Southern States - Karnataka   

Unemployment, sense of isolation haunt them

By Our Staff Correspondent

Eedu (Udupi Dt.) Nov. 25. Unemployment and a feeling of isolation appear to be the main problems faced by the people living in the Kudremukh National Park area and its surroundings. This offers naxalites a fertile ground to spread their ideology.

A portion of the park is in Udupi district. Nearly 70 per cent of the people living in its revenue enclosures are either landless or marginal farmers. According to an estimate, 500 families in the area are landless, 551 are those of small farmers, and 133 of marginal farmers. The remaining are families of big farmers. The SC/ST families number 470. Most of the small and marginal farmers are unemployed from November to April. They collect minor forest produce such as Rampatre (mace), nutmeg, sige, cinnamon leaves, and medicinal plants from the park for a livelihood. One of the grouses of the villagers is that the Forest Department guards prevent them from doing so.

According to Sudhakar Poojary, an agricultural labourer in Eedu, it will be better if they are allowed to collect the produce.

But the officials of the department said that they were only restraining people and not prohibiting them from doing so. They were only enforcing the provisions of the Wildlife Act.

It is said that naxalite and pro-naxalite organisations launched a "systematic disinformation campaign" making the farmers believe that they will be evicted from the park following the Supreme Court order in this regard.

The forest officials said they could not even touch the revenue enclosures, and the question of forcible eviction did not arise at all.

The many hamlets in the park are called revenue enclosures. Two or three families live in some of them. This makes taking up of development works difficult. Consequently, a sense of isolation and a feeling of being left out have developed among the people. This is in addition to the unemployment problem and makes some of them sympathetic to the naxalites who surveyed the hamlets and gleaned complete details of the families.

Sources said even the government departments did not have the kind of details and analytical data compiled by the naxalites. They had divided their areas of operation into zones A, B, and C. Zone A was the active one which comprised the park, Zone B the buffer zone comprising the Belthangady area, and Zone C the cooling zone comprising the Udupi area.

Since the problems of the region are economical, social, and psychological in nature, the Government will have reach out to the people in a concerted manner.

The disinformation campaign of the naxalites should also be countered.

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