegetable cultivation. He asks, "Can you spot any fields nearby? There are none. Ten years ago, when paddy fields were aplenty, Onam had been a harvest festival in letter and spirit."

T. N. Purushothaman Nair used to grow paddy in his fields at Perunganoor and Vettinad. When houses sprung up on filled-in fields around his land and Nair couldn't bring the water in for his paddy crop, he moved over to arecanut and tapioca cultivation. "I yearn for the days when the worth of a family was in the count of haystacks in their farm," he says.

Sadasivan of Chirayinkeezhu sold his land 20 years ago. "Ever since, Onam in my family is marked merely by a round of shopping for clothes."

Still, some do not sell their land or shift to crops other than paddy. "Many continue to cultivate paddy more out of an emotional bond than as an economic decision," says Sivaprasad.

Conversion of fields for housing is common. It is felt that the Revenue Department does not enforce the Land Utilisation Act effectively. Loopholes in law are exploited. For building a house in an area of less than five cents, conversion is allowed. This provision is misused by some, who hive off their holdings into pieces of less than five cents each, and get all of it converted.

Sivaprasad, who is also the convener of the Thiruvananthapuram district panchayat agriculture project, says decentralised planning has helped paddy cultivation. "Inputs are being delivered at the farmer's doorstep and high-yielding varieties such as `Uma' have been promoted for the past three years, with encouraging results. The effect of the reforms is marked in Kilimanoor, he says. "But, only half the land under cultivation benefits from this. If the rest is brought under the panchayats, it would help," he says.

Budgetary allocations for paddy are available only after the first crop (virippu). The allocation for paddy that comes late is used for other crops. Timely allocation would be beneficial.

Kazhchakula, the practice, now defunct, of tenants bringing the best of the crop of plantains for the landlord on Onam day, has been, in Malayalam art and literature, a popular icon of the `inhumanity' of the feudal order. A section of the erstwhile landed gentry still recalls those practices with nostalgia. Narayanan Nair recollects, "I had a farmhand, Vellachami, who worked in my fields and stayed with his family on my land. In Chingam, after harvest, Vellachami would bring us vegetables and sacks of paddy. In return, we would give them onakkodi and onasadya. After they died, I sold off most of my land. Those were the days!"

-- With inputs from RAJMOHAN SUDHAKAR, AMBIKA VARMA, NARAYANI HARIGOVINDAN and NAGEENA VIJAYAN

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