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Kerala State Land Policy
Draft
 
[Comments & suggestions by Dr. Thrivikramji.K.P., Professor (Retd.) of Geology,
University of Kerala, C/32, Sankar Lane, Sasthamangalam, Trivandrum 695 010
E-
mail:thrivikramji@gmail.com]
 1I read through the copy of the draft of new Kerala State Land Policy very keenly and
carefully and very
well appreciated the commitments of administration to the concerns of
the poor and disadvantaged in the society. It is a laudable goal if realized.
 
1. Land Policy
&
Tribals
 
As part of land policy a special focus is on landless tribals and the goal of grant of land
and shelter and I offer my views on the former in the following..
 a. Though the past weeks decision by the administration on the directive from GOI, to
locate and release 2.5 ha of forest land very much inside the forests to each tribal family,
looks outwardly sincere and novel but inadequate, as the beneficiaries or the members
of such families also do need some occupation or gainful employment in the proximity so
that food and clothes as well as small cash to devote for educating in the respective
families.
b. The new policy lesgislated by the GOI, seems very much similar to the policies andschemes followed in the
US
. While a similar law in Australia was rather quashed by theapex or supreme in Australia,
ordering
the national government to part-with a large
chunk of the land to aboriginals as their sovereign state or so
.
c.
Yet, situation in US for native Indians even now are less than satisfactory as theyhave to live by certain provisions of US constitution wherein native Indians are to live inand occupy the land with in the boundaries of scores of Indian reservations or
euphemisticallynations
though they can work and earn a livelihood and income byworking in the neighboring communities outside of the reservations. In fact this handicapof life is not properly focused any where due to their social, economic and educational
backwardness.
d. In India, u
nless
an imaginative policy aiming to bring the members of the tribes into
the main stream of society, the lot of tribals will stay very much the same way they are in
now like always looking forward to potential handouts from officials or other arms orindividuals of society. The handouts motivate and ingrain their minds to be and remainan underclass, which might sustain their current life style and ultimately dis-
empower ingthem.
e. What is called for is a sincere effort to get these people out of their currentenvironment of for
est
-
animals
-
hunting
-
gathering
syndrome and place them in thesocieties out in the plains of midland and lowland of Kerala. With this transformation, atleast the newer generation will be empowered like other members of the immediatecommunity they are part of. Until such provisions
are
part of new tribal policy, the lawmakers intention of facilitation and realization of the ultimate goal of bringing the tribals
into main stream of society will remain a far
-
cry.f.
My earnest wish is a set of
proposal
s to give a piece of land and a shelter to all thefamilies, in the plains of midland or low land, where
vibrant
economic activit
ies
, plenty ofopportunities for work as well as educational facilities exist alongside. What I am askingis for a one stroke solution to facilitate a quantum leap for social benefits to the grown
ups and gains to the younger school age generation among the tribals.
 
g.
If they are resettled and live in the forests, they will tend to
be
and continue to be
in
the very same vicious circle of
exploitation
-
penury
-exploitation by various arms of the
 
Kerala State Land Policy
Draft
 
[Comments & suggestions by Dr. Thrivikramji.K.P., Professor (Retd.) of Geology,
University of Kerala, C/32, Sankar Lane, Sasthamangalam, Trivandrum 695 010
E-
mail:thrivikramji@gmail.com]
 2society and by government machinery. Opportunities for education and higher
education chief passport to better life
-
will remain a dream as ever.
 
i.
All the openings due to the STs still remain untaken by their youngsters because oflack of good education, skill-sets, and motivations. If once every year one employablemember of each of a tribal family gets a gainful job out side the settlements or
communities, at least by a decade a huge social transformation would have happened.
k.
So far the current policies have been to improve the lot of tribals by forest centeredapproach opposed to the mainstream centered ones in the name of a golden philosophy
of
preserving the culture and native skills members of the tribes. As a consequence, Iam snot sure of the percentage, the majority of tribals are where they were soon afterindependence. This proposal is a
policy
change from present day gradualism to one of
fast
-
track
-
modernism.
Land policy and Fish
-
workers
 
