Kerala fisherfolk in despair as lives and homes crumble under state’s broken promises
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Surrounded by the detritus left by marauding waves, the six-year-old squats on his haunches, scooping up tiny handfuls of beach sand into an old cement bag. Two more boys, slightly older, assist him in this losing battle against the sea. “Name? Soorya,” he smiles and returns to his strange chore, grabbing another handful with his thin fingers.For fishermen residences just south of the Valiyathura Pier, or what’s left of them anyway, the hastily-assembled sandbags offer the last, yet dismally inadequate, line of defence against the angry sea. For the past few days, huge waves have been battering the coast, destroying houses and beached boats and bringing down trees. As usual, the state government has done little except make the usual noises.
But the families are done with broken promises. “If this is the situation in summer, what will be our condition during monsoons?” asks Tony, a local fisherman. Only the month of May stands between the residents here and the southwest monsoon. Nothing remains of a road that used to run between the struggle of houses and the knee-high jumble of rocks that officially makes up the seawall on this stretch of the coast. Some of the houses have crumbled overnight, forcing the inhabitants to seek shelter elsewhere. “If they had built up the seawall as promised, this would not have happened. Every time this happens, a few more families are shifted to relief camps opened in nearby schools. And they are doomed to live there forever,’’ says Carmon, whose house has been destroyed by the waves.
On Monday night, the electric lines came down, plunging the entire region into darkness. Tuesday morning found the residents picking up what was left of their lives.“We built this house only three years ago. It cost us Rs 10 lakh then. We have paid double that in interest and are still paying,” said Punithamary.
The steps leading up to the tiny verandah are lying to one side, and the waves have literally seeped into the foundation, sucking out the sand. Seawater mixed with mud covers the floors of the small hall and the two bedrooms. All the household items were hastily shifted to safety to the road which runs further inland.
“For three whole nights, none of us has slept. There’s a pregnant girl here and we shifted her to a nearby house,” Punithamary said. On Monday noon, M Soosa Pakiam, the Latin Archbishop of Thiruvananthapuram, made a brief visit to Valiyathura. But he did not visit the homes, a fact which did not go down well with the residents, who by and large belong to the Christian community.
“How can the Church protect us? Can the Church even get an old cement bag for us?” fumes Jerome Miranda, whose thatched house is barely standing. Frantic, Jerome has nothing to arm himself against the sea but the ubiquitous sandbags, which, in reality, offer scant protection. “The Church says they will tell the government. They blame the changing governments. But what does the Church do? Don’t they have organisations like the KLCA and the KCYM. Why don’t they do something?”
Politicians rarely venture this far except for the elections, but their promises carry little weight anymore with the local people.The nearby Valiyathura Pier, once a favourite local hangout, stands as testimony to the money washed down the drain in the name of coastal development. Now defunct except as a tourist spot, the government recently pumped in lakhs to construct new concrete railings for the pier and two pillars flanking its entrance.
The pillars crashed down some time back and now a 10 ft gap separates the mainland and the pier proper, the sand in-between eaten away by the waves. A banner put up by the port conservator flutters in the wind. It reads: “Entry strictly prohibited. The slab at the entry is damaged.”