Michael's Kattur

 Michael lives in Kattur, a village north of Chennai on the delta of the Arani and Kosasthalai rivers. His house is part of a small hamlet surrounded by vast open lands. There are coconut trees, mango trees and some  plants around his house. I planted these coconut trees when I was 12, says Michael. He plucks some tender coconuts, gives one to me and the others to his brother’s children.

Michael giving coconuts plucked from his trees

Michael, who is 31 years old, switched to organic farming six years ago. He switched to traditional varieties of rice such  as Kattuyanam and Mappilai Samba, replacing the hybrid rice variety BPT Ponni that everybody else in the village grew.  He also stopped using fertilizers and pesticides that the high-yielding hybrid varieties demanded.

“I made the change because I really wanted to lead my life in a nature-friendly way, without consuming chemicals or putting chemicals in the soil, or feeding chemical-laced fodder to the cows."   

"The change was difficult. My father opposed me.  At that time I was the only one in the village who was growing organic varieties. It is difficult to grow something different from everybody else. For example, these varieties take 20 days more to mature, and in those last 20 days my crops  are the only ones standing in the field, so kattupanrri (wild pigs) would go for them. I alone had to guard my crops night and day."

"The hybrid variety of rice fills one’s stomach, but it is devoid of nutrition. Most people grow those because its yield is higher, for them it is just about money. "

"I work part-time as a crane driver. If I take a job in a factory,  I can only work in my field on Sundays, and that’s too difficult to manage."

"Anyway, all of this is for a couple of years. After that I won’t have any land to farm on.”

 

The Tamil Nadu government is taking over land in Kattur for the expansion of Adani’s Kattupalli port. The lands appear as ‘scrubland’ in the project map, which makes it sound like unused lands. But in reality, these are poromoboke lands – commons – which are used by the village community in various ways. Parts of it are used for cultivation, and it includes Michael’s field. After the take-over, Michael’s family will just be left with the small plot on which their house stands.

The hamlet where Michael lives

Lands surrounding Michael’s hamlet

Michael is from a Dalit family, “about three-fourths of the people who cultivate these poromoboke lands are our people (i.e. Dalit). Each of these families cultivates about an acre of land.”

“Nobody is protesting about losing the lands. They are happy to have job opportunities close to home. They will no longer have to travel long distances for factory jobs. They are only thinking about the money, not the pollution that the factories will cause.”

I go with Michael to his field. The landscape consists of patches of rice fields, with uncultivated land taken over by Velam maram (Prosopis juliflora), an invasive thorny bush. The fields are interspersed with small rain-fed lakes. In the southern horizon, we see the smokestacks of the Ennore Thermal power station, which is 20 km away. We sit down to talk in the shade of a Velam maram. Michael occasionally supervises the tractor driver who is ploughing his field.

The tractor ploughing Michael’s field. Chimneys of Ennore Thermal Power Station in the background.

“These are the lands we grew up on - playing, grazing the cows, walking to the beach. The beach is 3 km from here. We would walk, plucking and eating palm fruit along the way. These places will be taken away from us, I don't know where we will go then.”

Michael says, “in the mornings, the plants here are covered by a layer of ash blowing in from the Ennore thermal power plant. Imagine how it will be once there are factories right in the village, what kind of life that would  be.” Indeed, the area surrounding the extended port is expected to develop into a petrochemical industrial area, and Michael’s fears of pollution are justified.

 


On Self-sufficiency

Michael : “Living in a village has so many advantages over living in a city -- there is no pollution, no vehicles; one doesn't need to have a steady job, most households have some savings in the form of a grain surplus.
In cities, if people miss a single day of work they are pushed to a wall -- they can't pay bills, there is no money for food, they have to make repayments on their loans. If we lose our lands, that’s the kind of life that awaits us."


"Most people in our village don’t care about what we are going to lose. They are only focused on earning money, not in preserving their suthanthiram (independence). They feel that money buys one respect in society. They have to earn -- that's their only goal.  And what do they do with the money? They enroll their kids in private schools. My sister sends her three year old son to a Montessori school – she paid Rs 10,000 for the school fees. The parents need to have a job just to pay the school fees."

