Standing near a shabby wooden shack that he hesitantly calls his home, 41-year-old Raju narrated his daily battles for survival. A gust of strong wind from the dense Sabarimala forest can blow away the plastic sheet ‘roof’ of the shack, exposing his family to nature’s fury. The trumpeting of a wild elephant could be heard at a distance, signalling that worse is in store at night for the 16 tribal families residing at Manjathodu between Nilakkal and Pampa enroute to Sabarimala temple.
“At night, we are only half asleep. When wild elephants go on a rampage here, we run for our lives. Our dwellings have been uprooted umpteen times but we build them again. Where else can we go?” asks Raju who is also the ‘ooru-mooppan’ (chieftain) of Manjathodu colony, as his wife Asha was busy collecting firewood nearby for the late evening meal. A pet dog, their low-cost alert mechanism against wild animal attacks, was taking a snooze under the evening sun. Children played around the trees in the vicinity.
There are 42 landless tribal families at Nilakkal, Plappally and Pampa along the Sabarimala forest area. If the tribal families at Moozhiyaar are also taken into account, the figure adds up to 100. They belong to the Malampandaram tribe. Following an assurance from the district administration that they would be given land and rehabilitated, 16 families including Raju’s came and settled at Manjathodu nearly two years ago. Thanks to the intervention by former Pathanamthitta Collector P B Nooh, most of them were provided ration cards and identity documents. They also figure in the voters’ list but still do not have their own land.
Their pleas to install electric fencing using solar panels to ward off wild animals have fallen on deaf ears. Besides man-animal conflict, residents of the colony also battle acute water shortage.
The stumbling blocks
Manjathodu falls in Perunadu grama panchayat where the Sabarimala temple is located. According to Manju P V, member of Sabarimala ward in the panchayat, bringing all the remaining homeless tribal people to one settlement at Manjathodu was a daunting task. “Despite repeated efforts to convince them, the tribal people are sceptical about the government’s intentions. They say the government should first transfer the land in their name and only then would they settle in Manjathodu,” she says. “Efforts in 2011 to provide 25 cents of land each to 25 such tribal families did not materialise due to opposition from the forest department. This time around, the district administration is hopeful of finding a solution,” said Aji P, Tribal Extension Officer, Ranni.
There are social issues as well. The tribal people, who earn a livelihood by selling forest produce, have developed drinking habit due to their frequent exposure to the outside world. Abuse and exploitation of tribal people are on the rise forcing them to view outsiders and the government with an eye of suspicion.
“After selling the forest produce, many return drunk. Alcoholism is highly prevalent among both men and women. Fights are also common making it difficult to settle all at one place. Political parties use tribal people for campaign and other programmes but do not want them stay united,” said V K Narayanan, the ‘ooru mooppan’ of Attathoudu colony and member of the Pathanamthitta SC/ST monitoring committee.
A STARK CONTRAST
TNIE also travelled to the second largest tribal settlement in the state, Attathodu, located 20km east of Manjathodu. The residents here belong to the Malayulladan and Malayarayan tribes. A few members of the Malampandaram tribe have also been re-settled here. Unlike Manjathodu, residents here have a proper roof over their head and also uninterrupted power supply.
However, water shortage and wild animal raids remain major concerns for the 380 families settled here. There were instances of wild boars destroying large tracts of crops and also injuring pets. As dusk falls, blaring voices from the television sets in the houses muffle the chirping of crickets, offering a stark contrast to the travails of their less-fortunate cousins at Manjathodu.