Zones of worry: Lives on the boil on forest fringes in Keralam after new ESA notification

It is barely noon, but dark clouds have already gathered over Randattumoonni, a hill hamlet deep inside Melukavu in the eastern high ranges of Kottayam. A cool breeze sweeps across the slopes before rain suddenly comes down in sheets, plunging the settlement into near darkness.

“It used to be even darker here when it rained,” recollects Tashkent Paikada, a settler farmer.

For those like Tashkent, these hills are not an untouched wilderness but a landscape shaped by generations of farming and settlement.

They fear that the proposed Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA) notification for Western Ghats villages will uproot them from their lives, which were built by fighting inclement weather and marauding wildlife.