Socio-cultural Processes and Livelihood Patterns at Tirurangadi - CDS

Productivity of the soil was the next important concern. As we have seen earlier, double
crop lands were not substantial in the area. However, the nature of the soil, mainly
riverside alluvium, ensured that generally lands would yield ten to twelve times the seed
capacity. This would provide for the subsistence, besides the pattom and revenue
requirements. The dietary practices of the area never exclusively depended on paddy
(only a few landlord families were vegetarians), crops like chama, modan and fruits, roots
and vegetables, along with fish, poultry and beef (the last two on festive occasions)
answered the dietary needs of the ordinary farmers. We have seen how they survived in
near- famine conditions. As they became the landowners, they had to meet the
requirements of the household from their lands, and any improvement of their conditions
was possible only by increasing the number of crops or by increasing the productivity of
the soil. Meeting the large number of ‘modern’ needs, like sending their children to
school, paying for their healthcare in a modern hospital or doctor, buying the household
necessities by paying money (we saw the existence of the local barter system earlier),
using a bus for transport, let alone buying a bicycle or scooter, construction or repair of
their houses, and all the other requirements for improving the ‘standard of living,’ needed
additional income which had to come from their lands.
According to agricultural ‘experts ‘of the Government, the problem lay with their
methods of farming. The Census of 1971 refers to the whole area as ‘rice and tapioca’
area. As we have seen tapioca appears just as one of the crops in the early settlement
documents and never as a staple. The experts appear to have ignored the fact that the area
yielded a number of paramba products such as ginger, gingelly, betel, pulses, vegetables,
apart from coconut and areca nut. The most important products were paddy and coconut.
Paddy cultivation was done with locally available paddy seeds such as Aryan,
thavalakkannan, kuttyatan, vellari, chitteni, nakara, nayaruvithu, kotiyan in the lower
areas, cheera, thekkancheera, palliyaran, thonnuran in the slightly elevated areas. Seeds