Jayaraman was born into a very poor farming family in the village of Kattimedu near Thiruthuraipoondi in Thiruvarur district. Educated only till the ninth standard, he joined the printing press at Thiruthuraipoondi and worked there for many years.
Interested in traditional agriculture and started working with Nammazhvar. Nammazhvar has been campaigning for intensive organic farming since 2000. Nel Jayaraman was one of the most important commanders of Nammazhvar at that time. Nammazhvar loved him dearly as he had the ambition to complete the work no matter how difficult it was, even if he was not as educated as Nammazhvar or his colleagues.
In 2004, Nammazhvar started a walk emphasizing natural agriculture in Poompuhar and ended at Kallanai. It was during that trek that Ramakrishnan, a farmer from Vadakkur village near Thalaignayiru, handed over the paddy called “Kattuyanam” to Nammazhvar. Eagerly receiving the paddy, Nammazhvar gave the seed into Jayaraman’s hands. During the trek, 6 more varieties of paddy including Kauni, Poomparai and Kaivirasamba were found. Nammazhvar handed over the responsibility of spreading and multiplying these paddy varieties to Jayaraman.
Then he first took a bicycle and went on from one village to the next and enquired if anyone had any traditional paddy and started collecting it. He thought of how to spread the collected seeds and gave them to some farmers and told them to cultivate them. Jayaraman did not have a large amount of agricultural land, so he was in a difficult situation where he could not cultivate much of this paddy. Then Narasimhan and Adinarayanan gave Jayaraman to use their farm in Thiruthuraipoondi Adirengam for this purpose. Since then his work has gained more momentum.
Jayaraman had reclaimed more than 40 varieties of paddy from 2004 to 2006. Nammazhvar and Jayaraman, who decided that the recovery of seed paddy should not only be a job but also a people’s movement, have been holding a paddy festival since 2006 at the Adirengam Agricultural Farm near Thiruthuraipoondi. The first year was his journey, which began with just two hundred farmers, about 40 varieties of paddy. Gradually began to grow. It was on this platform that Nammazhvar gave him the nickname “Nel”.
Jayaraman introduced a new tactic at the Paddy Festival. He said if a farmer gives two kilos of seed paddy for this year’s paddy festival, he will have to cultivate that paddy next year and return four kilos at the paddy festival. Traditional paddy began to spread at an astonishing rate with this special tactic.
After learning about his traditional paddy recovery work, farmers from all over Tamil Nadu started calling him and giving him traditional paddy. In last ten years there was no day he didn’t travel. It was through this hard work that his journey started with just a single paddy and turned into 174 varieties of paddy. So far more than 30,000 farmers have been cultivating traditional paddy.
Jayaraman died on December 6, 2018 after suffering from cancer due to his relentless travels to collect and spread paddy. Despite receiving many awards, including the Central Government Award for Best Achievement, Nel Jayaraman will always say that the nickname given by Nammazhvar is the big award. It is certain that his name will remain as long as rice exists.
Thanks : Puthiyathalaimurai