Palakkad: As a BA Malayalam student at Rajiv Gandhi Memorial Government Arts & Science College at Attapadi in 2015, Prashob K idolised nature poet Veerankutty.

Veerankutty's anthologies found a place in Prashob's shelf. His poems were seminar subjects for the student.

When the Kerala Independent Farmers Association (KIFA) organised a talk against Gadgil Commission report in Mannarkkad, a municipal town in Palakkad, 19-year-old Prashob was the lone speaker advocating its implementation.

Back then, he was the students' union chairman of the college and a leader of the All India Students Federation (AISF), the student organisation of the Communist Party of India (CPI).

Seven years later, Prashob, now a member of the CPI's local committee at Kumaramputhur grama panchayat, shocked his idol and other environmentally conscious poets and writers by burning a copy of 'Mannveeru', a collection of 45 poems by Veerankutty.

The New Year Day's solo protest went viral when he made the burning book his profile picture on Facebook and tagged Veerankutty.

The poet called it an act of fascism. Prashob said it was a "protest against the 'tree-hugging poets' who kept generations of Malayalis blind to their reality by romanticising nature and wildlife. He said he had cried seeing the news of CPI leader Binoy Vishwam hugging a tree to save it from being felled. "They cannot keep us guilt-ridden for using nature's resources or for calling for resistance against raiding wildlife," he said.

Proshob picked on Veerankutty after seeing the poet's sarcastic responses to the Facebook posts by Cx Tedy, an activist from Attappadi who has been calling for the easing of "stifling" environmental rules and policy for the past 10 years.

The bitter battle divided the social media with environmentally conscious writers and poets on one side and a group advocating "guilt-free use of natural resources" on the other side.

What makes the debate interesting is both sides claim to be speaking from the Left corner of the ring.

But if noises are cut, the issue boils down to the rising man-wild animal conflict in Kerala and the Supreme Court's order to maintain a 1-km buffer zone around forests.

Breaking the grip of Kerala's intellectuals over public consciousness

Cx Tedy (40) belongs to a collective called 'Kalariku Purathu', a phrase lifted from the Malayalam saying that means 'dabbling in extremes'.

"We started as a small group of 60 trying to change the guilty consciousness of Malayalis when it comes to the environment. A guilty consciousness implanted and nurtured by our poets and writers. We are relying on purple prose and we are countering them with hard data," said Tedy.

Tedy, whose real name is Thomas Xavier, has 12,000 people following him on Facebook. Most of them agree with his thoughts and support the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the CPM.

To be sure, Tedy follows no one. "I don't belong to any party. If you insist, you can label me left-leaning," he said.

Recently, at a farmers' seminar organised by CPM's mouthpiece Deshabhimani in Palakkad, Tedy hauled former Forest officials and writers over the coals for allegedly trivialising the man-wildlife conflict. "The green cover of Kerala has increased. Nearly 30% of the state is protected as forest. This is in a state with a population density of 859 persons per sq km," he said.

Around 20% of India's elephant population is in Kerala, which has only 1.18% of the country's land mass, he said. "But a Forest official says you don't have a problem when a cow knocks down someone. Elephants are raiding areas in Attappadi that have not seen jumbos in the past 50 years. Wild boar is in Schedule 3 of the Wildlife Act though it has been raiding crops, goring people to death and breeding indiscriminately. It should be declared a vermin but there is no measure to control its population," said Tedy, who quit his job as a chef in the UK and returned to take care of his ailing father and sister in 2012.

Prashob said culling is part of the government policy in the western world to keep the population of wild animals in check. "There is no uproar there. Our poets who happily cite the West as an example in conservation do not mention culling," he said.

Rising cases of conflict with wildlife

According to the Annual Forest Statistics, man-wildlife conflict increased by 20% to 8,017 in 2020-2021, compared to the year before that.

Elephants killed 27 persons, wild boars finished eight and a tiger mauled one person in 2020-2021. A year before that, 13 persons were killed by elephants, three by wild boars, and two persons by tigers.

Elephants and wild boars have injured 181 persons in 2020-2021, compared to 131 in the year before that, an increase of nearly 40%.

From 2019 to 2021, wild animals have lifted 721 cows in the state.

But according to the Forest Department's count, the elephant population was 5,135 in 2005. It peaked at 6,177 in 2010, and dropped to 5,706 in 2017, according to the latest available data.

