What does it take to restore a land’s waterbodies to their original abundance? In Kottayam, the short answer is vision, determination and two years of government-people collaboration.
The long answer, however, can be an aggregation of many activities – constituting over a hundred local collectives, collecting funds from the public and government agencies, clearing and de-silting a huge web of waterbodies, restoring paddy cultivation in over 3,000 acres, and establishing locally owned tourism enterprises.
As the Meenchilar-Meenantharayaar-Kodooraar River Linking Programme enters its third straight farming season this October, plans are afoot to expand the farming operations to 5,000 acres from the current 3,100 acres.
Farmers, public to meet
“To achieve this, the farming operation in each of the polder collective will have to be expanded to about 85% of the total area available,” said K. Anil Kumar, convener of the river linking initiative. A preparatory meeting of the farmers and the general public to chalk out an action plan for the next farming season is slated to be held at Nalumanikattu next week.
The mapping and integrating of the invisible river networks will be carried out through local collectives. “Launched as a pilot initiative in four panchayats and one municipality, the project has restored canals that together run about 1,300 kilometres across 34 panchayats and four municipalities. About 700 km of this could be done with the help of the employment guarantee programme while works in the remaining area were carried out through mass participation,” he said.
The funding part
In implementing the project, it has so far expended ₹1.5 crore collected from the people and received budgetary allocations worth ₹5 crore from the State government. Further, projects have also been implemented in association with various State agencies.
Having restored a major part of the region’s water network, the initiative has now set its eyes on rediscovering the Pazhukanila backwaters – where the Kodoor and Meenachil rivers converge with the Vembanad lake.
The success of the initiative has drawn praise from different quarters. In a recent facebook post, Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac termed it “the most popular initiative in Kerala, which is gradually expanding its reach to the entire watershed areas of the Meenachil river.”
“If the government and others give the necessary support, the river protection activities in Kottayam are set to reach the next level,” he noted.
