As I stood atop the six-storeyed apartment
building in which my mother had bought a flat, it was easy to see the wisdom of
Rama Varma Kunjhipilla Thampuran (1751-1805). This King of the Cochin State, more
popularly known as Shaktan Thampuran or the Powerful King, had moved his
capital from Kochi to Thrissur. His wisdom in moving his palace from the coast
to a location in the midlands of Kerala was strategic – reducing his exposure
to raids from the sea by the colonial adventurers of the days. Thrissur,
however, may not have grown into a city today had Shaktan Thampuran not made
this move.
From the top of the multi-storeyed
building, I was seeing Thrissur from a height for the first time. The canopy of
the coconut palm crowns below the terrace did not hinder the view up to the
Kuthiran hills, as they stretched back into the Nelliampathies and the Anamalai
mountain block. Towards the foreground, the Kuthiran hills wrapped around the
northeastern fringes of the city and lost their height towards Wadakancherry.
In the west, the sole Vilangan hill stood like a sentinel. Historically, it has
been used as a watchtower, for its line of sight up to the Chettuva estuary leading
into the Arabian Sea.
In the western fringe, I could see the
blue-green band of the Kole wetlands and paddy fields. Fed by rivers from the
Western Ghats, this large patch of wetland in Thrissur district, is an
interface between fresh and estuarine waters as they meet with the sea. In
addition to paddy cultivation, the Kole wetlands support multiple livelihood
options for those living around it.
Though I had grown in Thrissur (and those
days Thrissur was still a town and had not been upgraded to a city), my view of
the city was always from the ground. I had grown in a single-storey cottage and
we could not see anything higher than the leaves of the coconut tree. It was
decades later, after my father’s death, my mother moved into a smaller house in
a taller building.
If my father was alive today he would be surprised
hearing about drought and water shortage in Thrissur. During the lifetime of my
father, and his father before him, in the city that the Powerful King built,
water scarcity would have been the last of all concerns. With perennial rivers
flowing by and innumerable water bodies and wetlands in an around the city, the
wells may never have dried. If that was not enough, there was copious supply
flowing through the pipes from the Peechi dam reservoir near the Kuthiran
hills.
The irrigation cum drinking water supply
Peechi project was among the earliest projects inaugurated after the Kerala
state was formed in 1956. It symbolised the aspirations and dreams of the young
state. In 1976, when my father bought the house and compound in Punkunnam,
which became our home for decades, we had enough water in our laterite-lined
well. As a backup we had water supply from Peechi reservoir.
The situation is different today. Wells are
running dry. Peechi water supply does not reach many in the city. Even if it is
does, it is not of good quality. Borewells – unheard of in Thrissur during my
growing years – are going deeper. The situation may worsen by summer, which in
Kerala is from March to May. The Kerala Government already declared the state
as drought affected in October. The southwest and the northeast monsoons were
deficit by 39%, and even after adding
the smattering of winter and pre-monsoon rains Kerala received only 1869 mm,
the lowest rainfall since 1951.
 |
| Annual rainfall in Kerala from 1951 to 2016 (Source: IMD) |
But is it merely the drop in rainfall that
is causing the problem? A look at Kerala’s historical rainfall data from 1951
(see graph) shows that there have been years with low rainfall, though not as
low as 2016. Even 1800 mm is higher than what most parts of the country
receive. For a state with 44 rivers, breaking into estuaries in the coast,
there should have been some water in the reserve. Reducing forest cover,
changing land use, decreasing ecological health of rivers, land filling of
estuaries, increasing urbanisation and conversion of paddy fields, all ensure
that the water that falls flows into the sea quickly, thus reducing the water
availability in all parts of the state. This trend has been worse by the
increased disregard for the environment in the recent years, and thus the
impact of reduced rainfall in 2016 is likely to be felt drastically in the
summer of 2017.
Interestingly, Thrissur district had the
second-highest rainfall deficit during the southwest monsoon, the main rain
bearer for the state. For Thrissur city this is being compounded by the fact
that its needs have risen. Recently, I was surprised to see the name of
Thrissur on top of a list of urban agglomerations that recorded highest
population growth between 2001 and 2011. Ulka Kelkar, fellow at the Ashoka
Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE) in Bengaluru, had
compiled this data from the census data of 2001 and 2011. Even though partially
this can be explained by the fact that Thrissur got upgraded from a
municipality to a corporation in October 2000 and therefore adding adjoining
local bodies to the urban agglomeration, there is no escaping from the fact
that Thrissur’s population has grown dramatically in the past decade and half.
 |
The population of Thrissur urban agglomeration has grown dramatically between 2001 and 2011
(Source: Ulka Kelkar, ATREE, from Census data). |
The rapid growth in population in the
Thrissur urban agglomeration has been at the cost of its natural water sinks.
When my father bought the house in Punkunnam, there were large paddy fields not
very far from our house. Over the years, these fields were recovered acre by
acre and turned into housing plots. The huge filtration bed disappeared in less
than a few decades.
Similarly, the covered surface increased
with most of the houses paving most of their homesteads. Rainwater flows out
quickly from the city. If some of this running water could be made to walk,
then irrespective of the drought the inadequacy of water availability could
have been dealt with.
Drought in Kerala is counter-intuitive news
for the rest of the country. For the state promoted as “God’s own country” with
images of backwaters and monsoon tourism, the idea of drying wells and
dysfunctional taps do not fit in with the larger picture. The Powerful King who
built the city, could not have thought an answer for this one.
