By Smita Ramanathan
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Last year, Kodagu district, also known as Coorg, received unprecedented rain, followed by landslides in nearly 40 villages across six Gram Panchayats. This hilly district on the Western Ghats has picturesque coffee and spices plantations. In the 40 villages that bore the brunt of the landslides, many families’ lands and houses have been wholly or partly destroyed.
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Though the administration has taken up rehabilitation and compensation measures, this has not been done methodically and in consultation with the people, claimed Dhananjaya [a panchayat member from this village].
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The farmers do not have information on what the alternate [agricultural] options are. [Saleela Patkar, a coffee and pepper grower from Madikeri,] said there hasn’t been a scientific and methodical assessment either of the damage nor the options for rehabilitation and land reclamation.
She said that government departments such as those of agriculture, horticulture and the Coffee Board could have used this as an opportunity to assess how to rehabilitate affected persons and provide compensation.
“It was just 40 villages that were affected. They could have looked at it as a pilot intervention where existing funds could have been repurposed for a specific project looking at land rehabilitation, compensation for people who lost land at a large scale, how to introduce new crops, insurance, new tools, new watershed treatment plans — where you look at slope stabilisation and not just soil and water conservation,” added Patkar.
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