"For us,  a  year’s harvest  will last for 2-3 years. A job is not necessary -- we have enough food to sustain us. If we don’t have money, we can survive on kanji." However, Michael does need money for sowing and harvesting, and  household needs,  which he manages to earn from his  part-time crane driving work.

"I don’t like to spend money to buy foodstuff". His reasoning is that produce like vegetables are grown using chemicals, and other goods come wrapped in plastic packaging.

"I want to work on our self-sufficiency, to grow things that we need. I want to plant more vegetables next to our house, then we will be able to eat comfortably. And also fruit trees, maybe papaya, sapota and some more mango trees. Then we can substitute some of our rice consumption with fruits. That's how I am planning for the future."

Michael questions why a school education is prioritized over agricultural knowledge. "Farming is our traditional occupation. Growing up, we have seen our fathers and grandfathers do it, and we have learnt it from them. We know when to plough the field, when to sow the seeds and so on. To leave this knowledge aside, and to just go to school to study.. I am not against studying, but our traditional occupation is not something we should give up on. People here leave this and go to school. Say, they perform badly at school, leave that, and come back, the land would be gone by then. After al,, people study in order to get a job, through which they can earn to satisfy their basic necessities. But we already have the capability to fulfill our most basic need of food."



On disagreements, roadblocks and stress

“I harvest the grain, get it hulled and take it home. My mother cleans it. But she doesn’t cook this rice. Instead she sells it to whoever asks for it.”

Indigenous varieties of rice sell for about Rs 80 or 100 a kilo. In contrast, the public distribution system (ration) sells hybrid varieties of rice at a subsidized rate of Rs 5 a kilo.

“I agree the red rice (that I grow) is hard to cook, but we can use it in  different ways”. Michael suggests the rice could be ground up to make koozh (porridge) or  dosais. “But at home, they won’t, they would maybe make it once a week after a lot of pestering.” Michael feels upset that his mother doesn’t value the organic grain he grows.  “For her, selling is easy, and making it is hard,” he says.

Michael’s mother cleaning some Kattuyanam rice grown by Michael.

In a later conversation with Michael’s mother, she said she does not have time since she worked both at home and outside. She wanted Michael to get married so that there is someone to help at home. Michael continues, “my mother also works. She works in the fields, she catches prawns, she works in the salt pan.”

In his efforts to grow his food organically, Michael is often stuck looking for solutions. “In the market, a variety of vegetables are available throughout the year, I do not understand how. If one were to grow vegetables here, we will have vegetables available for about half the days in a year, and the variety will be limited. We can grow okra, brinjal, kotthavarakkai, gourds. Tomatoes can grow for parts of the year; onions are hard to grow here. Groundnuts, Moong dal, Urad dal grow well.”

He continues, “we will have to change ourselves. We will have to change the way we eat to adjust to want can be grown organically. That's how I want to live. But others around me are not coming around to that point of view.”

The stress of dealing with these disagreements takes a toll on him. “When I go to work, I drive a crane all night. I started having backache. I got admitted to the Govt. Yoga and Naturopathy hospital in Anna Nagar for 20 days. They made me do yoga and I got massages. My pain went away. At home, the stresses accumulate. I have been back for ten days, and now my pain is back.”

 
I ask him whether he is  concerned about his family getting him married to someone who does not share his ideas. He agrees, “yes, it will  be difficult if they don't understand these ideas. I won't be able to work  in the field peacefully. Even growing vegetables in the kitchen garden needs peace of mind. If I get into a situation where I am forced to take a steady job, then I won't be able to take care of the agriculture.”


Loss of livelihoods

While walking back from Michael’s field to his house, we ran into his uncle Gunasekaran sitting under a big tree chatting with a friend.

Gunasekaran is watching over a big pile of wood, which is being burnt to produce charcoal. “We have to control the burning, otherwise everything will burn off”, says Gunasekaran. “That happened to me with the last batch. The motor (that pumps water) stopped working at a crucial point, and then I couldn’t control the burning. I was up there standing on the pile of wood trying to control the fire, but it still burnt off.

It was a big loss. I probably lost 3 tons of charcoal. The total batch normally produces about 16 tons. I had collected very good wood. I was so happy with the wood. But then,  I could do nothing as everything burnt away.”

