What next for Wayanad?

While the survivors are for now lodged in relief camps in Meppadi panchayat, the government realises that its next big challenge would be to rehabilitate those rendered homeless by the landslides.

However, the magnitude was manifold — as of August 2, the toll stands at 210 dead and 218 still missing.

A day after the calamity, urging people to contribute generously to the Chief Minister’s Distress Relief Fund (CMDRF), Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said, “More resources are required to rebuild that region. Many people have promised assistance, but that is not enough. Generous contributions are required.’’

Kerala Public Works Department Minister Mohmmed Riyas, a member of the Cabinet sub-committee on the matter, told The Indian Express, “Rehabilitation plans will be decided only after detailed discussions… For many survivors, we have to give them counselling to make them mentally strong. The education of their children will also have to resume at the earliest.”

Puthumala, the village that was wiped out in the 2019 landslide and which now lies largely deserted, frames the government’s rehabilitation challenge for Chooralmala, Attamala and Mundakkai, the three villages in Meppadi panchayat that have borne the brunt of the latest landslides. Most families left Puthumala after the 2019 tragedy, never to return, and no buildings were allowed by the panchayat in the area destroyed by the landslide.

Aboobacker, the lone tea shop owner at Puthumala, says around 90 families lived here before the 2019 tragedy. “Now, less than a dozen families live here. Many had very good houses, which were abandoned after the landslide. People do not return to look after their agricultural land even where the landslide did not deposit rubble,” he said.

Survivors of the latest tragedy, now lodged in temporary camps, too, are resigned to the fact that they may have to start all over again. With nightmares of the landslide still lingering in their minds, many are reluctant to return to their now ravaged village, where hundreds of houses have been damaged, either completely or partially.

With nightmares of the landslide still lingering in their minds, many are reluctant to return to their now ravaged village, where hundreds of houses have been damaged, either completely or partially.

‘There is a school at the foot of Vellarimala, by the side of Punnapuzha, dressed in white snow, standing tall, to impart the sweetness of knowledge, lifeline to the land’ — these are the lyrics of a song released for the annual day celebrations of Vellarmala Government Vocational Higher Secondary School (GVHSS) in 2023. The school was razed to the ground in the July 30 landslide and more than 20 of its students are feared dead.

The song has emerged on social media once again, leaving the landslide survivors teary-eyed.

“I saw the video on social media after the disaster (on July 30). It was painful to watch. My daughter Tanmaya studied there in Class 4. Now, we don’t know if she will ever be able to go back to a school she loved so much. All I wanted was for her to get a good education, but now we are stuck here (at the relief camp),” says Janeesh.

He says his daughter is yet to learn that at least three of her classmates are either dead or missing. “She knows that one of her friends is in hospital, but not that she is critical. I don’t know how she will react once she learns about all these losses,” says Janeesh.

Vikas, a former student of the school who is now in his third year of college, says his friends and he would head to the school every evening to play football. “We even played there the evening before the landslide,” says Vikas.

As he shows a photograph on Instagram of the now-ravaged school and the ground after the landslide, Vikas’s eyes grow damp. Some of his friends, he says, are lost to the disaster, others are still missing.

His father Ponnayyan, 60, a tailor-turned-lottery seller, too, has lost several neighbours and friends. “I don’t know what’s in store for us. I have two sons and they are yet to get jobs. We have to move to a new place now and start afresh. We have no savings either. All these years at Chooralmala, we lived as a community, helping each other. Now we have no option but to move away,” says Ponnayyan.

Mahadevi, in her late 60s, came to Wayanad from Karnataka several decades ago to work on the tea estates. She lost all three of her sons and their families in the tragedy. “There is no one left to do my last rites. I don’t know what’s the point of my life now. There is nothing left for me to look forward to,” says Mahadevi.

Like Mahadevi, Manickyam came to Wayanad from Salem in neighbouring Tamil Nadu in 1984.

Like Mahadevi, Manickyam came to Wayanad from Salem in neighbouring Tamil Nadu in 1984. “I did several menial jobs after I came here and married a woman from Wayanad. We have four children, all of whom studied in Wayanad. This is now my home,” says Manickyam, 66, who in 1999 bought 10 cents of land at Chooralmala for Rs 16,500 to build his house.

He is unsure of what the future holds for him. “Even if I want to go back to Salem, I can’t sell my property here because no one will buy it,” he says.

After August 2019, the government rehabilitated 54 families from Puthumala on seven acres at Kottapadi village in Wayanad. The Mathrubhumi Charitable Trust bought this land from a tea plantation and handed it over to rehabilitate people from Puthumala. A people’s committee was formed under the leadership of the Meppadi panchayat. It obtained sponsorships from several charitable trusts to construct houses for these 54 families. The construction was completed in 2020. Another section of the survivors got a compensation of Rs 10 lakh each from Kerala government to purchase new land and houses.

“The biggest difference between life at Puthumala and Poothakolly is the cost of living. Here, we are closer to the town. I still go to Puthumala to farm cardamom and coffee on my two-acre plot. Our official documents still bear the address of our house in Puthumala. We even cast votes in Ward 9 there,” says Alavi, who moved to Poothakolly along with his wife.

“We came here (Poothakolly rehabilitation project) with no resources. The government and sponsors did all this for us. We are grateful for what we have here and to have survived the 2019 landslide. We were saved because the landslide happened during the day; otherwise, our fate would have been the same as that of those in Mundakkai and Chooralmala,” says Beeran, another resident.

Despite multiple smaller landslides in the region, tourism has been a growing industry in these ecologically fragile Western Ghat villages.
According to industry sources, Meppadi panchayat has 600-odd registered resorts/home stays. “After plantations started running into losses, people turned to tourism to earn their livelihoods. Despite repeated natural calamities, tourism was never hit. Cancellations of bookings in the region were only temporary,’’ source said.

While tourists may return, the residents are a different story. Anand, from Chooralmala, says, “The region has become uninhabitable. At Puthumala, the panchayat did not allow any new building permits in places where houses were destroyed (in August 2019). The same situation is likely to happen here since the landslide has changed the profile of the village. Perhaps those who have agricultural land in the hills may return to look after their fields,’’ he says.

Kavungal Hamza, 60, whose house in Chooralmala was washed away, says his family doesn’t want to return to the village. “My house was destroyed — not a single brick is left on the five cents of land we owned. My two schoolgoing children have lost their books. We lost all our household items and belongings. How do I rebuild my life at this age,’’ he says.