Socio-cultural Processes and Livelihood Patterns at Tirurangadi - CDS

never create a system of production and distribution that could ensure environmental
sustainability and satisfaction of needs. Instead, agriculture declined, land became
speculative, fictitious capital, and needs were satisfied primarily by remittances from
outside the region.
Was the region incapable of developing a system of production and distribution that
would cater to the satisfaction of needs? We have seen that nature of the terrain, and how
people created a system of patams and Parambas in their effort to create a livelihood
pattern. The madu, paramba, challi and patam were categories of human geography that
were built by the people in order to develop an understanding of the productive resource
regions. Each was conceived as a specific ecosystem, to be utilized with adequate
knowledge and sensitivity, which catered to specific needs of society. This is clear from
the maintenance of biodiversity by the people of the region, to which they could always
return in times of scarcity. Even the network of sacred places, such as the kavus had the
same function, and also played the role of a calandrical system by which people could
regulate their activities. The system of chenas, kulams and streams, as we have seen
earlier, created surface water storage, and the challis in many places had the same
function. It is interesting to note that virippu was very rarely sown, the mostly the crops
were mundagan and puncha. Some of the patams only yield the puncha crop. Given the
nature of the rainfall, and the average run off of Kadalundi River, the region receives
most of the rain during the South-West monsoon, and hence the raising two subsequent
crops would only depend on techniques of preserving surface water and the preservation
of the streams, which seems to have been successfully done. The system of streams,
which fed the huge patasekharams have been disappearing only recently.
In order to complement the paddy production in the patasekharams paramba production
was successfully used. Parambas grew a number of food products such as ragi, samai,
modan paddy, pulses, vegetables, root crops, plantains and so on, apart from fruit trees