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Like all poor people, Girija, too, was hoping luck would pull her out of a wretched existence. So when her first child, Narayana, was born with six digits in each foot, she was sure it was a sign of good luck.
Narayana brought no extraordinary luck to the family. Girija and her husband, Babu, continued to toil as daily wage agricultural labourers. They had three more children—twin girls Bhagi and Bhageerati, and another boy, Balachandra. Then, things started taking a turn for the worse.

“Narayana must have been seven then. He used to simply wander off and throw himself into a well or a stream. Luckily, someone always saved him,’’ recalled Girija. She could not stop working because she had three other children to look after. Between toiling for wages and looking after Narayana, Girija has never known a moment of leisure. Narayana’s mental abilities grew progressively stunted. His speech was incoherent and he had no attention span. The village school teacher tried to take him to school, hoping it would help the boy get better. But it made things worse, as the children in school made fun of him and bullied him endlessly.

Girija and Babu did everything within their meagre resources to provide treatment for Narayana. Their hamlet, Kollaje Palike, in the Western Ghats is far from any expert medical help. Even the doctors at Mangalore, which is 55km away, had no clue what was wrong with him. As the couple could not travel frequently for treatment, they eventually gave up.

Narayana no longer tries to throw himself into wells. That is a relief. But he has turned blind, and even though he is 20 and well-built, his mental faculties are that of a little child. Girija is one of the many mothers in the three villages of Kokkada, Nidle and Patrame of Belthangady taluk who have no life of their own. But Narayana is the apple of her eye.

Almost a third of the 10,000 people in the three villages have abnormal health conditions ranging from skin diseases and blindness to physical deformity, mental retardation, heart disease, cancer and chronic allergies.

A few kilometres from Girija and Babu’s house live Ramanna Gowda and Sita on their areca farm. They have three children—two boys and a girl. The youngest child Tulasi, who is the same age as Narayana, is mentally challenged. She can barely speak from a jawless mouth. She mumbles to herself most of the time. Many of the bones, including that of her skull, are deformed. Owing to the deformation of the pelvic bone, she can barely stand. “Thanks to a belt devised by doctors, she manages to move around the house,’’ said Ramanna.

“We cannot take Tulasi anywhere, not even to the village fair or temple. When she sees people, she gets excited and ends up getting epileptic seizures. It has happened a few times, leaving her weaker,” said Ramanna. He is worried that Tulasi’s condition is deteriorating. “Last year, another child who was like Tulasi died,’’ said Ramanna, hiding his tears.

Gracy D’Souza, a labourer, was pregnant with her fourth child when aerial spraying of pesticide was carried out on the cashew plantations near her house two decades ago. Her son Santosh has been lying on a mattress in her living room for the last 20 years. His backbone and limbs are twisted in such a manner that he can neither lie straight nor move his hands and legs in the normal way.

Only Gracy understands Santosh’s needs. For the others, his speech is gibberish. An ardent cricket fan, Santosh was watching the T20 World Cup matches when THE WEEK met him. “He only wants India to win. When I tell him that the best team will win, he scolds me. He says if we support some other team, we should not live in India,’’ said Gracy. Santosh, who receives a government pension for the physically challenged every month, saves the money in a wallet, which he keeps under his pillow. When asked about the winner of the T20 World Cup, he thrashed his limbs and mumbled. Gracy translated it as ‘India’.

The primary health centre at Kokkada is not equipped to deal with the special needs of the people of these three villages. According to Dr Prakash, in-charge of the PHC, the three villages need a full-fledged medical centre. “Many of them require surgery and frequent reviews, for which they have to be referred to Mangalore. They stop going after sometime,’’ he said.

The cause for the high incidence of abnormalities remained a mystery for long. It was only six years ago that one of the villagers, a schoolteacher named Sridhara Gowda, made a guess on the cause of the malady. His quest for the cause came from a personal calamity: he became visually impaired in 2003.

