The waterway that brimmed with hectic activity once turned into a brook. For the life around it underwent a drastic change over the past couple of decades. The villagers from Chennithala were left grappling with the hard reality of a dying river in their efforts to complete a ritual on their Palliyodam (snakeboat) to the Aranmula Parthasarathi temple for the annual water festival. R Rakesh, one of the two representatives from the village to the Uthrattathi regatta who accompanies the boat on its annual 24-hour journey, recounted: “For the past 124 years, it has been an 82 km journey by water to the temple to participate in the Uthrattathi festival.
However, the 12 km of river Kuttamperoor had thinned so much we had to pull the boat with long tugs from the banks. It wasn’t fit to be called a river. On many occasions, the journey was an uphill task. But we made it purely because of our spirit and devotion.” It has been so for around 15 years, with the past five or six years being particularly painful. According to Rakesh, during the last festival in September 2016, they had to write to the Prime Minister’s office to get the way cleared as hyacinths along the route had grown to such an extent one could sit on them comfortably.
MGNREGS WOMEN STEP IN The inlet had everything - garbage, mud, weeds, filth, sediments and hyacinth - except water flow. Unchecked, illegal sand mining, clay mining for brick units and encroachment acted as the catalysts to death. Sans the snakeboat making its trip once a year, a requiem for the river was ready until a 70-day initiative by the Budhanoor panchayat through which it flows. The support of nearly 700 women from the MGNREGS has seemingly altered the river’s destiny, with the work to clear at least a channel having finished in February.
“For the women, it was not merely a job guarantee scheme,” panchayat president P Vishwambhara Panicker said. “Their work showed their dedication. They toiled with a social commitment. It was exemplary asset creation under the MGNREGS. Rs 72 lakh was earmarked for this.” The rivulet was a natural flood control channel between Achankovil and Pampa. It used to flow southwards when the water rose at Pampa and to the north when the waters in Achankovil went up.
The tributary that irrigated 2,000 acres of land and fed thousands of families, sadly, became a storage of dumped waste. “I started living off this river at the age of 15 and it continued for nearly 50 years. I could support my family with the income from this river,” said George, one of the thousands of inland fishermen from the area who joined this endeavour to clear the course. “The work started on December 8, 2016 and ended on February 15, 2017. Though there were a few men, 97 per cent of the workers were women from all 14 wards,” said Sanal Kumar B, an overseer of the MGNREGS in the panchayat.
STOP NOT TILL THE GOAL IS REACHED
The panchayat is not in a mood to stop at this, though. “We will form an action force to maintain the progress we made in the case of the river,”said Vishwambhara Panicker. “We are aware of the advantages. Water level in around a 5-km radius has increased considerably. The use of water from the river, for purposes other than drinking, is also going up.
The same is the case with irrigation.” In the next phase, they are coming up with a Rs 4 crore project with the support of Nabard. “The Irrigation Department has prepared a detailed project report on a directive from Water Resources Minister Mathew T Thomas. It will focus on the widening, deepening, desilting and putting coir mats on the shores. Action will be taken to evict encroachment with the help of a satellite survey. We are also looking into the possibilities of eco-tourism along this route,” he said.
“When we were kids, we used to steal sugarcane from the country boats while taking a plunge in the river,” recalled a native, Sanal, of the days when the Kuttamperoor river was a vibrant mode of transportation. In its prime, large wooden boats carried 100 to 150 tonnes of sugarcane to the Travancore Sugar and Chemicals Ltd (TSCL) through the channel. Round the clock. It is an old story as the sugar factory - as it was popularly called - located at Pulikkeezhu near Tiruvalla on the banks of Pampa stopped sugar production two decades ago. “It happened in 1996, exactly 50 years after it started production,” said P M John, deputy manager, TSCL.
“The pond we had in about 2.5 acres to park the boats carrying sugarcane could accommodate some 500 boats.” The raw material reached the factory via waterways as the fields were close to streams and rivers. The company had a capacity to crush 750 tonnes of sugarcane on a daily basis. “There was sugarcane farming in a radius of 30 km and there were nearly 1000 farmers associated with the factory. There were farmers having land from 50 cents to five acres. The cultivation area had Kottayam to the north and Mavelikkara to the south. Vadasserikkara lay to the east and Veeyapuram to the west. The company used to give employment to 1000 persons - 700 directly and the rest indirectly,” he said.
The factory required a tonne of sugarcane to produce around 50 kg of sugar.”Our yield from sugarcane was low compared to north India. This was mainly due to the special features of our soil. When the average yield was 70 to 80 kg, sugar from a tonne of sugarcane was around 50 kg,” said John, who belongs to the area. The factory stopped production due to a number of reasons, including the non-availability of sugarcane. “Farming became non-profitable.
The cost of farming rose due to a dearth of workers. “The cost of sugarcane was fixed at the national level and the price of sugar had a limitation as it is a food item,” he said.Sugarcane cultivation thus came to an end and the company stopped sugar production. The boats ceased to travel on the river. The result was the beginning of the end of a riverine system. Well, it isn’t dying anymore.