There is a definite attempt to put the landslides on the backburner because news of them and climate change worry Wayanad's tourism and real estate businesses greatly.
Whatever I experienced of Wayanad's 2024 by-elections; the July landslides were not a burning issue, observes Shyam G Menon.
- Part I: The Woman Who Lost Everything
A couple of kilometres away from the central part of Kalpetta was the quiet colony housing the office of an organization that has become important to Wayanad's present reality -- the Hume Centre for Ecology. and Wildlife Biology.
Some years ago, the Hume Centre started studying Wayanad's weather and landslides.
In league with the Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT), it has divided the district into grids, each of them fitted out with a rain-gauge and related monitoring devices.
Using the data gathered so the two partners have been providing hyper local weather forecasts to Wayanad's farmers.
It wasn't long before the organisation's research into the region's weather, study of past landslides, mapping of the district based on its landslide studies and its investigations into rainfall patterns, were leveraged to issue periodic weather alerts to the local administration.
It is the responsibility of the local authorities to evacuate people and be ready for the consequence of extreme weather events.
Such warnings were issued ahead of the July landslides as well. In retrospect, a series of developments including the replacement of a key official in the local administration with a new one, disrupted the continuity in understanding of weather-related warnings that had been built up over the preceding period.
Data-based pre-emptive action had contained loss of life during the floods of 2018 and 2019. But thanks to the emergent gaps in communicating and processing information, the July 2024 landslide exacted a heavy toll.
With the state government claiming that it wasn't warned adequately by New Delhi of the impending disaster in Wayanad, the Hume Centre's work has acquired a politically critical dimension.
The institution's work is now something that local politicians and Wayanad's administration must notice and comprehend.
An organisation Wayanad and Kerala needs to know of
In early November, Dr C K Vishnudas, Director, Hume Centre was among speakers at a workshop on environment journalism held at the Muthanga wildlife sanctuary in Wayanad.
Dr Vishnudas put the July 2024 landslide in perspective. Wayanad is Kerala's small share of the Deccan Plateau.
Unlike in most other Kerala districts, where the Western Ghats are on their eastern edge, in Wayanad, the Western Ghats are on the western and south western fringe.
Beyond the hills on these sides lay the neighbouring districts of Kozhikode and Malappuram, which are further bordered on their west by the Arabian Sea.
Prior to the floods and heavy rains of 2018 and 2019 in Kerala, Wayanad had a long spell of droughts.
Even as heavy rain has currently displaced drought as the district's worry, the average temperature of Wayanad has risen by 1.5 degrees Celsius reflective of global warming.
Meanwhile, Kerala's monsoon has become erratic in behaviour. The state's rains also got complemented by the separate phenomenon of an Arabian Sea warmer than usual and contributing more water vapour for cloud formation.
"The monsoon system has collapsed," Dr Vishnudas said. Further, the old pattern in rainfall distribution does not hold good anymore.
In general, in the past few years, the central and northern districts have been more prone to extreme weather than the south.
With the warmer Arabian Sea also adding to cloud formation, it isn't just the overall layout of Wayanad's hills (they work as a barrier to clouds, forcing them to accumulate, gather density and release water as rain) that matter.
Each fold, twist and valley within a given mountain system also gets to count. Specific to the landslide above Punjirimattom, for example, Dr Vishnudas said that rain clouds had moved in from the seaward side, crept up that high slope and released their water along the top of Vellarimala.
The landslide triggered on the Punjirimattom side had then converged into the Punnapuzha valley thanks to the amphitheatre-like architecture of the mountain range here.
During the rainy season, Wayanad's hills stay rain-soaked. When the rainy weather aggravates due to clouds contributed by the Arabian Sea as well, the chances of landslide increases.
After a slide has occurred, it takes years for a given location to revert to being stable.
In other words, the same place can slide again under rainy conditions, even if the rain is not of extreme proportion.
Rain is quite heavy in the western portions of Wayanad, moderate in the middle and lower than these two belts, in the eastern portion.
Landslides have occurred in identified high-risk zones. They have also happened in less anticipated places, where the culprit usually is the nature of human intervention and construction.
Against this backdrop, there are areas in Wayanad where human activity and habitation must be regulated/restricted.
Not just that, an entirely new approach to human activity must be adopted including new construction methods.
The most important and immediate intervention required though is a good, trustworthy early warning system and well-maintained shelters that people can shift to.
The Hume Centre's hyper local weather forecast is more accurate than the Indian Meteorological Department's generalised forecasting.
At present, the alerts issued to the public are based on IMD's data. On the eve of Wayanad's July tragedy, some people in the know say, there was a mismatch between cautions issued on the basis of hyper local monitoring and the IMD's alert.
Reportedly, the latter wasn't yet a red alert signifying extreme weather and consequences.
To avoid such conflicting signals, Dr Vishnudas said, the two early warning models must be harmonised.
Only then, will alerts become free of confusion, only then will they be genuinely relevant.
Two things Dr Vishnudas said stayed in my mind -- first, people don't expect the changes to behaviour and imagination demanded of them because they have never experienced climate change before in their lives and second, people don't shift from where they are residing despite clear signs that they should.
The Hume Centre is taking its work to other hill districts in Kerala. In Wayanad, it got a head-start because some level of systematic, reliable data collection was already available thanks to the weather records maintained by the plantation industry.
