A man-made drought?

The dried-up bed of the Kabini river, at the inter-State border near Pulpally in Wayanad. A tributary of the Cauvery, it is one of the three east-flowing rivers of Kerala. -

THE east-flowing Kabini, so far a perennial river on the border with Karnataka, is now almost dry and farmers at Pulpally said that the wind brought in waves of heat into their coffee and pepper farms as forest fires raged in the border areas. Environmental groups say that in places such as Pulpally and Mullankolli, where large tracts of forests were destroyed for planting shade/support trees for the coffee and pepper plantations, the desert-like conditions that have burnt crops are irreversible. It is an indication that the arid conditions of the Deccan plateau, seen in Karnataka, are spreading into Wayanad too, they say.

But according to Fr. Robin Vadakkencheril, director of the Wayanad unit of the Indian Farmers' Movement (INFAM), the reason why the district is drying up, is the unscientific cultivation patterns, especially the large-scale conversion of paddy fields into quick-profit banana plantations. "We want the government to declare total debt relief to farmers. This drought is man-made. The farmers of Wayanad are the ones who should reverse the arid conditions that have set in, by reversing the cultivation patterns, by reconverting banana plantations back to paddy fields, by switching to organic farming and by putting a stop to the large-scale use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. But for that to happen, they should be able to stand on their own feet and should be rid of their debt burden," he said.

INFAM estimates that banana is grown on nearly 40,000 acres (16, 000 hectares), most of which was under paddy earlier. Overdoses of pesticides and chemicals are used for the new crop. As a result, the water retention capacity of the land and the soil quality have fallen to alarmingly low levels. The groundwater table is falling and wells are drying up. Water supply in tankers is today a common feature of Wayanad. K. Narayanan, environmental activist and president of Solidarity, a non-governmental organisation active among the tribal people of Wayanad, said: "At Padichira village in Sulthan Bathery taluk, nearly 700 tubewells have been dug over the past decade. All of them have gone dry-."

Nearly 11 wards near the Pulpally and Mullankolli villages along the Kabini now form something of an environmental disaster zone. The settler farmers have denuded the once-pristine region and transplanted the forest with water-depleting species of trees such as Erthrina (murikku) and silver oak, grown as support/shade trees for pepper and coffee crops. Manu, a journalism student and the son of a local farmer, said: "Being a rain shadow region, the monsoon rain almost always stops at our gates. On either side of the river are the teak plantations owned by the Kerala and Karnataka governments. In summer, all such trees shed their leaves. And the forest fires across the Kabini add to the heat." The six acres (2.4 ha.) belonging to his family usually provides 25 to 30 quintals of pepper - a golden harvest, literally. This year it was barely 1.5 quintals, he told Frontline.