ALAPPUZHA: In M S Swaminathan, Kuttanad has lost a beloved son who dedicated his life to farmers. It was the state’s ‘rice bowl’ that sowed the seeds of the agrarian revolution in the country. The struggles of the farmers of Kuttanad, which lies below sea level and is constantly subject to the vagaries of nature, deeply affected him. The region inspired him to pursue his studies in agriculture and the rest as they say, is history.
MSS’ ancestral house still stands in Mankombu. “His forebears arrived in the region from Madras more than two centuries ago on the invitation of kings of Travancore,” says Ajithkumar Pisharath, a resident.
“The Mankombu Devi temple was popular with devotees. The need for priests and helpers for its upkeep led the ruler to invite members of the Tamil Brahmin community to the village. King offered them land and facilities to conduct business in Mankombu and the port city of Alappuzha. Swaminathan’s grandfather and many other families settled in the village.
They own acres of land and cultivate rice in the land. But the low production was an issue and the unpredictable climate played spoilsport with cultivation every year. It may be the reason to attract Swaminathan to research in agriculture mainly paddy,” Ajithkumar said.
Swaminathan masterminded the ‘Kuttanad Package’. It was a proposal to uplift the agrarian life of the region, including Alappuzha, Kottayam and Pathanamthitta districts of Central Travancore, said M K Narayanan, a resident of Kuttanad.
“Based on a study by the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), the central government approved a Rs 1,840-crore package for flood mitigation, ecological conservation and enhancing agriculture production, mainly paddy, in July 2008. Unfortunately, the lackadaisical attitude of the state government, its departments and stakeholders of the central government led to it being shelved in 2016. After the five-year project was extended by two years, the estimate was raised to over Rs 2,509 crore in 2014.
“The Centre released Rs 517.27 crore before the package was dropped, but only Rs 398.78 crore was utilised. This large-scale under utilisation led to abandonment of the package,” Narayanan said.
“The completed projects also landed in controversy. Most of the funds were utilised for protecting vested interests and persons. The outer bunds constructed using the concrete pile-and-slab system invited large-scale allegations. The allocated funds were utilised ineffectively. The end result is that the benefits of the ‘Kuttanad Package’ have not yet reached the farmers or marginalised sectors, which was Swaminathan’s dream,” he added.