KOCHI: In an attempt to draw public attention to the shrinking farmlands across the state and its effect on the groundwater level and quality, a few young men in Angamaly adopted a portion of a 3.5-acre paddy field for cultivation, on Sunday.
They tilled the land in Chempan Padam in the traditional way, bringing a pair of oxen and plough from Kodaly in Thrissur, and sowed the seeds. They aim to grow seeds, nurture the paddy, harvest it and then hand over the land to willing groups, while furthering their cause.
It is not just a token endeavour. The group has adopted a few other vacant cultivable plots in the region after a portion of those lands were allegedly levelled for commercial purposes.
“This is our protest against the vices of blatant urbanisation; our reminder to the public of its blight on nature, and our bid at exhorting people to come forward and take up farming,” said Nipun Varghese, one of the members of the group.
According to them, Angamaly is one of the few regions in Kerala, where groundwater is still fresh for direct consumption. Despite falling along the courses of Chalakkudy river and Periyar, they said Chalakkudy and Aluva depend on pipeline supply or water tankers for their fresh water demand.
The group attributes the decline in the quality of fresh water to pollution triggered by the unbridled levelling of farmlands.
“Large swathes of farmlands were flattened in Angamaly to milk the benefits of the real estate boom. The rate of its increase has been alarming in the last five years . If it is not checked, it will take a debilitating toll on the ground water table of the region,” said Martin Gopuranthingal, another member and a post-graduate with a doctorate in oceanography. The group, which comprises auto drivers, businessmen, doctorate-holders and Gulf employees, initially took to farming as a protest against levelling 2 acres of the 30-acre paddy field in Ilakkya Unnimadom in Angamaly two years ago.
“The incident made some of us furious and it spurred us to form a group to register our protest. We didn’t want to take out a dharna or stage a sit-in, but wanted to do something proactive against the practice,” Martin said.“We discussed among ourselves and decided on cultivating the land by ourselves. We read up on zero-budget farming and collected around ` 20,000 from the people. Of that, `7,000 was spent on buying a cow,” he said.
They procured local varieties of paddy seeds for cultivation and once the land was made fit for cultivation, they employed domestic and migrant labourers for the rest of the work till harvest. For manure, they mostly used the cow dung and urine.
Money, they say, is hard to come by, but nobody in the group has suffered any loss. “People has been very encouraging and pitched in with money voluntarily. But our main problem is the difficulty to claim the grants announced by the government to promote farming,” said Nipun, adding that things would have been a lot easier if the government could streamline the process of issuing agricultural grants.