IDUKKI: Around 8pm every day, after finishing dinner, Rajumol Ayyappan, a tribeswoman settled in the 301 Colony in Chinnakkanal, clambers up a wooden ladder to reach a makeshift hut built on the rooftop of her house. Her purpose: escape from wild elephants. Just last month, the elephants had attacked her house.
The scene is now normal in the colony where as many as 301 landless tribal families were rehabilitated by the A K Antony-led government in 2002. Although Chinnakkanal has witnessed two major turns of events in the past two years – the translocation of wild tusker ‘Arikomban’, which worsened their lives, and the death of another marauding tusker ‘Murivalan’–the tribal families have learnt to cope with the wild jumbo attacks.
While many families left the colony in the face of unrelenting elephant attacks, only a handful of families, numbering below 10, continued to occupy the area. But the situation is now changing as more families are returning to the 301 Colony. While some stay at their houses, others at least carry out farming on the one acre the government had allotted them.
“After the Arikomban issue, there was widespread rumour that the forest department was going to turn the area into an elephant sanctuary by evicting the tribespeople. Moreover, wildlife experts’ suggestion to retain it as an elephant corridor has also sparked concern among residents, who are now returning to keep possession of the land allotted to them,” Manikandan, a colony resident, told TNIE.
Though the tribespeople cultivate cash crops like cardamom and pepper, guarding the crops from pachyderms is a daunting task.
“But we have learnt to understand the jumbos. If they stray into the farmland, they are driven back by making noises. And they are never harmed,” he said.
Natarajan, a tribal resident who is also a Rapid Response Team (RRT) member, said the department has formed a WhatsApp group including the local residents to give timely updates on the movement of wild elephants.
“An eight-member RRT team is patrolling round the clock to drive away jumbos straying into the residential area,” he said.
Natarajan said jumbos attack houses only if they find that nobody is inside them.
“The wall of my kitchen was demolished last month by tusker Chakkakomban to steal food items. The attack occurred when I had gone for night-patrolling duty, and my wife too was not home,” he said.
To ensure safety, the tribespeople have hung glass bottles on cables tied around their compound so that the rattling of bottles on jumbos’ arrival would alert them at night.
“When the bottles clink, we quickly move to rooftops. The neighbours are informed and the jumbos driven back from the residential area jointly,” he said.