Before the rains started, coffee planters in Coorg were talking of a good crop —the plants were well rested after a lean year and went through the process of blossoming and forming fruits. That settled, seasonal certainty is gone with the wind and merciless lashings of torrential rain.

A fully-done crossword puzzle is on the table next to Chitra Subbaiah who confesses that she could forego reading the newspaper, but not the crossword. We are in the cottage of a home-stay in Madapura, north Coorg, resplendent in the evening sun—the first day in two months that the rain has let up. It brings some rel­ief from fear. Chitra, nearing eighty, rec­ounts a painful experience with great fortitude. “You have to do some mental jugglery, you know. You can’t curse your fate.” She’s staying in a friend’s cottage because her home, in the neighbouring village of Hattihole, now lies beneath a pile of earth which slid down the hillside, burying everything she owned.

“Wiped out, totally. I don’t have one pin. There is nothing to say there was a house,” she tells Outlook. All she could reach out for in time were her spectacles, medicines and some gold the wor­kers from her coffee estate had ent­­r­­usted her with safekeeping. The workers’ quarters on her coffee estate too went down. Fortuna­tely, they had time to move out. She points to others in the same situation. “At least I can rent a house and stay. What about so many others, who have nothing,” she asks.

Before the rains started this year, coffee planters in Coorg were talking of a good crop—the plants were well rested after a lean year and went through the process of blossoming and forming fruits.

That settled, seasonal certainty is gone with the wind and merciless lashings of torrential rain. It rained heavily through July and August in this region of south Karnataka bordering Kerala. Then, in late August, came a series of punishing cascades of sodden earth. Now, there’s a trail of ruin in these charming hills, where landslides have swept off whole villages, re-arranged estates and shattered its economy. With immediate rescue measures tapering off, one question hangs limply in the air: where do you start picking up the pieces?

“I can’t plant anything now on my land, that’s for sure,” says K.U. Erappa, standing in his camouflage gumboots in a relief camp inside Madikeri’s old fort where, grouped with several families, he has been staying for days now. “All that’s left of my coffee plants are just stalks,” Erappa says. His ageing mother walks up to say, “We had a small house, but it was pretty.” Their grief is palpable. Erappa owned a few acres of coffee and paddy in Mukkodlu, one of the hardest-hit places in north Coorg, in the vicinity of district capital Madikeri. Much of Coorg is remote, away from the main-travelled roads. Like others, Era­ppa has been going back to salvage what he could. His three children, like most kids from his village, have been sent away to a temporary residential facility in a school in Ponnampet town at the southern end of the district. “We never dreamt Coorg would come to this,” says N. Bose Mandanna, a planter from Suntikoppa.

Right now, a full picture of the damage isn’t available, though it is being estimated. Planters like Mandanna reckon that at least 5,000-7,000 acres have been wiped off in the landslides. For the plants still standing, there’s the danger of wet feet and black rot—water-­logging at the base of the plant that strangulates it, cau­sing leaves to fall off. “When leaves are lost, next year’s crop is also lost,” says Man­danna. Coorg, with about one lakh hectares in cultivation, accounts for close to 40 per cent of India’s coffee production. The 2017-18 post-blossom estimate was 1,33,500 metric tonnes, most of which is exported, Italy being a top destination. To make matters worse, prices, say market watchers, have been at historic lows. Brazil is harvesting a good crop this year and so will Columbia and Vietnam.

“International prices have gone (down) to levels last seen in 2006. We are getting a lot less now, if you factor in the inflation,” says Ramesh Rajah, president of the Coffee Exporters Asso­ci­ation. Prices dep­end on the big three producers—Brazil, Columbia and Vietnam—which account for over 70 per cent of the global production. “Only if there are supply shocks in the big three will there be impact in international prices. India can lose one third or even half its production and the international market is not going to blink,” says Rajah.