Sridhara put the facts together. He recalled a pesticide-laden chopper landing outside his school when he was a child. The pesticide was meant for the 800-hectare cashew plantation spread over three villages. “For us kids, it was like festival. Imagine a helicopter in the village! Our teachers would take us from school to see it,’’ he recalled.

The Karnataka State Cashew Development Corporation, which leased the 800 hectares to plant cashew, conducted aerial spraying of pesticide every December from 1983 to 2000. Each round of spraying wiped out the insects from the vicinity. “Even frogs died,’’ said Sridhara.
Villagers begged for the left-over pesticide, which they used in the stream to catch fish. Subraya Achari, who lives downstream closer to the forest, said Sambhar and spotted deer died after drinking the river water. It was a mystery.

Later, Sridhara read in newspapers about a pesticide named endosulfan affecting the lives of people in Kasaragod, Kerala. The issue was raised by activists in the late 1990s, leading to a ban on aerial spraying of endosulfan in 2000. He came to the shocking conclusion that it was endosulfan that was used in his village. Though the plight of endosulfan victims in Kerala was much written about, the victims in neighbouring Karnataka have been ignored.

However, though all circumstantial evidence pointed to the spraying of endosulfan as the cause for the abnormalities, there was no scientific study to prove it. Sridhara petitioned the authorities, to no avail. When nobody responded, he started a postcard campaign. The 12,000 postcards that were sent to President Abdul Kalam in 2004 made an impact. Soon, the deputy commissioner’s office asked the health department to conduct a survey. The survey revealed that 251 people in Kokkada, 103 people in Patrame and 75 in Nidle were suffering from chronic diseases.

But no scientific study of the cause was conducted. Those suffering from other debilitating conditions such as blindness, skin diseases, cancer and heart ailments, were not enumerated. During the Janata Dal (Secular)-BJP coalition government, Sridhara recorded the condition of the people on a CD and gave it to the leaders. B.S. Yeddyurappa, who was deputy chief minister in charge of finance, ordered the horticulture department to compensate 281 people. But they told the government that since the land on which the cashew trees stood belonged to the forest department, it should make the payment.

When Yeddyurappa became chief minister, he ordered a compensation of Rs 25,000 to 200 people. Minister for Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Shobha Karandlaje took a special interest in the issue and fixed an eligibility criterion. A family with one or more persons with more than 40 per cent physical disability would get Rs 50,000.

Surveys were conducted in the villages, and 211 families were found eligible for compensation. In February, Yeddyurappa handed over the amount to the victims’ families. “I will join the Kerala chief minister and appeal to the Centre for a ban on endosulfan,’’ Yeddyurappa said in Kokkada. It was the first official acknowledgment that endosulfan was the villain. But the official invitation for the CM’s function only referred to compensation for ‘pesticide victims’. He also announced that an orphanage would be built in Kokkada at the cost of Rs 25 lakh.

Villagers with heart disease, cancer, skin disease and blindness are feeling neglected. Pushpa and Sanjeevu of Denja can never have children. Pushpa had three miscarriages and twice she gave birth to stillborns.

Padmayya Naik’s three daughters, Prema, Gulabi and Shobha, are childless even after six years of marriage. In recent years, several women in these villages have been diagnosed with uterine tumours. They haven't been compensated so far. Many women have psychological problems.

Those with more than one victim in the family also felt cheated. P.K. Cheenkra’s two children are affected. Yet, he got only Rs 50,000. Same is the case with Sunanda Poojary of Alankara village, who has three children with multiple disabilities.

The other side of the story is that everyone is gunning for compensation. The day after the chief minister’s visit, 500 more applications for physical disability pension were received at the Kokkada PHC, said Prakash. Some are genuine, but many are not, he said.

However, when one sees the condition of the affected, it becomes clear that no amount of compensation can erase or mitigate their suffering. What is required is a comprehensive package for sustained hi-tech treatment and support that takes into account the care-givers as well.