at

etSonsk t
C.C,, Pellamh
BCONONIC UNDERDEVELOPMENT OF THE NILA
BASIN A TENTATIVEE
EXPLANATION OF THE CAUSESS

C.B.RAJ EEV, Dept.of Bcon omics, Govt.college,

Kerala. Thrissur -
680 014

INARODDCTTON
At the
very outset, it should be made clear that this
paper attempts to explore tentatively the likely causes of
economic under
development of the Nila (1)
Bas in .*' It intends
to raised certa in crucial issues for
further research rather
than put
fovh
path any conclusive f ind ings.
The Nila basin covers a total area of 6186 Sq»Kms.
More than thirty percent of this area lies in the
Coimba tore
District of Tamil Nadu from where the river
Nil originates
the rema iring seventy percent of Nila basin area lies in

the three Distriictf Palakkad, Thrissur and Malappuram of

Modern Kerala. *"'It comprises of three hundred
villages from
n ine taluks (Mannarkadu, Palakkad, Chittur,
Ottapalam,
Thalapilly, Chavakad, Per in tha lamanna, Tirur and Ponnani).

Historically rivers influenced the settlement pattern

and urban process in many coun tries of the world. Frequent

wars have been kought for the control of rivers in ancient,

medieval and modern periods of history. We can cite Nile

river valley civilization of ancient Bgypt, Nesopotami an

civilization of the rivers of surophrates and Tigiris,

Harappan civilisation of Indus river and Chinese civilizat ion

on the banks of Huang-Ho river as classic examples of the

golden era of river valley civilisation.The emergence

of all these civilisation were made possible with the deve-

lopment of the economy of the respective river basis The

 2

extensive cultivation of fertile river basi which

assured
Ce
a constant supply of aereals, pulses and other food
resources
for the sustenance of the society and also a huge agri-
cultural suryplus which was traded with other commodi
t ies
from the
neighbour ing reg ions or even from far away
places
(4Thus the fertility of the soil,
availability of water for
irrigation and water tran sport facilities have st imulatedd
the economic
development of river valleys from a time imme
morial.

this context, it is
In
interesting to observe the

economic
AV
changes that Rare taken place in the Nila Basis)
area over the last two thousand years or so. It is true
theyh
that this region had been an importan t centre of cultural

social and political act ivity since the dawn of Christian

era, very little changes have taken place in the

econom ic
ac tivities of this region which virtually stagnated th is

basis economy. Thus it can be safely argued that the Nila

basis rema in ed economically under developed relative to
other areas of Malabar Kochi and Thiruvithancore.

It has been pointed out that it was the search for

fertile lands for cultivation that pronpted the migration

of ancient people from Coimbatore through the Palaghat

gap to the Nile basis by the time of Sangam era. The

migration of people from eastern Tamilakam continued upto

Ve
the 8th century A.D. Later excavat ions has unear thed

ingaxkan impatent store age rema ins like Kuda Kallu,

Nannangady, Muthu Makathuzhy from Ariyannur and Byyal

lending credence to this belief Many agricultural

implements were discovered in theYe sites providing
evidence to the fact that these set tlers had evolved from
«hunting to more settled occupation of farming . It is not

a mere accident that all of these stone age relies were

found from the Nila basi. The nature and quality of implements

discovered reveal that the ancient society also made use of

iron impl ements for plaugh ing which logically means that

they were follow ing quite modern agricultural pract ices of

those times.

By 9th century AD, the Brahmans colon isers aMzamtit

succeeded in forc ing the stage of autocrat ically organised

agrarian system on the indigenous society. (BalaksishnanPPK.

