Mullaperiyar: Grapes, lives rot as dam issue boils

KUMILY (TN-KERALA BORDER): The Mullaperiyar issue has sown the seeds of mutual distrust between people on either side of the 116-year-old dam, but nobody wants a harvest of hate.
Jobless for four days because of the curfew in the border districts, plantation and farm labourers who live in Tamil Nadu and work in Kerala have started feeling the pinch and want an immediate end to the impasse.Daily incomes of families have come down from Rs 500 to Rs 200 and, in some cases, nil.
Not any better are the cardamom farmers in Kerala, who may soon face a crisis without workers to pluck the spice. It is a double whammy for Kerala farmers as the price of their produce plummets and the cost of vegetables, milk and other ess-entials that come from Tamil Nadu shoot up.
P N Surulivelu, who owns 30 acres of cardamom plantations in Idukki, says he has incurred a loss of Rs 85,000 in the last week.
"Birds are feasting on ripe cardamom as there is no one to pluck them. If the situation continues for a few more weeks, I will have to wind up everything and leave," he says.
Tamil workers won't last that long. "We are on the verge of starvation," says Pon Murugan, a driver who has been out of his job for four days. "I don't think I will get my monthly income of Rs 5,000 this time. My family of four is surviving on my wife's daily wage of Rs 150," he says. Murugan's wife is lucky to have her job in Kamaya Goundapatti village near Cumbum.
Other women from the village, who used to work in Kerala plantations, are scared to move out of their huts in Cumbum after an unruly bunch of youngsters waylaid their jeep on the Kerala side three days ago.
"We've been living like brothers," says Kavi Suresh, who works in a vineyard in Cumbum, about his relationship with Keralites. "Now that good feel-ing is gone. But we don't want to live in hatred forever. We want this issue to end at the earliest," he says. The vineyard he works in has ripe grapes waiting to be plucked.
"Kerala is our main market," says P Chinnu, who doubles up as a watchman at a vineyard. "With loads not moving to Kerala, we are forced to keep the fruits on the plants as long as they last."
A Threviyam, a farm labour in Cumbum, says there are 1,500 men like him staring at uncertainty. "I am worried about the dam which is our lifeline, but my bigger worry is to feed my family for the next few months. Please do something to put an end to all this trouble," he says. He sees his perishing livelihood in the rotting grapes.