Last month, around 2,000 people, all farmers, gathered near a grotto of Mother Mary and infant Jesus on the bank of Pampa river in Angel Valley in Kottayam. The meet, held on January 8, was organised by the Kerala Independent Farmers Association (KIFA), which in recent years has emerged as one of the most vocal organisations lobbying for the rights of the farmers. The mood was of anger and despair and found resonance in the KIFA slogan “Kattu neethi kattil mathi,” which translates as ‘Keep laws of the forest in the forest.” Laws made to protect forests and wildlife – mandates for Eco Sensitive Zones and protection offered to crop raiding wild animals – are now being perceived as the biggest impediment to livelihood by farmers, who live in villages that border the state’s forested regions.
Angel Valley, a ward in Erumely panchayat bordering the Periyar Tiger Reserve, lies on the eastern tip of Kottayam district. It was in the news recently after being marked as forest in a satellite survey to determine buffer zones.The neighbouring ward, Pampa Valley, too was marked as forest in the survey, sending the residents into a tizzy as there are several restrictions on land use in buffer zones. The speakers at the Angel Valley meet, mostly representatives of KIFA, which has adopted a confrontationalist stance against environmentalists in the state and the Forest Department, encouraged the villagers to question laws and policies that pose a threat to their livelihoods and land rights.
“Why do we need national parks? Wild animals existed even before the formation of reserve forests and national parks. When these protected areas came into existence, the farmlands were subjected to forest rules. Only eight lakh acres of Kerala are reserved forests, the remaining forests are perfectly fine and animals live there. Then why do they need reserve forests? This needs to be changed,” said KIFA chairman Alex Ozhukayil in his speech. His contention was that until reserved forests are there, farmers would remain under the threat of lands being turned into Eco-Sensitive Zones.
The Supreme Court had directed that every protected forest, national park and wildlife sanctuary in the country should have a minimum one km eco-sensitive zone (ESZ), from their demarcated boundaries.The mandate has been contested by affected villagers and a section of environmentalists, who think it's unscientific. Kerala had been witnessing protests against the ESZ demarcation and recently the Supreme Court referred pleas to modify the one km mandate to a three-member bench. Last week the Wildlife Board in Kerala decided to recommend excluding Angel Valley, Pampavalley and parts of Thattekad bird sanctuary, which still has human habitation from demarcation as ESZ.
The farmers in Angel Valley, like their counterparts in similar forest fringes, are agitated by increase in man-animal conflict that makes farming impossible. For many it’s a daily struggle against marauding herds of elephants that never seem to leave their habitats and wild boars that have made intercropping in rubber plantations almost impossible.
“We have been dealing with wild animal attacks for many years. On top of this, in a recent survey by the Forest Department, our land and houses were categorised as forest cover. Most of us have our title deeds, how can they erase our existence?” asks Mary, a resident of Angel Valley.
Residents of Angel Valley have already lost acres of land, as they had to move away from farm land due to constant presence of wild elephants. They allege that the Forest department is of no help, and the officials harass them. Recently, after the controversial satellite survey four people were arrested on December 23, 2022, for dismantling a board put up by the Forest Department and replacing it with one that said ‘Welcome to Angel Valley’. Mary is not in a mood to relent. “We will fight till we die,” she said.
Man-animal conflict has become a daily part of life in similar agri-landscapes across the state with elephants, wildboars, peafowls and simians – all protected under stringent wildlife laws – making farming a profitless and risky venture. TNM travelled to farms in forest fringes of Kasaragod, the northern tip of Kerala, which have been experiencing such conflicts.
At the arecanut plantation of Sasidharan in Idiyadukka near Kanathur, problem makers are monkeys. Screeching langurs kept jumping from one palm to the other, plucking tender areca nuts, peeling off their skin and throwing it into a nearby stream. Once they were done with the areca nuts they moved on to coconut trees repeating the pluck and throw process. Langurs feed on the flowers of arecanut trees and also the tender nuts, sucking the juice before they are discarded.
“I used to cultivate plantains, vegetables and tubers here,” said Sasidharan, pointing towards a plot left barren. He stopped farming after the crops were continuously destroyed by wild animals.
“They do this all day,” he said, pointing at the monkeys. “For an outsider this might be fun but the pain we are going through cannot be explained,” said 65-year-old Sasidharan, a member of Anakkaryam Karshaka Sangham (Elephant Matters Farmers’ Collective), formed to address the challenges posed by wild elephants. The Sangham, which operates a WhatsApp group of farmers, in 2022 through an internal survey, found that 390 farmers in the area had lost Rs 42 crore since October 2019 due to wild animal attacks. Most farmers here rely on rubber, arecanut and plantain for livelihood. The farms lie close to Aletti forest in Sullia Taluk.
The situation is not different for farmers in Adoor, Karudukka, Parappa and Muliyar, which lie close to Kanathur.