The
1987 FraneisBuchahan, 1801 67 Ward and Cannor A
transfer of all land to Brahman s was one of the consequence

of the Aryanisation of Kerala. (6) The new organisation of

characterised by a landed aristocracy at thhe

productions was

a host of small tenants at the middle and poor backward

apex,
hard work. The fal1
castes at the bottom who really did the

the Kulesekhara empire after the Eleventh century Chera-

of
the Brahmin's hold over
Chola wa xtxnghx streng thened
their land on Kanam tenure
land. The Brahmins transferred

As the Nair's disliked physical labour, they

to the Nairs.
c u l t i v a t i o n s to the backward castes
on
entrusted the actual

inferior tenures 1ike

Kuzhikanam and Vetumpattam. " This

to the
unabated from Eleven th century
land system cont inued

Nineteen th century.

by the absence
Malabar was characterised
The Pre British
comprised several petty
polity.Ehe region
of a cen tralised
observed by b u Batuta in the fourteen th
principalities as

trade
after at constant w a r s o v e r
They were
cen tury.
towns. The Zamor ins of
r o u t e s and for the con trol of part
the Mysorean invas ion
the scene until
Kozh ikode dominated
(9)
of Malabar in the late Eighteen th century.
 4

The most significan t aspect of this period was though

seve centres of foreign trade emerged along the coast

of Malabar from Tynd is (Ponnani) to Kannur not much

struc tural changes had taken place in the interior land

1ocked regions oE Malabar especially the Nila basis. This

is mainly because this area produced less of the expertable

commodities 1ike spices. The system of product ion and dis-

tribution in the Nila basin, based on backward Agriculture

hardly produced any substantial marketable surplus. The

basin was characterised by subsistance farming.

It is to be noted here that though Ponnani (tyndis)

served as a natural harbour at the mon th of Nila river
during the period 9th to 13th century A.D.. the linkage

effects of Fore ign trade has not percolated into the

in terior areas of south Malabar. This can be explained

only by the difficulties encountered in water navigat ion

in Nila river which maturally made it impossible to

transport bulk goods through this river. * The x

Povt
emergence of Kozh ikode p t as a major trading centre

by the middle of 14th century naturally shifted the interest

Cvound
of traders and manufactures to invest in and aatt Kozh ikode

which helped the area to develop relatively faster.

Kerala was integrated in to the world sys tem of capitalLsm

by the time of sixteenth century by the Portugese. Several

d to control the z g
wars were wages spice trade by Portugese,

Dutch, Frenc and nglish during the 16th to 19th centuries.

VIC o y
The ultimatewas to British who sxajat subjugated Malabar
in 1792. 12)
12
 &5

By 19th century, Briti sh cap1tal found its way to the

plan tat ion sector and later to primary process ing of several

agricultural produces like coir, caahew, co£fee oand tea.

The ver increas ing global demand for tea, coffee, rubber

and spices kmixt lerd to the large scale commercialisation

do
veo ma
4f Kerala Agrlculture. However, the dert of plan tations

Cenle td of Malabar, Koch1 and

over the hilly regions
travancore only. Along with this process of commercialisation

several factories and trading cen tres were started by the

the coastal regions of Kerala.

European capital iats along
These fac tos helped the transition of Kerala conomy from

semi feudal to capital1st path though reinforc ing its

external depend ency .

The Nila basin was left out of all these developments

because of the pecul iari ties of its geograph ical setting.
Con lans
This reglon ceertain o r e wet land suitable for the
Co len ia
cultivation of paddy the 7he policy of impos ing
bo Ln
high rates of land taxes and provid ing the ard lords also
adversely affected the cul tivat ion in Mal abar. Moreover,
the policy of impot ing cotton, handicrafts and other consumer
goods discouraged the setting up of manufac turing enterprises

in the South Malabar.** All of these factors led the Nila

Basin area to note in to rema in i o r Agrarian subs is tence

economy with tradit lonal feudal relat Lons of product ion.

The region was in sulated against the commercial isat ion

process goind on in North Mababar, Kochi and Travancore regions.

