It’s rush hour at Punnamada Lake in Alappuzha. All kinds of houseboats — from the simple kettuvallam to super-luxury ones with Jacuzzi and swimming pools — glide past us both ways in quick succession. Our small country boat needs a little leeway to cross over to the Nehru Trophy ward, an island named after the famous annual boat race held in its waters.

“The traffic never stops, except at night. It’s fun to watch tourists enjoying. But at times, the rush gets a bit too much,” says Babychen, my boatman.

Finally, we manage to cross to the other side. A concrete walkway was built around the ward and opened to public last year. The walkway hems the village houses, beyond which are the vast paddy fields. Murali, a villager, and his friends are angling on the edge of the walkway and hoping for a good afternoon catch.

“On odd lucky days, we manage to catch big fish. Otherwise, the fish wealth in the lake has deteriorated in recent years. The waste generated by houseboat tourism, which has grown indiscriminately, is partly to be blamed. The increasing salinity of water has also affected the fish,” says Murali.

Houseboats, which travel through inland waterways for most of their journey, emerge into the lake at this open spot, and are often parked here for “afternoon rest”. Every passing moment brings in more boats, each anchoring a few feet from the other.

Sunitha, a villager, points to a rainbow-like pattern bobbing about in the waters in front of her house. “It’s the oil flushed out from the houseboats. Though the water appears clean on the surface, we can often see thick films like the one floating here. Add to it the plastic and food waste, and even human waste. Though we have piped water, we don’t get enough for daily use as the supply is for a short time every day. We sometimes bathe and wash clothes in the lake. In places where water shortage is severe, people boil and drink this water. Sometimes we get rashes on our skin after a bath in the lake. We did not get such rashes earlier,” she says.

Houseboats and backwaters have become so synonymous that hardly anyone remembers that they did not exist on Kerala’s tourism map until the 1990s.

The traditional kettuvallams transported rice, fish and other items from the rice bowl of Kuttanad to Kochi and other parts. The traditional, non-motorised boats took days to carry the cargo to its destination.

However, better roads and the availability of other transport options saw the kettuvallams falling into disuse. In the early 1990s, a few enterprising tourism officials and entrepreneurs converted one of them into a houseboat and took a few foreign tourists on a trip around the backwaters. They were bowled over by the experience of floating on the tranquil backwaters, flanked by lush greenery while taking a peek at the village life unfolding on either side. By the end of the trip, those behind it knew they had struck gold.

Soon, there was a surge in demand for abandoned kettuvallams, all of which were converted into luxury houseboats. Initially, it was mostly foreign tourists who preferred the slow journey in the houseboats powered by oarsmen, say the boat owners. The houseboats operated for 3-4 months a year, coinciding with the tourist season. The rest of the year, they were rested, covered in tarpaulin, and boat workers went about looking for other work.

The surge in domestic tourism happened at the turn of the millennium. In December 2000, the then prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee camped at nearby Kumarakom and took a houseboat ride. Before long, houseboats became active round the year.

Since the 1990s the State tourism department has been aggressively promoting Kerala in the international and domestic tourism markets as “God’s Own Country”, selling it as a dream destination with beaches, backwaters and hill stations. Tourist inflow has since recorded a surge annually.

Number guide

By 2005, the number of foreign tourists travelling to Kerala had touched 3.46 lakh annually, according to tourism department statistics. The number of domestic tourists stood at 59.46 lakh.

A decade later, by 2015, foreign tourist arrivals in Kerala almost tripled to 9.7 lakh. However, the surge in the number of domestic tourists was significantly higher, touching 1.25 crore. Total revenue (direct and indirect) generated from tourism in Kerala during 2005 was estimated at ₹7,738 crore. By 2015, it had zoomed to ₹26,689.63 crores.

The backwaters, all 900 km of it, is high on the wishlist of tourists. But it was the upsurge in the number of domestic tourists that changed the nature of tourism, particularly in the backwaters.

“Foreign tourists preferred calm rides in non-motorised boats. They wanted some quiet time with nature. But domestic tourists, who arrive in large groups, have different priorities. They want to have a blast. They wanted faster boats, loud music and wild celebrations. Thus began the transformation to the present form of houseboat tourism,” says Josekutty Joseph, president of the All Kerala Houseboat Owners’ Association. The association is busy organising the year-long silver jubilee celebrations of houseboat tourism in Alappuzha backwaters.

