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The third wave of prospectors reaches Kumarakom

Vanishing act: Fields like this one might be a thing of the past in Kumarakom once the construction sector becomes fullfledged.

This sleepy fishermen’s grove by the Vembanad Lake had its tryst with the modern world more than a century ago when the Bakers, a missionary family who ‘discovered’ Kumarakom, reclaimed more than 100 acres from the Lake, set up a country house and started agriculture in the 1800s. Later, the reclaimed land was turned into a rubber plantation, but the life in the village remained almost unaffected.

The second wave came more than a century later, when entrepreneurs in the hospitality industry rediscovered the village in the late 1900s. The Missionary family’s bungalow now forms part of a five star hotel and ‘vellakettu’ (water logged areas) in the village have been filled to make way for new resorts.

Life for the villager is fast changing and there is no looking back. The tourism hotspot is already enjoying the third wave in the form of builders and real estate lobbies who have discovered Kumarakom for the third time.

“It is the emergence of Kochi as the powerhouse of the State’s development that has brought the real estate people here,” says P.G. Padmanabhan, former grama panchayat president and social activist. “Across the Lake on a speed boat, it is just 30 minutes to Kochi, and less than one hour by road. You can take either the Vaikom route or Cherthala route. Every new declaration of development, whether it is the container terminal or Smartcity, have the builders hotfooting it to the nearest available piece of land,” says Mr. Padmanabhan.

When the hospitality industry people came they could get land for a few hundred rupees a cent, but now, relatively dry areas go for lakhs, he pointed out. According to him, the sudden spurt began a few months back, following the finalisation of the Smartcity Project in Kochi. “Now, land in Kumarakom has emerged as a safe and highly remunerative investment, compared to bank deposits,” says Mr. Padmanabhan.

Another local politician, who begged anonymity, endorses: “It is the best investment. It was less than three years back that one of our leading lights in the business world bought a ten acre, waterfront plot for a little over Rs. 2 crore. The other day he said he had an offer of Rs.14 crore for the same land.” According to Subhash, a young social activist, “North Indian businessmen have already identified Kumarakom as an investment destination. The deals being made by local agents’ points to the arrival of big money.” He recounts the experience of one villager who had fixed a land deal with a broker who gave an advance of Rs.25 lakh, but never cared to come back. In another case, a broker advanced a token amount of Rs. 1 lakh to 20 people who had made deals with him. “There is no news about him ever since,” says Subhash. “The deal with the real entrepreneurs from the North might have fallen through, but the brokers never cared about the money as this must be peanuts for them,” says Subhash.

Mr. Padmanabhan reasons, “The village has a little over 5000 acres of dry land, the rest being paddy fields, the vast, verdant ‘padasekharams.’ So there is scramble for a share of the pie, he points out. Once the real action begins, even the padasekharams would be up for sale, he believes, and says the trend has already begun.

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