This ia true-even-in the-present-dato

 In this can text, t may also be noted that the share of
Christian populatlon in the Malabar area was at its lowest(14)

(census report of 1871 as reproduced in Table 212 of (Page 37)

of Radhakrishnan.P. 1989) t m a a only 0.3 per cent. This

observation is pertinent when we consider the fact that n

Travancore Kochi reglon, it was the Christian commun ity who

en thusiastically paved the path for commercil ization of

commerce and
Agriculture and expansion of indus try trade,

bank ing. It is also true that in the post independence

of Christlans
period, there tatk place a large scale migration
in
Malabar and South Malabar,
from Central Kerala to North
owng
commercial
of purchasing fertile land for grantng
the pursuit
14 ity to South
of Christian commun
cropsThus the migration
the traditional relations of
Malabar def in itely changed
also the Nila basin region i s
production. Econ omically
development. It is slewly chañing
i experiencing more
from a food crop economy to a cash crop area.

the major causes of economic under

Sumnring up,

the followingi-
development of the Nila basin are

Lack of commercial crops in the Framing system.

1.
Lack of extensive trade net works to bust linkage
2
effects of economic progress.

Lack of entrepren eur ial spirit among the natives of

3
the South Malabar.

4. Apathy of the ruling class and land owmng castes

to provide stimuli for economic development programmes.

It is however a welcome relief that aftet the 1950's

there is a perceptible change in the Nila basin region

for develop ing economica lly among the people of the area.

Industrially also this region is one of the backward

areas of Kerala.
 As mention ed in the introduction this paper first attempted
concentrate
to identify broad areas where future research, should
in order to offer plausjible reason s for the relative under

development of Nila bas in region. This area from time Lmme

lackod
the
morial high developed cultural 11fe but kaxk
enjoyed a

liffe.
superstructure for such a high develop ed social

Notes and References

ish the fact that

the Nila basin
1. It is not easy to establ
rest of Kerala.
developed from the
area is economically under
trips made
observation from the number of
This is a pers onal
of other research
collect data in respect
in the region to

project.

environmen tal
Geomorphological and
2. Anirudhan S.(1994)
Internat ion al
river system :Kerala in
aspects of Bharathapuzha

on Kerala studies Abstracts Vol,4. AKG Centre

Congress
for Research and Studies,
Trivandrum, Page. 47

3. Nishi sinha (1995) Water Resource man agemen t Har

Publ ications, New Delhi PPI

-
10.
Anand
cumulaticn of
4. Gills B.K. and Frank AG(1990-91) The
Accumulation Theses and Research Aganda for five thous and

Dialetical Anthropology 5(1)

years of world system History.
19-42. The argument put forth was that the first systematic

appearance of city centered exchange of surplus ac tually

began from circ 2700-2500 B.C. among Mesopottamia, Bgyptian

and Indus Valley cities.

5. Ayyappan A(1982) The Personality of Kerala, University

of Kerala, Trivandrum P.10, 14-15.

6. Pillai Kunhan, Elamkul am (1966) Janmi Sampraday am Keralath il,

National Book stall, Kottayam
 3

7. Varghese .T .C. (1970) Agrarian change and

econom ic consequences
Land Tenures in Keralla 1850-1960 Alllied Publ ishers, Calcutta.

8. Lee Samuel (1829) Travels of Ibn Batuta, Mur ray, London

9. Panikkar.K.N. Against Lord and State, Oxford

Univers ity Press,
New Delhi PP1 - 3

10. Sreekumar.T.T.(1993) Urban Process in Kerala, Centre for

Development Studies, Trivandrum.

11. Logan Williams 1. The Malabar Mannual

Charithram Publishers,
Trivandrum.

12. Gupa Nikhilesh (1994) PepPper and Imper ial pressure in the
Kerala Coast, The Late 18th
centurY. Paper presented in
International Conference in Kerala
studies. Trivandrum.

13. Pan ikkar.K.N. Op cit

14. s k a Aiyappan A (1982) OP cit. P.186 observes that in Travancore

the Chris ti ans form about 12% of
population.
15. Michael Tharakan.P .K. (1978) Dimensions and Characteris tics
of the migration of farmers from Travancore to Malabar,

.Journal of Kerala Studies June 1978 PP 287 305.