Fearing land loss, tribespeople return to Chinnakkanal colony

AROUND 8pm every day, after finishing dinner, Rajumol Ayyappan, a tribeswoman settled in the 301 Colony in Chinnakkanal, clambers up a wooden ladder to reach a makeshift hut built on the rooftop of her house. Her purpose: escape from wild elephants. Just last month, the elephants had attacked her house.

- NEJMA SULAIMAN @Idukki

The scene is now normal in the colony where as many as 301 landless tribal families were rehabilitated by the A K Antony-led government in 2002. Although Chinnakkanal has witnessed two major turns of events in the past two years—the translocation of wild tusker 'Arikomban', which worsened their lives, and the death of another marauding tusker 'Murivalan'—the tribal families have learnt to cope with the wild jumbo attacks.