While farmers continue to kill themselves every other day in crisis-hit Kuttanad, a belated mediation effort that the local district collector chaired failed on Wednesday, after political participants nearly came to blows.

Representatives of the ruling Left and Congress-led Opposition riled at each other over the question of allowing farmers to use harvesting machines, leaving angry farmers to walk out alleging both were trying to use their plight for political ends.

In Thiruvananthapuram, meanwhile, Chief minister V S Achuthanandan announced that his Government would write off debts of all Kuttanad farmers who have killed themselves in desperation over the past two weeks, and give their kin Rs 50,000 each.

That, however, may not bring much consolation to this area, once Kerala’s rice bowl. About Rs 40 crore worth of paddy is still under threat of destruction in Kuttanad fields, apart from some 30,000 hectares of paddy awaiting harvest that last fortnight’s summer showers laid to waste.

The Opposition has been blaming the CPI(M)’s powerful farm union, the Kerala State Karshaka Thozhilali Union (KSKTU), for refusing to allow local farmers to use harvesting machines in time to reap their crop before the rains leading to the enormous loss. In Kuttanad, no farmer would dare to use the far cheaper and more efficient farm machines instead of the unionised manual labour, without applying and procuring the KSKTU’s sanction to do so — paying it a ‘fee’ for each acre that the machines are allowed on.

The CPI(M) and other Left parties, however, blame the unexpectedly heavy showers for the crisis.

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