It will be difficult to list every single thing that makes Wayanad, the Green Paradise of Kerala, a must-visit destination for tourists. The evergreen and deciduous forests, rich wildlife, serene lakes, enchanting waterfalls and the famous “Thamarassery Churam” - nine hairpin bends stretching from Adivaram in Kozhikode and ending at Lakkidi, serving as the gateway to the district – are just some of its attractions.
Around 6pm, the sun sails down the horizon and the mercury starts to dip. By dusk, the traffic thins until there are just a handful of vehicles on the road. The distant lights of small tea shops guide night travellers. The owner of one such stall is Robin. As he serves tea, the 40-something vendor opens up about his daily travails and how he is trying to make both ends meet amid the pandemic.
“My friends moved to the Gulf, but I stayed here to look after my parents. I suffered huge losses in farming and turned to real estate. Later, I worked as a driver. The pandemic took away my job. I am not earning much from this, but it is our only relief,” he says.Further lies Kalpetta, the district headquarters and a known agrarian region. Farmers here are struggling to overcome the pandemic-induced crisis. However, after the lockdown, more youths got involved in farming.
At Munderi, a tribal settlement a few kilometres from Kalpetta, lies a five-acre plantain farm behind the District Stadium. It is an initiative by a group of 10 youths - professionals, PhD scholars from JNU, LIC agents and others - who were confined to their homes due to the lockdown. “Agricultural productivity of Wayanad was severely hit due to the pandemic and the back-to-back floods before it. The district is trying to overcome the crisis caused by the price fall mainly of ginger and plantain, the main crops here. We started plantain cultivation in August last year and expect a harvest by Onam,” said Shuhaib Muhammed, an accountant and one of the farming team members. With the assembly election date declared, discussions on farming and development are now the prime talking point.
Plight of tribal villages
Around 7am the next day, Mananthavady, 33km away from Kalpetta, is yet to wake up fully. However, the Valliyoorkavu football ground, just a few km from town, is teeming with teenage boys and girls, including tribal youth, practising football and cricket under the aegis of Soccer Star Library, Arts and Sports Club. N P Louis and M K Jayaraman, the coaches, are outside the small, pothole-ridden ground, giving instructions to players.
“Sports training has helped several youth avoid bad habits like liquor and drug abuse. Many players have been selected for national and state level football and tennis ball cricket tourneys. We launched the programme a couple of years ago and the response now is overwhelming. Even children living 20km away, especially from tribal colonies, come to train. Now, we need better ground and facilities and expect aid from the local body and sports associations,” says Jayaraman, a member of Kurichiya tribe who has devoted his life to football and athletics.
At the Chekadi-Thazhassery tribal colony 14 km away from Valliyoorkavu, things are different. Here, jobless youth spend time fishing, swimming and rowing ‘Changadam’. Children are out playing. They have no idea what online classes are. Some tribal youth are sitting under a tree.
“I ended studies in Class VIII as no one from the community backed me. Since then, I have been doing daily wage works,” he says. The 14 families in the colony stay in houses built by the government under the tribal development scheme. “We are happy. We get free rice from the government and fish from the river,” says Subrahmanian, a resident, one eye on his grazing cattle. Anu Raj, the colony’s lone college student, disagrees. “Those who do not go out feel comfortable here. Once we go out, we are neither accepted by those outside nor by our own,” he says. One issue affecting all of them is the lack of proper healthcare. With no medical college in Wayanad, the tribal residents depend on Kozhikode MC, hundreds of km away.
The shifting of the proposed MC from Kalpetta to Mananthavady has sparked a political row here. “The district hospital which is elevated as MC is considering tribals as second-class citizens. It lacks basic infrastructure required for an MC,” says K Kunji Raman, a leader of a tribal movement from Nettimani colony. Sooppy Palliyil, leader of the GMC action committee, Madakkimala, feels Wayanad MC should be set up on the 50 acres donated to the government at Madakkimala. “An MC at the centre of the district would help everyone. The present facilities are only useful to those in Mananthavady. Others go to Kozhikode MC as usual,” he says.