Tamaraikulam

Tamaraikulam, a small village in Virudhunagar District, around 10+ kms from nearest road network on all sides i.e Tiruchuli, Aruppukottai, Kariapatti. It is around 6+ kms east of Krishnapuram, a village lying on the nearest major road connecting Madurai and Kamuthi via Kariapatti and Tiruchuli.

Tamaraikulam is around 370 kms from my home town Cuddalore and invariably took around 8-12 hours on public transport.

The purchase of agricultural land here commenced around 2005 and almost completed by late 2007.

The exact co-ordinates are 9°35'33.9"N 78°11'33.3"E .

Initial years

Originally my father resided at a rented accommodation in Tiruchuli, 8~9 kms from the land for close to 7 years. He helped clear the entire land of Prosopis juliflora, locally known as seemai karuvelam. He also dug around 6-7 borewells and out of that around 3 were successful.

We applied and got power connection at one of the borewells. This borewell was used for drinking water and Irrigation.

Experiments with Manivannan

Initially tried the local crops like kuthiraivali and Paddy with Manivannan. Could not reach break even.

Installed drip for banana. It totally bombed due to very deep jcb digging, going down even up to 5 feet for laterals..

Casuarina survived barely but could not grow due to poor soil and nil irrigation.

Maravalli failed 99.99% due to wrong planting.

Working with kumar

Teamed up with Kumar and ? on Jasmine and tree cultivation. Planting was done successfully with huge manual effort from Kumar. However due to poor security or lack of fencing, grazing and lack of water, entire thing failed.

Living in the farm

Thinking that living at the farm will improve farming, on my urging, we went for a construction of living quarters in the land, near to the bore well.

Constructed a two storey building of the size 20*10 squarefeet, with a overhead water storage on second floor at around 5 lakhs cost.

Manivannan family members used Ground floor and we used the first floor.

Manivannan family members stayed mostly during the day time only. He slept there during night time initially when crops were cultivated.

Banana, casuarina, maravalli attempts were made during this time and all failed. Living in the farm did not improve anything.

Major mistakes

• Too far away from road i.e lack of access
• Area was quite big
• Poor planning due to lack of knowledge
• Worst execution, as i was not there at crucial times, compounded by making this mistake multiple times
• Wrong incentive structure

These factors invariably produces a Lollapalooza effect .

Reddichavady Radhakrishnan

Reddichavady Radhakrishnan was introduced by Mala pinni to cultivate the land. He brought his tractor and started living there. Cleaning and Ploughing was completed. Before he could sow the crop, the land was handed over to RSS around 2017.

Others

I once used RTI to get a patta transfer completed in kadambankulam.