The Hindu Business Line : Mahabali's kingdom has undergone a sea-change

ONAM celebrations, which began on September 6 with Atham (Hastha) star in the constellation, will conclude on September 19 with a traditional snake boat race before the Parthasarathy temple in the river Pampa at Aranmula in Pathanamthitta district.

On the Thiruvonam star day, the tenth day from Atham, Malayalees believe that King Mahabali, under whose reign all his subjects were living in prosperity, would be revisiting his erstwhile kingdom to check whether his subjects were happy and prosperous.

In fact, the people here are in a festive mood right from the dawn of the new year of Malayalam Era (Kolla Varsham), which begins from the month Chingam.

In the past, the peasants used to work in the farms, mainly paddy fields and midlands, cultivating various crops such as rice, tapioca, plantains and other root crops and spices in the high lands.

Year- long farming activities normally culminate before the onset of South West Monsoon from June 1, which gives the farmers a break for about a month from mid-July to mid-August (Karkitakam).

They utilise these rainy days for taking rest and undergoing some traditional ayurvedic treatments so as to get rejuvenated before taking up agricultural activities for another year.

Normally, paddy is sown before the commencement of the monsoon and it becomes ripe for harvest in the month of Chingam for the Onam festival.

Thus, until four decades ago, the paddy harvested in this month is cooked in each home during the festival season.

Similarly, those items such as yams, vegetables, banana, plantain etc., used for cooking various delicacies are also home grown and harvested before the festival season begins.

The surplus produce is sold in the markets and with the sale-proceeds the farmers used to buy new clothes, jewellery and consumer durables for the family before Onam.

This legacy has almost disappeared with the breaking up of the joint family system and the emergence of nuclear families where both the husband and wife take up jobs outside the agriculture sector.

The situation has now changed with the entry of cash crops such as rubber, which has occupied a major part of the midlands and part of the highlands, squeezing the area once used for cultivating tapioca and other root crops and even paddy.

On the other hand, high cost of cultivation and scarcity of labour have resulted in sharp fall in the area under paddy cultivation in the State. These two factors have deprived the State of its legendary harvest festival, as the situation has reached such a stage that there is virtually no harvesting of any Onam crops.

The total area under paddy, which stood at 8.75 lakh hectares in 1970-71, has come down to around 3.8 lakh hectares in 2004-05 shrinking the rice production from around 14 lakh tonnes in the seventies to around six lakh tonnes of late.

The high pressure of population beyond the carrying capacity of the land, coupled with a cropping system traditionally oriented towards cash crops, contributed to its being a food deficit from the very beginning.

The gap between demand and supply of rice, which was around 50 per cent till the mid seventies, had started widening there after the large-scale shift in paddy lands for cultivation of other remunerative crops like coconut.

The area under coconut has gone up from 7.19 lakh ha in 1970-71 to over 9 lakh hectares in 2004-05.

This phenomenon coupled with reclamation of paddy fields for construction of residential and commercial buildings and criss-cross roads in the Kuttanad region, known as the granary of Kerala, has brought down the area under paddy drastically.The shift towards cash crops such as rubber, coconut, pepper and other spices had improved the per capita income of the farmers.

However, in the case of those depending on tea and coffee cultivation of late have a tough time due to the low prices for their produce in recent years.

The area under tea was 36,877 ha while that of coffee was 84,139 ha in 1999.Following sharp fall in prices of tea, several plantations have been shut down. Similar is the case with coffee plantations.

Majority of the area under tea is held by corporates while there are 10,000 small growers. If there are 70,000 small growers of coffee that of rubber is over nine lakh and of cardamom is 20,000. For about one lakh small growers of tea, coffee and cardamom, the prices of their produce have not been remunerative for the past few years and hence they are not in a position to celebrate the Onam like rubber growers.

The pepper growers are also reeling under the decline in prices. As the prices have been on the downward trend, the Kerala Government had resorted to a market intervention exercise and procured 4,800 tonnes at Rs 75 a kg directly from the producers. But, this exercise failed to arrest the fall due to large-scale imports of pepper at low prices from Sri Lanka under the free trade agreement. The situation has deprived the farmers of remunerative prices.

The area under rubber rose from 1.79 lakh ha 35 years ago to 4.78 lakh ha last fiscal. Similarly, the production of natural rubber has also risen from 79,000 tonnes to around 6.5 lakh tonnes. Thus, 83 per cent of the area and over 90 per cent of production is in Kerala now.

Given this scenario, the production of essential commodities dropped drastically. Because of the predominance of cash crops in the agriculture of the State, the per capita consumption of non-food items is very high in Kerala compared to other parts of the country.

On the other hand, the extreme pressure on land has resulted in large-scale encroachment of forestlands resulting in the denudation of the green canopy of the State.

The size of land holdings in the State has become quite small, the average size of the holding being less than 0.4 hectare.

About 90 per cent of the holdings are below half a hectare in size. There is thus acute pressure on land making agriculture less attractive. This has had its adverse impact on the ecology of many parts of the State and has been one of the major causes of the frequent occurrence of droughts and floods and of degradation of lands in hilly areas.

The situation has increased the dependence of the people for essential commodities especially rice, vegetables, cereals, pulses etc, on the neighbouring States.

Because of inadequate production and the need to import most of the essential and other consumption requirements of the population, the pressure on general price has been high in the State.

It has given rise to the vicious circle of higher wages and higher prices. To add to this, the flow of remittances from abroad also contributed to the pressure on prices.

Thus, the State has become high cost non-competitive economy, which has come in the way of attracting investors within the State and from the rest of the country.

In fact, the investors in the State have been moving into other States and investing there.

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