The shift to mechanised boats with outboard engines was an important step in that transformation. But within three years, concerns began to be raised about pollution from the oil outflow from the boats. A case was filed before the Kerala Lok Ayukta. The Ayukta ordered all engines be made inboard to reduce pollution. Though the boat owners asked for more time, they came around eventually and made the shift before long.

But a bigger problem remained. The onboard toilets were directly draining into the lake. A few years later, another case was filed in the Lok Ayukta, this time over the issue of toilets. The Lok Ayukta ordered that provision for biotoilets should be made.

Soon, the houseboat owners took legal recourse to demand a Septage Treatment Plant (STP) for a periodic cleaning of the biotoilets in the houseboats. The Lok Ayukta ordered the government to set up one. The plant was finally set up in 2014 at H-block, one of the islands reclaimed from the lake in the last century. It was built on a private-public partnership model, with houseboat owners providing the land, which they had bought for setting up night shelters, and the government constructing the STP.

Each houseboat is supposed to visit the STP once in four months to flush clean the biotoilets. Houseboat owners have to produce proof of these visits to get their annual licence renewed. However, records at the District Tourism Promotion Council show the houseboats at most paid one visit to the STP annually, while many did not visit at all.

“We have 740 registered houseboats. In the past three years, if all the boats had visited thrice every year, there should have been more than 6,000 separate boat clean-ups at the STP. But, we have only around 1,000 separate clean-ups on record. So, the question is — where is the waste from the rest of the boats going? The Pollution Control Board needs to be stricter while renewing licence,” says the DTPC official.

That is just the story of registered boats. By the admission of both the DTPC and the Houseboat Owners Association, there are at least 1,200 houseboats plying in the Alappuzha backwaters, which means 400-500 of them are not licensed. A GPS for boats is currently being implemented to counter the problem of unlicensed boats, but boat owners are sceptical.

In 2015, the department of environment and climate change commissioned the Nansen Environmental Research Centre India (NERCI) to conduct an environmental impact assessment on the effects of houseboats on the Vembanad lake ecosystem. The study found the houseboat operation on the lake to exceed the carrying capacity of the system. The lake was found to be in a state of ecological deterioration. Though houseboat tourism could not be blamed for the myriad kinds of pollution affecting the lake, it was found to be the source of pollution in two cases — faecal pollution and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon pollution caused by the spilling of fuel.

“Though owners claim oil is not leaking into the water after inboard engines became mandatory, we can still see signs of continuous leakages from the boats. Also, all boats have generators which cause kerosene leakage. The tainting of fish, giving it a foul smell, can be attributed to this. We had conducted a similar study in 2000. We could compare how the ecosystem and the water quality have deteriorated over the past 15 years,” says N Nandini Menon, senior scientist at NERCI, who led the team.

The study also documented a considerable decrease in the phytoplankton diversity in the area. The waterbody was found to be burdened by floating weeds. Increased turbidity of the waters due to the constant movement of houseboats, and the canopy of aquatic weeds inhibiting sunlight were depleting the phytoplankton diversity, found the study.

The 100 HP engines used in houseboats, with its re-suspension of bottom sediments and wave action, were found to damage the ecosystem in a way that could accelerate the rate of shoreline erosion, it cautioned.

The report takes note of the lack of awareness among tourists who throw plastic waste and food items into water, thereby further polluting the lake.

The NERCI team has recommended several steps to arrest the deterioration of the ecosystem, including regulating the number of houseboats operating on the lake. It has asked the government to fix the route of houseboats on the basis of their size, engine capacity and pollution certificate. This, the team said, would save inland canals from further deterioration.

The boat owners are not unaware of the problems. Many of them expressed concern about pollution driving away tourists in the long run, thus destroying the local economy, which is completely dependent on tourism.

“We do have a clear idea of how polluted the lake is now. There is a thick layer of plastic underneath. When we pull back the anchor, we get to see the load of plastic attached to it. But it is unfair to blame the houseboats for all the pollution in the lake. For instance, the chemical presence is from the use of pesticides in the adjacent paddy fields. We also want to protect this environment, it is our mainstay. We organise regular cleaning campaigns and sensitise crew and visitors on the need to keep the lake clean,” says Joseph.

There is a lot of filth below the crystal clear water that the tourists get to see. If there are no timely interventions, it won’t take long for the dirt to surge up.

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