As paddy cultivation is on a shrinking stage in the State, a tribal hamlet in the district is showing the way for rejuvenating the paddy field after lying fallow for years.
The Korangatti tribal village, near Adimaly, has brought under cultivation over half of the 150 acres of fallow land under it and it is on a harvesting-spree now. It was a government initiative in 2005 that a project was prepared to promote paddy cultivation in the tribal hamlet by bringing the fallow land under cultivation.
The tribal people were paid wages and engaged in the cultivation. It was an experiment later linked to Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) and nearly 30 Padasekhara Samithies were formed. However, the delinking of the farm labour from MGNREGS was a temporary set back to paddy cultivation, though increased number of tribal people engaged in farming.
It was in Korangatti that the MGNREGS was implemented on an experimental basis in the State by linking it with the complete paddy production scheme.
Tribal people say the scheme has helped in bringing more of them to paddy cultivation and it is a self-sufficient tribal village in paddy production. They also sell a portion of the paddy to outsiders. They mainly cultivate Pattambi, Malabar, Palakkadan, and Matta varieties. They say that the wild animal attack in the paddy field is a problem and needed help to bring more land under cultivation. The harvesting has just started now.
In addition to their own labour, there is a tiller and hushing machine jointly owned by the Padasekhara Samithies. Thevarkuzhiyil Raveendran, president of a Samithi, says that the main benefit of the scheme is that the village became self-sufficient and they plan to bring all the fallow land under cultivation viz-a-viz engaging more tribal people.
However, it was the alienation of the land that has made them dependable to the ration rice. If there is an initiative, all fallow land could be brought under cultivation in tribal settlement areas, Kochupurackal Raghavan, secretary of a Samithi, says.