1. Conventionally
the coastal land of Kerala, with the exception of space of large cityscapes are occupied by people and families who make most of their lively-hood byengaging themselves in coastal fisheries. The size of fish catch is certainly seasonalboth biologically and climatologically and of late per capita fish catch tended to diminishas a result of a steady increase in the number or teams of fish-workers attempting to
target the same geographic space.2. On top of such uncertainties the climaticfactor takes a huge toll of their savings during
the SW monsoon season characterized by severe erosion of the beach and backshoreand occasionally even the ancient coastal plain, uprooting the standing population ofcoconut palms and the houses of different descriptions.
Cement
-mortar and concrete
houses are perhaps the only exception to the vagaries of the monsoon wave climate.
 3
.
As a rule of thumb, the remedy is to temporarily shift the suffered individuals to somekind of a shelter with free food and medical care. The local schools always come handyfor use as shelters, forcing the students and classes to be kept under suspension. Theengineering solution that has been practiced until recently across the world isconstruction of design seawalls and groins (The first groin field is near Vettor in Varalabuilt during the pre-independence days). A large segment of Kerala
shoreline
with alength of 580 km, is under the threat of wave erosion, and with grants from GOI
nearly¼ th remains to earn the gift of seawall.
4
.
So far the solutions proposed for warding off the menace of coastal erosion, arebuilding seawalls at preposterously huge capital cost. If all the monies so far spent onbuilding seawalls over the last
six
decades, were spent on
building multi
-
story
-
multi
-family complexes to relocate the settlers, I would imagine that, we could have
easily
provided 100% housing for the population in the erosion-belt of the coastal land.Elsewhere in the world, the on going mantra among the coastal engineering
technologists
goes like seawalls are good until they fail. The current mind set ofgovernment, in respect of coastal protection needs
a change
like relocating the
population or families of potential
ly
affecteds to a place away from the reach of monsoon
erosion, somewhere to the east and at least 500 m away from the modern shoreline.
The over all design be something like the one given below.
5
. The best possible alternative is to build multi
-
story apartments
,
at least 500 m or moreaway from the modern shoreline and to the east of it, out of the money received as grant
 
Kerala State Land Policy
Draft
 
[Comments & suggestions by Dr. Thrivikramji.K.P., Professor (Retd.) of Geology,
University of Kerala, C/32, Sankar Lane, Sasthamangalam, Trivandrum 695 010
E-
mail:thrivikramji@gmail.com]
 3from the GOI. These complexes built on columns and beams shall not have the s
treet orground
level
living units, and instead will be left open to allow free flow of air or apassage f
or
seawater, in case of an occasional huge backwash. Or else it is very muchlike the car park provided in the new generation
high
-rise buildings. Another analogy is
the
two blocks of office space erected between the old secretariat building and the northand south blocks in the capital. Such a design will neither harm the residents nor createa need to shift the suffered to relief camps operating from schools, at the expense of thestudy days. In retrospect, think of an investment in your backyard worth a few crores
which is only fit and good as a blind in a squat latrine.
6. Therefore, as a policy do away with the seawall which is no longer the gold standard
to defend the wave onslaught on people and property, instead invest those funds to build
multi
-
story
-
multi
-
family apartments, away from the reach of the storm over
-
wash
-
flooding
and erosion of beach in the monsoon season. We the ordinary and specialist alike haveseen the way the beach rebuilding activity taking place by the off-set of m
onsoon.
Allthat is required is to convince the GOI on the need for a shift in the shore protection
strategy.
 
Land Policy & Water heritage of Kerala
 
Water is getting to be a scarce commodity. In the context of global climate change, thefuture scenario on water is still anybodys guess. What we have now is that the climatye
is bound to change and as a result the dry seasons will get drier and wet seasons will be
wetter. Ramifications of these near possible shifts need to be examined threadbare, and
the process is yet to take place as a national policy of priority. Being a modern society, it
is our responsibility to ready our self with the knowledge, mechanisms and processes tofend off the intensity and severity of this calamity. We have to consider the c
limate
change consequences in our preparedness in any new policy initiative that we elect to
follow. Land policy is o exception.1.
S
everal
-
expert
-reports have
proposed
that in India due to the tropical monsoonclimate, 50% of precipitation is received in a matter of 15 days of an year and river flow
has a duration of only 4 months and people have adapted to this system by living near or
close to the river corridors and harvesting water for storage in
surface
and underground
structures.
2. Water future of India is not very encouraging as the demand for water has beensteadily on the rise. For e.g., decade of 50s saw a four fold increase in water use as aresult of consumption, irrigation, industry and heat and power engineering. We havebeen building structures for water storage and use, but diligently followed a philosophy
of build
-
neglect
-
re
build. That should change.
 3
.
In Kerala several factors affected the water systems. With the arrival of canal water(for irrigation) and inadequacy of conventional structures on the one hand and largeincrements in the size of the population on the other led to rising water needs (like food,shelter, healthcare and education). The rise of micro-
households
in l
ieu of
 joint families,introduction of equal-
right
-
to
-
property
-
among
-siblings in the family by a decree ofMaharaja and by land reforms after independence resulting in division of property
into
unviable and uneconomic sizes, led to the neglect and transformation of several
thousand
large and small ponds by eutrophication, sedimentation and lack of
of 00

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