REVISITING PUTHUMALA- PART 1

5 yrs on, living in unsafe homes, Puthumala landslide survivors feel betrayed

In a two-part series 'Revisiting Puthumala', Onmanorama explores the lacunae in the government's compensation policy by speaking to the survivors of Puthumala landslide victims. Read Part 2: Puthumala survivors pay tax for non-existent land, govt's compensation policy doesn't match reality.

Puthumala (Wayanad): Nehru S (39), a resident of Puthumala, is on the way to Attur, his ancestral village 55km from Salem in Tamil Nadu. "August 8 is the fifth anniversary of my parents' death," he told Onmanorama over phone on Tuesday.

"I will return after offering shraddha," he said, referring to the Hindu ritual performed in honour of the dead. Five years ago, Nehru was one of the faces of the tragedy triggered by the landslide that erased two hamlets in Wayanad's Meppadi panchayat — Pachakkad and Puthumala, billed by residents as 'mini Ooty'.

Today, Nehru represents the people who have fallen through the cracks of an ostensibly benevolent bureaucracy. Tea estate workers Rani (53) and Selvan (66), who named their only son after India's first prime minister, were among the 17 people killed in the landslide. They lived in the cramped lane quarters inside the tea estate of Harrisons Malayalam Limited in Pachakkad.

"The government promised me a plot and house. Five years on, I'm still doing the rounds of village office, panchayat office and taluk office for the house," said Nehru. Nehru is not alone who feel they were left behind by the government. Over the recent years, landslides in Meppadi have displaced at least 50 families who lived in the tea estate lane quarters, called 'padee'. 

One British-era 'padee' will have six houses, each with an area of less than 200 sq ft. Once a padee is destroyed, the estate workers are rendered homeless. "Neither the company nor the government considers them for rehabilitation projects," said Nehru. The government also rehabilitated or compensated those who lost houses under construction. There are around 12 families who bought or owned three to 10 cents of land to build houses. 

The Puthumala landslide razed their plots, and the blinkered government, their hopes. Small-time farmers who lost their farms are also reeling in penury because the government does not have a policy to provide alternative farmland to farmers.
Leelamma Joseph (64), a cardamom farmer who cultivated the spice on eight acres of ancestral land and lived in a five-bedroom ancestral bungalow made of granite stones, now lives on a church-donated 10-cent plot. 

Onmanorama spoke to a cross-section of the people of Puthumala untouched or inadequately touched by the government's rehabilitation schemes. All of them had one prayer and Abu Thalhath Naranthodi voiced it: "The government should not do to Mundakkai and Chooralmala residents what they did to us. Please hold all of them together."

Puthumala, a model that fell short
After the landslide in Puthumala in 2019, the government assessed 95 houses as destroyed or uninhabitable. Of them, 52 families were given houses in Harsham (Happiness And Resilience Shared Across Meppadi) township, built on a seven-acre land donated by Mathrubhumi Charitable Trust at Poothakolly in the same panchayat.
The houses were built on seven-cent plots, each, by voluntary organisations.Those who wanted to own residential land were given Rs 6 lakh to buy the plot and Rs 4 lakh to build the house by the government.

Nehru said he bought seven cents in December 2019, four months after the landslide, and the government directly transferred Rs 6 lakh to the land owner's bank account. But the money for the house never arrived. Harrisons Malayalam gave him Rs 1 lakh as solatium because his parents had been estate workers, though they had stopped working for the company by then.

The then collector Adeela Abdulla vividly remembered Nehru. "When I asked his name, he said Nehru. I thought he was joking with me, but his expression was distraught," she said.Officials said the district administration made an exception to ensure Nehru got a house of his own. But it appears the red tape tripped him, like others living in the lane quarters.