In the mid-nineties, Coorg coffee saw a boom when prices rose because of a supply shortage in Brazil whose production, apart from being vulnerable to frost, was considered inefficient then. The boom years lasted a decade until trends began to reverse. Owing to hilly terrain, Coorg can’t mechanise the way Brazil did. So, it has been grappling with high labour costs. Nor can other crops be sown, as coffee plants need trees for shade. Many Kod­a­vas, as Coorg’s natives are called, conc­ede the difficulty in maintaining pla­­­­n­­tations. The symptoms, many say, have been showing—an ageing population, a you­nger generation that has been migrating to cities and bits of land being sold to meet expenses, the latter contributing to a soc­ial churn in the highlands. This devastating blow came on top of all this.

The future, many say, is bleak. First, the question of land lost, by no means an easy task, given the complexities that involve verifying claims, boundaries and so on. “Let the government acquire the property. See the record, set­tle them,” says planter Mittu Che­n­gappa, who’s also a Karnataka Congress general secretary. His suggestion, that the government acquire private land ravaged by landslides for afforestation so that owners can begin afresh elsewhere, has been voiced by many. Unlike neighbouring Chikmagalur—where coffee was first grown in India—there are more small growers in Coorg, many owning only a few acres.

Even for those who didn’t lose land, rep­lanting will be a big financial burden, says Rajah. Besides the upfront cost, it would mean a five-year wait for yields. “So, how will they sustain themselves for five years? What does he do about infrastructure within the farm, workers’ houses, his house?” asks Rajah. Coffee planters have always weathered difficult years, but the destruction this year is unprecedented. “Some years, the crop yield is sharply lower because of lack of rain or excess rain. But this is the first time we have act­ually seen this sort of damage where infrastructure is damaged. It’s going to be very difficult in the short term,” reckons Rajah. In the long term, he says, every producing country is bleeding, so things can be pulled back to a degree by increasing efficiency. Of course, primary rehabilitation remains a priority; the process of replanting will take place slowly.

“The other thing is the labourers are not coming back. We are still in a state of flux, a dilemma as to what’s going to happen. There are a lot of issues, it’s very fluid,” says Nanda Belliappa, a coffee grower from Hattihole who has to now walk half a kilometre inside his property to reach his house, as the road leading to it is blocked. The Hatti, a stream outside his gate—where once a Malayalam film was shot—has beached fallen tree trunks ashore. “The neighbours’ coffee plants and trees are on our road…it’s unbelievable,” says his wife Anitha. In villages in these parts, the conversations go from rain to earthqu­ake—many planters say they heard loud booms and felt tremors, but officials say no seismic event was captured.

Bose Mandanna too says he won’t be so pessimistic as to say that the coffee ind­ustry won’t claw back. But he’s doubtful about the prospects of a full recovery in North Coorg. “This area cannot come back in a hurry,” he says. Last weekend, as the evening drew on, Madikeri wore a deserted look—tourism has stalled and hotels are ordered not to take in travellers for some time. “Every night, there’s fear that the hill will come down on your head,” says Mandanna. The Kodava harvest festival Kailpodh, when they worship their guns, went by this week. Says Mandanna, “Nobody was interested in the festival. Coorg has become like a funeral parlour.”

source: http://www.outlook.com / Outlook / Home> The Magazine> Business / by Ajay Sukumaran / September 17th, 2018

Old-timers and environmentalists blame tourism for the devastating floods in Kodagu

IF THE RAINS had not wreaked havoc in Kodagu, Karnataka’s coffee country would be preparing for ‘Kail Murta’, a festival in which the Kodavas worship their weapons. But, the district, which got battered by flash floods and landslides that took 12 lives and rendered more than 1,500 families homeless, is now left with just one weapon: resilience.

On the midnight of August 15, torrential rains started pounding Kodagu. The hills cracked up and tumbled down, and the rivers swallowed everything on their way—century-old houses, brand-new homestays, tiny tea shops, lush green paddy fields, vast stretches of coffee plantations, forests, livestock, bridges and vehicles. Incessant rains submerged low-lying areas in Kushalnagar, Somwarpet and Madikeri, pilgrimage centres like Talacauvery and Bhagamandala, and major bridges like Bethri, while landslides along the national highways turned those into death traps.

By the time the district administration launched rescue operations, the communication lines were cut off and most villages had become inaccessible. Heavy rains, tough terrain and scattered habitations made rescue operations a daunting task even for the armed forces and the National Disaster Response Force. Many people were hungry and exhausted when the rescue teams finally reached them.