Gunasekaran in front of a pile of wood buried under soil being burnt to produce charcoal

Gunasekaran is about 50 years old. He dropped out of school after Class 1, and started herding goats. “I would take out everybody’s goats to the woods, each house would have 4 or 5 goats, I would end up with a herd of fifty. They would pay me a little.”

The charcoal-making that he does now is seasonal work, he collects wood over two months in the summer. At the end of summer, for about 15-20 days he burns it to make charcoal. In the rest of the year Gunasekaran works as agricultural labour and other kinds of daily wage work.

Michael explains, “If someone calls for some work, he will go. He does all kinds of work – digging drains, cutting wood for firewood, putting cow dung in the fields, clearing bushes from paths, transplanting, harvesting, he can even fish. An educated man does one kind of work, an uneducated man does all kinds of work, that's their benefit. If they take away the lands, I will go to work in a company, but what will he do?”

Gunasekar’s companion under the tree is Idimannan, who said he is 83 years old. He is herding five goats.  Another friend walked by – he had been out catching prawns at the kalvai (canal) near the Adani port site.

Gunasekaran sitting under a tree.

Michael explains, “once they catch (take away) the land, 70% of the elders will be affected. People aged over 50 won’t even get work as security.  They will have to depend on their children. That will be a life without any peace. The kind of suntantiram (independence) they have now – going around grazing goats – how can they have that once the lands are gone?

One of Gunasekaran’s sons works in the MRF factory in Kathivakkam. He has been working for 20 years but is still a contract employee.  “We will lose our lands in exchange for a few of us getting low-level contract jobs”, says Michael.


Gunasekaran : Oruthar valararthukku oore sudukaada maridum. (The entire community will be destroyed for one man to earn profits.)

 Gunasekaran :  If he (Adani) is buying so much land, how rich he must be. The government will listen to them, the police will listen to them. Who will listen to us? Who is our support? We are sitting below the poverty line.  If a few of us gather to protest, the police may give orders to shoot. In such a situation, what can we do? Nothing.


On the past

Michael: “There were a lot of hardships in the past too. His (Gunasekaran’s) parents would have worked as labour in the fields of the big Mudaliar and Reddiar landlords.”

Gunasekaran : Yes, there was a lot of poverty. People would get some rice as payment for the day’s work. They would make kanji. There were so many people at home, we each got a little bit.

Michael: The situation improved after Indira Gandhi’s time when it was declared ‘Land to the tiller.’ By the time I was growing up, we no longer had to go to work at the big landlord’s houses. We achieved a level of independence, which we are on the verge of losing again.

Michael : Back then, when people were out working, they would eat anything they found, since they had only one meal when they got back home. They would eat forest fruits like kalli pazham (cactus fruit), kova pazham (ripe ivy gourd), they would eat crabs and snails. We don’t eat these things any more.  Somehow those people survived. It is unclear how we are going to survive.

Michael : In those days, they ate natural varieties of rice, and millets. In the 90s, we started growing the hybrid BPT rice for its higher yield, and the natural varieties disappeared. The older rice was sweet, the kanji made with it was so tasty. It made people strong.  When BPT rice came in, people started having high blood sugar. That's when these health problems started.


Gunasekaran : What he is saying is right. We had so many varieties of rice – vaat samba, pisikini, neelum samba, managathhai, soodasu -- his (Michael’s) grandfather used to plant those. The rice was sweet, the nellu (husk) had a different colour.  We would make puttu or undai with it.

But there was also a lot of hunger and poverty then. The wage was just enough to buy rice, with some paisas left for red chilli and tamarind. They would put in some prawn they caught or squash they grew, and make kulambu, and run the family.   In our house there would be ten people to feed.

 Michael: Today however much one earns, one has to keep aside a portion of it for hospital expenses.

 Gunasekaran : Those healthful rice varieties we have eaten, that's how our health is still good today. We didn't fall sick. but there was a lot of hardship.

 Michael : They would carry 80-100 kg sacks of rice on their heads and come home. This rice only fills the stomach, it doesn’t build our health. It is produced using so much pesticide and chemicals!

Gunasekaran: Back then it was just some cow-dung and a bit of urea sulphate. Now people are copying each other in the use of chemicals. Back then the rice was fragrant. Where have those rice varieties gone?

Michael : We didn't give it any importance and the rice has gone away.