Chandran Nair, a farmer from Padya near Adoor said even the elephants have started feeding on cassava plants like wild boars. “They pull off the stems with their trunks and go for the tubers,” said Chandran Nair. Initially, he thought that the tubers were taken by boars which frequently raid the one-acre farm. “So I kept a trap and waited outside at night and then I saw the elephant,” he said.
He recalls seeing a herd of 14 elephants just outside his house while opening a window. “What if we have an emergency at night? When my children who study in far away places come home we have to ensure they get home before dusk,” said Chandran Nair. Sasidharan used to harvest 2,000 coconuts two years ago. “It has come down to 500 because of monkeys. Most of us in our group stopped cultivating food crops. We grow only cash crops now, which are destroyed by elephants,” he said.
A 50-year-old farmer, Thomas, was killed by a tiger in Wayanad on January 12. The incident left local residents enraged, resulting in a protest. Two days later the tiger was tranquilised and captured but another one was spotted the same day in the district's southwest division. The tiger captured on January 14 was the sixth big cat netted in a year in the hill district, which hosts the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary, geographically contiguous with Bandipur and Nagarhole tiger reserves in neighbouring Karnataka. The outrage over the death also led to Kerala Forest Minister A K Saseendran stating that the government would consider sterilisation or culling of big cats and jumbos. The failure of the political parties both in the ruling front and the Opposition to address this issue have resulted in groups like KIFA that are channelising the anger against the government and pro-environment groups.
Sasidharan, farmer
The agitations have put the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Kerala Congress (M), now a coalition partner with the ruling Left Democratic Front, with five MLAs, in a spot. Kerala Congress, which has several splinter groups, is considered as a party of farmers. The Left reaped rich dividends in 2014 when Joice George of the High Range Samrakshana Samiti (HRSS), was elected as an independent candidate backed by them.
The HRSS, aligned to the Left and was in the forefront of the agitation against recommendations of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel headed by Madhav Gadgil lost the Church patronage in 2019 after Mar John Nellikunnel, the current bishop of Idukki, decided against political partisanship. It also chose not to contest the local body polls in 2020. Recently, a statement made Joice George, that the buffer zone is a reality, received wide-spread criticism farmer groups who believe he benefited from the 2014 protests against the recommendations of Gadgil and Kasturirangan panels but tried to turn HRSS into a CPI(M) vote bank.
Currently, the agitations are being driven by organisations including Kerala Karshaka Athijeevana Samyuktha Samiti (KKASS), a collective of 60 farmer outfits, backed by the Catholic Church, and Idukki Land Freedom Movement (ILFM), a relatively new outfit. ILFM comprises 22 farmers' organisations, traders and community organisations including SNDP Yogam, NSS, Catholic Church and various Jamaats. An organisation called Athijeevana Poratta Vedi (Forum for struggle for survival) is also active in Idukki.
Bishop Mar Remigiose Inchaniyil of Thamarassery diocese recently stated that people will resist the implementation of buffer zones in human habitations even if blood has to be spilled.
In Angel Valley, a speech made by Fr Scott Sleeba Pulimudan, was sharply critical of Kerala Congress (M) chairman Roshy Augustine. His words reflected the ire against the government and a veiled threat of violence. ¨We have suffered enough. We cannot tolerate anymore. Don't blame us if we attack forest vehicles or police officials. We are capable of doing anything,¨ he said. The KIFA website however states that they are "pledged to the law of the land and are committed to refrain from violence of any kind.”
KIFA, which wants to “defeat all farmer oppression through collective action and empowerment,” is only two years old but has 40,000 members and presence in almost all districts. They stepped into action by providing legal support to Wilson, an accused in the sensational case in which a pregnant elephant died after consuming a pineapple filled with firecrackers in Palakkad in May 2020. When the incident attracted national media attention, people behind KIFA came to the support of the accused. It now aggressively campaigns for farmer-friendly laws by organising meet-ups and effectively utilising social media. They also provide free legal support to farmers who are booked in cases related to forest law violations. KIFA leaders say the outfit, which claims a membership base of 40,000, has no allegiance to any political party. Members believe in different political ideologies.
KIFA is dismissive of assertions by environmentalists regarding the disastrous impact of quarries on the environment and the importance of conserving trees in the backdrop of climate change. “Forests haven't been reduced. It’s a myth. How can forest cover be reduced when there are strong laws to protect it?” asks KIFA chairman Alex Ozhukayil. He believes that the guilt around cutting of trees was manufactured by mainstream media, poets, writers, and environmentalists.