Drop in Reserve Forest area

Since 2009, Kerala's forest area marginally increased to 11,520 sq km from 11,309 sq km, which is around 29% of the total area of the state.

Forest area includes reserve forest, proposed reserve, vested forest, Ecologically Fragile Land (EFL), and protected area.

But in 2009, Kerala's reserve forest area was 9,107 sq km, which is 80.53% of all forest land. In 2021, the reserve forest area has shrunk to 6,451.68 sq km, and is now only 56% of the total forest area.

Principal Wildlife Conservator and Chief Wildlife Warden Ganga Singh did not respond to calls made to find the reason for the drop.

'Poets are soft targets, they should take on the govt'

Prashob and many of his supporters on Facebook blame poets and writers of Kerala for the lack of development in the state and the rigid environmental laws.

"They have contributed to forming the public consciousness in the state. They are the original influencers," said Prashob.

In one poem, Veerankutty wrote: 'Shrink down humans and put them in a corner, Only if there is space left after earthworms and caterpillars'.

"In my college days, I thought it was creative freedom. Today, I know it is anti-human," said Prashob.

Prabhob's father Prabhakaran K used to grow around 5,000 plantain trees. He was the first to do tissue culture plantain cultivation in Palakkad. "But peafowls swoop down in groups and destroy the cultivation. But poets such as Rafeeq Ahmed romantically write that he wants to become a peacock. They are mocking our lives," he said.

Both Prashob and Tedy said Attappadi should have small quarries to cater to the needs of the people in the area. "Our cost of construction is high because we have to get stones and rocks from 60km away," said Tedy.

There were no sawmills either in Attappadi and Attappadi has an area of 735 sq km. "A few years ago, we felled a rosewood that was easily worth Rs 6 lakh. But we got only Rs 3 lakh because the timber merchant had to haul the log to a faraway place to saw it," he said.

Tedy said when his grandparents and parents migrated to Attappadi, the land was barren. "My grandmother used to say there was not a twig for the crow to perch. Today, our five acres are full of trees. Who planted them? Should we learn environmentalism from the poets?" he said.

Prashob pulls out another poem by Veerankutty. "In 'Ezhuthu' (Write), Veerankutty says: 'Write about the importance of saving trees on this paper' and goes on to say paper is made from wood pulp."

Today, Prashob sees hypocrisy in such poems. "Recently, the media widely reported an incident where relatives carried a pregnant tribal woman for 3km to take her to the hospital because there were no roads to her village Kadukumanna in Attappadi. But no one reported why there are no roads. There are no roads because the Forest Department does not allow roads to be constructed," he said.

Veerankutty said no poet was against the development of basic infrastructure for residents. "People's lives and property should be protected by the government. Basic infrastructure should be developed. And they should take it up with the government. But these groups are using the plight of the poor to pave the way for the corporate houses to exploit natural resources," he said.

He said it was important to drive home a sense of guilt in people so that resources are used judiciously and not wasted or mined recklessly. "Without the guilt, our society will descend into crass commercialism," he said.

"If they accuse us poets of creating guilt in people's minds for using resources, we will plead guilty happily," he said.

Veerankutty said he responded to Tedy's post sarcastically because he was mocking the contributions of poets such as Sugathakumari, the Silent Valley Movement and the Kerala Sasthra Sahithya Parishad.

Environmentalist C R Neelakandan said those rooting for guilt-free felling of trees and using resources are neither youths nor left. "Today's youth is represented by Greta Thunberg," he said.

Yesterday, when the management of Palora Higher Secondary School in Kozhikode felled trees on the campus, the students wrote to the government to register their protest.

Tedy dismissed the concerns of the children as 'emotional bandh'.

Neelakandan said poets and writers were soft targets for these "cyber bullies". "They should be moving the courts and talking with the government to change the environmental policies and not try to censor how poets think and write," he said. The rising man-wildlife conflict is a failure of the Forest Department. "But we don't see them outraging against the government," he said.

Neelakandan said the left leaders might be using these groups to advance their new agenda. "That's why they don't come out in the open to refute or own up to the new line of thinking," he said.

The book-burning protest is not dying. The group is targetting more poets and writers such as Ambikasuthan Mangad accusing them of leading a cozy life while advocating earthy ideas.