The Hindu Business Line : Reviving Kuttanad: Is there hope in the package?

Kuttanad, the “rice bowl” of Kerala, has of late become the focus of considerable interest, both political and agricultural, because of the “high voltage” publicity accorded to the “Kuttanad Package,” a scheme on the lines of the “Prime Minister’s Relief” package for the farmers of Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region.

The Rs 1,840-crore “Kuttanad Package” has been in cold storage for more than a year. Each passing day, there is more uncertainty surrounding the package. A careful examination of the details of the package shows that Rs 1,400 crore of the total Rs 1,840 crore, or 76 per cent of the outlay, has been earmarked for irrigation. For a single district in a State, this is an unheard-of sum!

Understandably, Mr Saifuddin Soz, heading the Ministry of Water Resources in New Delhi, has said that it would be impossible for his Ministry to meet this huge demand. He went on to record his objection, that before the package was “verbally approved”, the Agriculture Minister, Mr Sharad Pawar, had not taken him into confidence. These are understandable objections.

The package is now caught up in a bureaucratic bungle in New Delhi. A way to solve this impasse is for the State government to finance the project from the Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme (AIBP). But to shell out more than Rs 1,000 crore for irrigation on a single project in one district of the State is simply impossible. That is what the Kerala Water Resources Minister, Mr Premachandran has said. And he certainly has a point. Given that the UPA government has less than a year left in office, it is anybody’s guess whether the Kuttanad package will ever take off.

It is important in this context to make some serious observations about the package. In India, politically motivated and supported “scientists” who later become bureaucrats draw up hugely-funded packages, apparently without much serious scrutiny or analysis of the financial implications for the State or the Centre.

Involving stakeholders

The public in Kerala, for example, does not know how this massive sum of Rs 1,840 crore was arrived at! Was there a competent cost accountant and a capable auditor or financial analyst involved in vetting the outlays? Was there a soils and land use expert and a water management expert involved in the team that drew up practical aspects of the package? What was the interaction between these experts and the irrigation engineer, if any, involved in designing the package?

Was there a representative from the health department conversant with anthropological, social and ecological aspects of the terrain involved? And was there a value addition specialist in the team who could have shown the paddy farmer how to get more out of his crop?

These are all unsettling, yet highly relevant, questions that need to be asked when a package involving very large financial outlays is drawn up. It is important to remind ourselves that accountability and cost-benefit ratios of public funded projects are minimal in India. Alternatively, where public funds are involved, the demand is always several times the actual requirement. Private “waste” of public money is a common feature of planning. Transparency International would vouch for this.

Water the core issue

One must examine some unique features of the region in this context. The upper Kuttanad suffers from perennial water shortage, both for drinking and irrigation. Indiscriminate pesticide use, thanks to to the “green revolution”, dumping of waste from markets, hotels and slaughter-houses into the water bodies, intrusion of brackish water from Lower Kuttanad and water inundation due to unscientific paddy field conversion, are some of the factors contributing to the water scarcity of the region.

The entire population in these low-lying reaches solely depend on the Kuttanad Water Supply Scheme for potable water supplied by the Kerala Water Authority (KWA).

Treated river water is stored in huge tanks at Tiruvalla, about 20 km away from the supply points, worsening the drinking water problems of upper Kuttanad. Pipe bursts are a common feature in summer, while tube well water is acidic and not potable — again, a result of the so-called green revolution.

Thus, one observes the central role of water and its interconnectedness for both domestic need and agriculture in the entire scheme of things. Hence, a project with such a colossal outlay should give equal importance to domestic water use as to agricultural needs. Water use has to be mutually complementary.

Fragmented land

The next question is of the size of the holdings. Food security, as far as rice is concerned, is central to the State’s economic welfare. Fragmented holdings and change in land use are the twin problems that bedevil Kerala’s agriculture, particularly that of paddy.

The State, which once had a million hectares under paddy, has now merely 3.5 lakh hectares under the crop — just a third (35 per cent) of the original.

Far from having been able to bring about a permanent increase in the rate of growth of rice production, successive governments have presided over the steady decline in its cultivation, despite the much publicised land reforms. This is because land reforms in Kerala have been implemented as a means to re-distribute land, but, not to enhance its productivity.

The present farm crisis in the State, and in Kuttanad, in particular, is not a simple one-dimensional problem of providing enough water for irrigation, as the package seems to suggest. Water is only part of the problem.

The package should have addressed several other concurrent aspects, so specific to Kuttanad, and in this consideration, it falls way below any meaningful expectations.

(The author is a Kerala-based international agricultural scientist.)

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