Mirage of safety
Abu Thalhath Naranthodi (46) and his wife Shemira N T received the worst deal. They are forced to live in the same house, assessed "unfit for habitation" by a technical team from the National Institute of Technology in Kozhikode.
Their house next to an estate football ground in Puthumala, 500m downhill from Pachakkad -- the origin of the landslide -- appeared to be a haven. On the morning of August 8, 2019, around 60 relatives from nine families took refuge there.

Officially, the people were shifted to the Government LP School in Puthumala."When I returned home in the evening from the relief camp, Shemira asked me to buy snacks for the people," said Abu Thalhath, who runs an automobile upholstery shop at Erumakoli in Meppadi.Abu bought the snacks and was returning home when he heard a big blast.

"I saw the floodwater rushing down in a flash and uprooted trees from the hill walking on the football ground. My first instinct was to run to safety and I did run," said Abu.But on second thoughts he paused and returned to rescue his family. 

"We dragged our elderly and children through the thick forest where even chickens cannot pass," he said. In the melee, his 26-year-old niece Ajira could not escape. They found her dead in her house filled with silt.The houses around Abu's were destroyed. His house on a 40-cent plot was seemingly untouched.

"But the foundation and the walls developed long cracks. The well was filled with debris and the road to the house was washed away. We are now living on an island," said Shemira. Today, a footbridge made of three areca poles keeps them connected to the rest of the panchayat.But Revenue officials would not cross that bridge and preferred to assess the condition of the house from the main road, 300m away. They reported the house structurally fit. 

However, a spot study by a team from NIT found the house unstable and sent the report to the collectorate. The collectorate sent the report to the taluk office and the tahsildar sent the report to the village office. "The village officer is not returning the report with his feedback," Abu said Thalhath. After the landslide, the family of five moved from one rented house to another for two years.

"Shemira is scared to live in the house. She has a mental breakdown if it rains. But we returned because I cannot afford the rent," said Abu who makes around Rs 600 daily. This time, the family left home on July 29 because of incessant rain in Mundakkai and Chooralmala, 2km away. They returned home only on August 3, Sunday. But in the five days, they stayed in the houses of four relatives. "Whenever closer relatives come, we have to move out to another house," said Shemira.

Kashmir, is not a heaven for a family of five generations
On August 8, 2019, when the landslide hit Pachakkad and Puthumala, Kashmir, an islet in the Kalladi River, with four families, took a big hit.That day, five members of an all-female family from five generations had a narrow escape, the youngest one, Darshini being only 56 days old. The grand matriarch Lakshmi, who the family claimed is 105 years old now, her daughter Kamala (71), her granddaughter Manjula (49), great-granddaughter Anusha (28), and Anusha's daughter Darshini was only 56 days old then.

They were staying in Manjula's house, which was a decade and a half old, and made of mud bricks. "The house is full of cracks like spider webs.The cracks have widened to become gaps so huge that anybody passing by can see who is sitting in the loo," said Manjula. The bridge to the house is also washed away. 

However, the Revenue Department had not declared the house unfit. The family said they would not return to the house. On July 30, this year, when three landslides hit Vellarimala and destroyed Mundakkai and Chooralmala, the family was huddled in a rented house at Neelikapp, an earshot distance from Chooralmala.

The family had another member, Darshini's younger sister, aged 71 days old. "How will we run around with children who are just days old and a woman past 100 years old," said Manjula, an estate worker and only earning member in the Tamil-speaking family. They trace their roots to Choladi village in Tamil Nadu's Nilgiris district. "We were all born here in Meppadi panchayat but our husbands are all Malayalis from Kerala," Kamala said.

Her mother Lakshmi said she quit her job and bought 6.5 cents at Kapankolly with her PF money and gratuity. She also borrowed Rs 1.4 lakh from Kerala Gramin Bank by mortgaging the plot in Kashmir. "But the panchayat is not sanctioning a house on my new plot. I just have a dream of dying in my own house," said Lakshmi.
Read Part 2: Puthumala survivors pay tax for non-existent land, govt's compensation policy doesn't match reality.