Like the fast-evaporating Nila, the civilisation it had spawned — a civilisation which now lives in the form of folklores, legends, songs, art forms and skills — too is in danger of extinction.
An internationally-acclaimed tourism outfit which began operations in Nila, The Blue Yonder, has hit upon a never-before attempted strategy to reconstruct a vanishing civilisation: participatory wiki-mapping, crowd-sourcing or outsourcing the job of documentation to the masses. This is for the first time that the country is experimenting with “crowd-sourcing” to revive a river ecosystem.
The objective is to document each and every trace of the civilisation in the 9,000-sq km surrounding the 200-km course of the Nila through three districts — Thrissur, Palakkad and Malappuram.
“Participatory mapping can empower local people to take charge of what’s remaining,” said Gopinath Parayil, founder of The Blue Yonder.
His team is giving finishing touch to an open source platform where people could directly upload any Nila-related information. “It could be about stories they want to share, it could be about the natural ponds in their village, it could be about farming traditions, about musicians, about skill sets, handicrafts, pottery,” Mr Gopinath said.
As a first step, a pilot documentation of 10 historically-significant regions will be done by Nila Foundation, a platform created by Mr Gopinath for “people passionate about Nila”.
We have identified 10 hubs within the 9,000-sq km, the places of historical significance like Thirunavaaya or Thrith-aala or Thrissur cole lands for instance,” he said. He said each hub will have 10 volunteers. “One hub will take care of 10-sq km patch, so in all 100-sq km patch. This is just a pilot exercise,” Mr Gopinath said.