Things could be similar in places like Idukki, where too the plantation sector is present.
Graduation to a mature warning system would take longer where data collection has to be built up from scratch.
According to Dr Vishnudas, if he had a chance to speak to Wayanad's by-poll candidates, he would tell them to quickly build good shelters that people in high-risk zones can shift to because extreme weather -- rain or heat -- is going to be a reality going ahead.
The system has to be akin to how Japan handles its earthquake problem. Moving out, moving back in, relocating if required – all these have to become doable; efficiently and easily.
Question is -- is anyone listening? As yet, one understands from enquiries around, only one senior politician -- T Siddique, the MLA from Kalpetta -- made it a point to visit the Hume Centre and get acquainted with its accrued knowledge and forecasting abilities.
That was soon after July's tragedy. Nobody else of political significance has made the trip. It brings us to a strange aspect of the 2024 by-polls.
A tragedy that is there and yet not there
From whatever I saw and experienced of Wayanad's 2024 by-elections; the July landslides were not a burning issue.
There is certainly public dissatisfaction over how the work of supporting, relocating and rehabilitating the survivors appears incomplete, mainly for want of funds. But the landslides, the larger context of climate change in which it is couched or the question mark over contemporary development paradigms that it poses, didn't appear to command the attention and importance it deserved in the candidates' campaigns.
One person into farming, who I have known for a while told me so: "There is a definite attempt to put the landslides on the backburner because news of them and climate change worry Wayanad's tourism and real estate businesses greatly."
Not just that, all the major political parties, used to large infrastructure projects as emblems of economic development, can't imagine differently.
They are trapped in costly projects and costly solutions. The trend stood encapsulated in a senior politician's now famous quip of how the landslides were essentially developments in just three wards in the Meppadi area.
To gauge how true the above view is, I spoke to a person in the local business community, I have known for some time.
According to him, the tourism business sank to never before known lows after the landslides and the media buzz around the tragedy.
Occupancy levels at resorts have been poor. Many of the tourists traditionally visiting Wayanad elected to go to Ooty and Coorg.
"That was to be expected. But the problem is, if the trend continues due to lack of confidence in Wayanad and in the meantime, Ooty and Coorg add facilities there, then we would find it tougher to recover," he said.
As regards real estate transactions, he said that prices have remained stagnant and big-ticket investments appear to be on hold.
The interesting thing, however, was the change in this person's perspective when compared to the earlier occasions we had chatted.
During those instances, he had been partial to big projects and capital heavy dreams.
"Climate change is a reality in Wayanad. We can't question that. We have to evolve and alter our projects accordingly right down to how we build things. The problem is nobody wants to acknowledge this challenge. It is still short-term goals and short-term planning," he said early November 2024, adding that there wasn't a politician yet who would risk political fortunes and highlight ground realities to the people.
The final word should belong to an insightful, senior politician I spoke to in Kalpetta.
He hit the nail on the head. For political parties, during elections and by-elections it is imperative to view important issues -- like the landslides and the rehabilitation scheme -- through the keyhole of what may capture people's attention.
An election is a contest between competing sides. In that milieu, what appeared expedient was the debate around funding.
So, the issue of funding the rehabilitation scheme found space in political discourse.
The other angles raised by the landslide, even if sensible and relevant to Wayanad at large, have to be kept out because it is too much for effective polls-specific communication. "We talk about the funding issue while campaigning," he said.
Thus, while this person didn't say it in as many words, the larger issue of why these landslides occurs; how Wayanad's residents must adapt to the changes upon them and what focused infrastructure should be developed for the same -- they appear politically unattractive in an election campaign scenario, even if scientists insist that the drone-view of Wayanad distilled to the specific is how perspective must be built up.
Politics better watch out for what ordinary people are doing.
People are watching
Jijeesh hailed from Punjirimattom, the village closest to the landslide's source and that brooding scar on Vellarimala.
He was away in Mananthavady when the landslide hit Punjirimattom. He lost his house. His elder brother was seriously injured. His younger brother died.
Jijeesh, who sympathises with the political Left, is an office bearer of Janashabdam, an association of those affected by July's tragedy and those keen to make sure that in the future such disasters don't elicit the kind of toll it did in 2024.
In all, it has about 1,200 members, he said. In October, Janashabdam was in the news for a protest it organised in Kalpetta.
According to Jijeesh, the state government's original promise was that it would pay Rs 300 per day to two survivors from a family for three months.
A month's money had been deposited accordingly in survivors' bank accounts. The rest was awaited (I spoke to Jijeesh on the phone, on November 7, roughly 100 days since the landslide).
"Unfortunately, the list of the beneficiaries isn't accurate. Money has gone to those deserving assistance and otherwise," he said.
The government has promised a second round of disbursement. Meanwhile the government's plan to relocate and rehabilitate the survivors on a portion of land obtained from plantations in Wayanad, hit a hurdle when the matter was taken to court.
During Wayanad's campaigning period for the by-election, both the chief minister and the revenue minister visited the district.
Jijeesh said the revenue minister had promised that land for relocating the landslide-hit people along with the stone-laying ceremony for the project, would be in place by December.
Work on the project to build new homes would commence in January 2025 and the expectation was that the houses would be ready by the first anniversary of the landslide.
"If the outcome in January is not as promised," Jijeesh said, "then our agitation will become stronger."
Shyam G Menon is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai.
Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff.com
