Title : Kumbalangy – Model Tourism Village
Kumbalangy is a green island village of Ernakulam district in Kerala. It is having a population of about 30000 in its 7 sq. km area. The major attraction to this place is that it is surrounded by rich backwaters. Thus the place is known for traditional fishing and Chinese nets. A variety of prawns, oysters, crabs and small fishes are there which are supported by the array of mangroves. It was awarded for the best panchayath in Kerala in the year 2004.
The initiative to make this a model tourism village started in year 2003 when Sri. K V Thomas was the tourism minister. Since the place is blessed with the scenic beauty and advantage of being near to the Cochin city (16 km), they found much scope for tourism development. Initially there was protest from the natives arguing that tourism will harm the environment and culture. So the first step taken was to make them aware of the opportunities and benefits they can get from this tourism plan and how to avoid the possible ill effects. Massive awareness programmes by the panchayath were successful in this.
“The Kumbalangy project was set in motion in 2003 to help the local people, the economy and the locality through tourism,” says M C Sivadathan, former President of the Kumbalangy panchayath (village council). “And in order to achieve this, we have done away with many concepts typical of tourism elsewhere. Our idea is to create job opportunities for the villagers, while also ensuring that tourists have a good time seeing and experiencing real village life,” he explains. The panchayath is implementing the project.
The awareness that cleanliness will add to the scenic beauty made them to think for a model village. The panchayath banned use of plastic in the year 2007 for environmental protection. It is the first village in Kerala having a waste management system. As a part of this they set up 600 biogas plants for houses and 150 ecofriendly toilets. They want to make this a model village in cleanliness by ensuring sanitation in each and every house by implementing the biogas plants and ecofriendly toilets. For the accomplishment of this aims they are focusing on 15 crores from the central government’s “Jawaharlal Nehru Nagara Naveekarana Padhathi.” But to avail this, the panchayath has to have 20% of the amount. State government is supporting these plans only by words. So they are in a financial crisis to implement these projects.
As far as tourism is concerned, they aim at the scope of employment and welfare of the natives. The major attraction of the tourists to this place is the homestays available here, the traditional fishing and food, and of course the back waters. Now there are 25 homestays there, where the tourists stay with the host family and eat the same food they eat, of which 18 are licensed. They can walk through the village, watch fisher folk at work, fish themselves, go canoeing and visit the farms, among other things. They can also contact the panchayath if they require assistance.
Another scope is for the hotel business and the traditional fishing people. The tourists who come over there are very passionate to have the nadan food items mainly fish and other sea foods. Also the houseboat tourism is also gaining much profit. But the panchayath is paying keen attention in the area of avoiding pollution from tourism. Another goal the project has is to bring the village back to its ecologically glorious days – about 25 years ago.
Towards this, pokkali farming, a crop pattern that alternates between rice and fish (each for six months a year), is being brought back in full form. Also, mangroves that were once in abundance in the region are being planted once again. So far, about 50,000 mangrove saplings have been planted in the area.
Another initiative from the panchayath is to set up a “Kalagramam”-an artist’s village. This will showcase the traditional fishing equipments and handicrafts in the area. First plan was to erect it in the middle of back waters, but the ecological concerns made them to choose another area. They are offered UNDP (central govt) support if the panchayath and state government together can arrange the initial facilities like land. Their first installment was lapsed as they were not able to arrange land facilities in time. They needed 4 acres of land for the project which they are now making up by filling up a part of a pond over there. After that they can get an aid worth 1 crore from the central government.
Other initiatives that they have done for tourism are 13 walkways and drainage system and widened roads with trees on both sides. Now they are maintaining and planting trees by the side of the inland sub waterways and proceeding with grudging, to implement pedal boating. They were in discussions for setting up a plastic recycling project. Since it is not viable for a local body to set it up and plan for such a system in the Ernakulam city was in pipeline, they waited for that. But due to some other reasons that project is lagging.
Now they are getting above thousand foreigners as tourists and some of the visitors have done promotion to this place through internet, being passionate about the beauty of this place. Their future plans are to build more walkways and cycle paths along the waterside, building public toilets as part of the pollution control projects and for the comfort of the tourists and a craft centre for promotion and marketing of coir products. The people and the panchayath want to make the model tourism village much more practical but lack of financial support is the main problem
