Indigenous angst

The organised devastation of the pristine tribal habitat of Attappady hills is a classic example of how public funds can be misused in development programmes

Jeemon Jacob Thiruvananthapuram

Kalan is a 65-year-old casual labourer whose life spins between poverty and misery. He earns Rs 125 a day and on an average gets no more than 10 days of work in a month. Like hundreds of tribals who lost their ancestral land to the organised land mafia, Kalan, a former landowner, is now a coolie and a victim of government-sponsored development programmes. Uprooted from his own land, illiterate Kalan is fighting a legal battle against his oppressors. 

“My family had over nine acres of agriculture land. But we were evicted and our land was transferred to Subbayyan Chettiar, a local landlord, without our consent. Chettiar produced records which stated that the land was taken on lease and later was sold to him by my father. We have been fighting the case for the last 25 years,” said Kalan. He alleges that Chettiar bribed the local revenue office to transfer the land in his name and evicted Kalan's family from their land.

Kalan has been fighting a drawn-out and costly legal battle since then, which has only made him poorer. Meanwhile, his wife and daughter-in-law have died, leaving him to support his 11-year-old grandson. Indeed, he is not alone in this fight for survival: there are more than 1,000 land dispute litigations pending in various courts of Kerala. The indigenous people, many of whom live in the forest in clusters, are economically weaker, socially backward and politically disoriented. “Earlier, our lives were easy as we could live with the forest resources. But the development programmes destroyed our forest and agricultural land. Now we have no place to live,” said Kalan, describing his pathetic fall from a landlord to a coolie.

Attappady Hills spreading over 745 square kms in the Palakkad district of Kerala is the home of 28,711 tribals, who account for 42 per cent of the total population. According to forest land records, 444.05 square kms of the total land is forest, with agriculture land accounting for only 130.3 square kms (17.4 per cent of the total land). Roads alone account for 0.44 per cent of the total land. The roads to development were the gateways of corruption leading to massive deforestation in Attappady.

The state and Union governments have spent more than Rs 4.3 billion for the development of the Attappady region alone. Yet, the effectiveness of these programmes is coming under increasing criticism and scrutiny as people like Kalan live without livelihoods. “Here it's development versus people. The money spent in government-sponsored programmes was wasted. And large-scale corruption prevailed. Basically, the officials, their middle-men and contractors benefited from these development schemes — not the people of Attappady,” said Sukumaran, an office bearer of 'Red Flag', a grassroots organisation working in the village.

Attappady has witnessed a series of government-sponsored development programmes since 1962, when migration into the region from neighbouring Tamil Nadu and Central Kerala began. Tribals, who formed 90.26 per cent of the population in 1951, declined to 60.45 per cent in 1961, 42.21 per cent in 1971, 33.19 per cent in 1981, and to a mere 39.06 per cent in 1991. The population of tribals rose slightly to 42 per cent in 2001. The non-tribal settlers, who were better educated and skilled, displaced the indigenous people from their land, and exploited the natural wealth and forest.