Manu Madappa from Mukkodlu village said around 40 people took refuge in his homestay for three days. But with no help arriving, they decided to trek to Madikeri. “We covered a distance of 20km, walking in the rain on a muddied path, and made it to a relief camp in Madikeri,” he said.

As many as 51 relief centres have been opened across the district, sheltering 7,594 people as on August 22. NGOs have ensured an uninterrupted flow of relief material to these camps. The Kodava Samaj in Bengaluru and Mysuru are the nerve centres for organising relief material.

Local MP Pratap Simha, who was part of the rescue operations, said the devastation was unimaginable. “Incessant rains prevented airlifting of stranded people although three Army choppers were on standby. After I sent an SOS to Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, the Army unit from Karwar was rushed in,” he said. “The relief centres are working well, and our next big challenge is rehabilitation. We will need huge cash donations to rebuild homes.” According to the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre, 1,206 houses and 123 kilometres of roads have been damaged, 58 bridges and culverts have collapsed, 278 government buildings and 3,800 electric poles and transformers have been severely damaged.

Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, who conducted an aerial survey, said the infrastructure damage alone amounted to Rs 3,000 crore. “A team of engineers from the Border Roads Organisation and the Army engineering task force have been called in to clear roads and restore them,” said Kumaraswamy. “A team from the National Geophysical Research Institute, Hyderabad, is conducting geotechnical studies to ascertain the causes of landslides. We have deputed two IAS probationers to fasten the process of identifying the lands for rebuilding 2,000 temporary homes.” he said.

The government has promised Rs 3,800 per family, along with essential groceries as immediate relief. The chief minister has promised the affected people work under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and offered to issue provisional documents for those who have lost their Aadhaar and ration cards and title deeds. “Rs 5 lakh will be given to the family of the deceased. Special classes and books for children are also being planned,” said Kumaraswamy.

The rainfall was unprecedented, but old-timers and environmentalists said the alarming plight of Kodagu was the fallout of the booming tourism industry. G.S. Srinivas Reddy, director of the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre, said Kodagu received 103 per cent more rainfall than normal this year.

U.M. Poovaiah, editor of Brahmagiri, a Kodava weekly, said he had never seen or heard of such devastation in the history of Kodagu. “This is the fallout of unregulated tourism that has razed down the hills to make roads to homestays. The riverbed has been encroached upon. Unplanned construction has pushed the district to the edge. The authorities are to blame for the influx of tourists and atrocities against nature in this once-pristine district. We want unlicensed homestays and construction activity to be stopped,” said Poovaiah.

The Coorg Wildlife Society, too, blamed the severe stress on Kodagu because of the change in land use and unbridled tourism. In a letter sent last May to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the CWS wrote, “Kodagu provides almost 50 per cent of the total inflow into Cauvery, which is the lifeline of South India, and provides water to over 80 million people and 600 major industries across the region. The food, water and economic security of southern India hinges largely on Cauvery River. It is therefore in national interest to preserve the Kodagu landscape and protect its ecosystems.”

Colonel (retd) C.P. Muthanna, president of CWS and co-ordinator of the Save Kodagu and Cauvery campaign, said more than 2,800 acres of paddy fields, coffee plantations and highlands were converted to residential layouts, sites, commercial complexes and resorts between 2005 and 2015. “Kodagu’s fast-paced urbanisation will turn it into a slum,” said Muthanna. Earlier this year, he had urged the Karnataka government to regulate tourism in the region and demanded an audit of water and waste and sewage management in the resorts. “While Kodagu has a population of 5.5 lakh, the number of tourists goes up to 13 lakh,” he said.

A report by the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, said massive deforestation and monoculture plantations caused the landslides. “Trees hold the top soil and also absorb and regulate the flow of rainwater. But deforestation for construction of roads and power lines have resulted in soil erosion,” said T.V. Ramachandra of the centre. “If the government wants to avert disasters, it should not take up any mega projects.”

source: http://www.theweek.in / The Week / Home> The Week> Cover Story / by Prathima Nandakumar / September 02nd, 2018