Alex Ozhukayil
KIFA is also a vocal supporter of culling wildlife to reduce man-animal conflict. “Culling is done when the animal population increases. No developed country considers wildlife above citizens’ lives,” said Alex. In May 2022, considering complaints of crop loss and bowing to pressure by farmer groups, the Kerala government authorised local bodies to kill wild boars. The argument in favour of culling recently received support from ecologist Madhav Gadgil, whose effigy was burned in 2013 by farmer groups for recommending Ecologically Sensitive Zones (ESZ) in Western Ghats.
Alex said the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 enables forest officers to cull wildlife. Section 11(a) of the Act says, “The Chief WildLife Warden may, if he is satisfied that any wild animal specified in Schedule I has become dangerous to human life or is so disabled or diseased as to be beyond recovery, by order in writing and stating the reasons therefor, permit any person to hunt such animal or cause such animal to be hunted.” Section 11(b) states that Schedule II, III or IV animals can be hunted if they “become dangerous to human life or to property including standing crops on any land.”
Poets and writers in the state who have taken a pro-environment stance have become soft targets for cyber bullying and ridicule. On New Year day, Prashob K, a Local Committee member of Communist Party of India (CPI), burned a copy of 'Manveeru', a collection of poems on trees by a leading Malayalam poet Veerankutty. It was a private act of protest but triggered an intense debate on social media after he updated the burning book as his profile picture. It polarised readers and writers, mostly on the Left side of the spectrum.
Prashob, son of an award-winning farmer, said he used to be a nature lover, but now considers environmentalists as hypocrites. “When I was young, I was influenced by poems and couldn't even think of cutting a tree. In a seminar against the Gadgil committee report in Mannarkkad, I stood alone and fought for the report to be published,” he said.
Prashob said he burnt Veerankutty’s book as a protest against those who make a “mockery” of farmers’ lives. “They criminalise the farmers in the hills and romanticise the environment in their poems. When wild animals become a threat to our livelihoods, we will defend ourselves,” he said. In a post on FB he had earlier explained the struggle his family had to face due to man-animal conflict. They were forced to sell off the farmland in 2004.
Like KIFA, there are smaller groups like Kalarikku Purathu, trying to build a counter narrative to environmentalism, which they allege is creating a guilty feeling towards nature. Their FB group has the tagline 'A correction of environmentalism in Kerala'.
Organisations like KIFA and their supporters have been citing the 2021 India State of Forest Report (ISFR) data to claim that forest cover in Kerala has increased. As per the report, prepared by the Forest Survey of India under the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Kerala's forest cover increased from 21,144.29 sq km in 2019 to 21,253.49 sq km in 2021, an increase of 109.2 sq km.
The country's Forest Cover went up by 2,261 sq km during the period, the report said. The ISFR itself defines Forest Cover as all lands more than one hectare in area with tree canopy density of more than 10%. It doesn't make any distinction between the origin of tree crops or tree crops and encompasses all types of lands irrespective of their ownership, land use and legal status. This resulted in everything including plantations and other monocultures being brought under the ambit of Forest Cover. Experts, who believe the Union government is using a flawed report to shore up its progress on climate commitments, have picked several holes in the assessment.
Data regarding elephants and tigers in the state is being increasingly used to question state policies of protecting natural forests and wildlife. Results from the All India Synchronised Elephant Population Estimation in 2017 showed Kerala had 3,054 wild jumbos. In 2019, the figure was revised after the dung count method showed a total of 5,706 elephants. The state had an estimated population of 6,177 elephants during 2012. A 2018 census showed Kerala had a tiger population of 190. Some conservationists like Ullas Karanth, who are sceptical of the methodology are not convinced about the growing numbers.
Forest department data shows an increase of around 20% man-animal conflict cases in the state in 2020-2021 compared to the previous year. The department has identified more than 1,000 areas in the state facing such conflicts. Every year the number of deaths due elephant attacks are increasing. Between 2018 and 2022, wild elephants killed 105 persons in the state.
Lawyer and environmental activist Harish Vasudevan is of the view that India’s forest management practices have been wrong for about a century. “Until 2021, we followed the management of forests based on the Forest Act of 1927,” said Harish.
The Act has been criticised for providing huge discretionary powers to forest officials that led to victimisation of forest-dwelling tribal communities and villagers who live in forest fringes. The Forest Rights Act of 2006 offered some solace but the implementation of the Act in Kerala leaves much to be desired.
According to environmentalist Sridhar Radhakrishnan, none of mainstream political outfits were successful in addressing many issues of farmers in Kerala. He however feels that data on forests and wild animals cannot be trusted. “Groups like KIFA are using the data in a dramatic manner. But there is a real problem in these areas. People who work in the environmental stream should sensitively understand these concerns. In Kerala none of the environmentalists are blind to the situation of farmers,¨ he said. While Harish is supportive of culling even the elephants if needed, Sreedhar considers such views extreme but is supportive of farmer demands to cull wild boars. ¨We need to listen to farmers who are also environmentalists.The extreme stand taken by organisations like KIFA cannot be accepted,¨ he said.