ARIYALUR: For Irulars, living in penury in Kuvagam village of Ariyalur district in Tamil Nadu, it is more than a new lease of life. With the help of the state government, they have happily bid adieu to their traditional occupation of catching rats and snakes and collecting honey, and turned to cashew cultivation. There is a lot of excitement in the village after they recently earned a handsome profit of Rs 3.5 lakh.
This follows the move of the Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare department to sanction Rs 5 lakh as a special fund to Irulars for making the earnest money deposit (EMD) to participate in public auctions. In 2022, the Tamil Nadu Forest Plantation Corporation Limited (TAFCORN) announced that cashew harvesting could be leased through an online tender process across the state with an EMD of Rs 4.5 lakh.
Once they bagged the bid, 80 families got involved in cashew cultivation on about 100 acres in Kuvagam. They took good care of the cashew plants by spraying pesticides and erecting fences. Their efforts paid off with a harvest of 95 sacks of cashew nuts (each sack having 80 kg) and sold them to traders for Rs 9.70 lakh of which Rs 3.5 lakh was a profit.
‘10 more Irular hamlets selected for agri scheme’
Seeking to better their lives, the Irulars had filed several petitions since 2014 with the Ariyalur district collector, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister’s Special Cell and TAFCORN, requesting them to lease government land under the Forest Rights Act, so that they could start farming. It was only in 2022 that, with government aid, they could embark on the new initiative. District collector P Ramana Saraswathi told TNIE, “This is a long-standing demand of the Irular people. So, we bought Rs 5 lakh as special funds from the Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare department and helped them for farming. It has succeeded.”
“Considering this, we have selected 10 villages to engage in agriculture in the same way. TAFCORN had sanctioned this. We are awaiting money from the government,” the collector added. Speaking to TNIE, C Dharmadurai, an Irular of Kuvagam, said he had been engaged in rat-snake catching in fields, houses and gardens for many years as no other work was available to them and he is thrilled with the new job.