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More than a year after the Chooralmala, Mundakkai and Punchirimattom mountains of Wayanad district in Kerala came crashing down, the nationalised banks of India have not stopped sending reminders.
The envelopes keep arriving at government-arranged rented houses and relatives’ homes where the survivors of the July 30, 2024 landslides now live. Neatly addressed, machine-printed, they carry the same impersonal warning: “Final notice for loan repayment.”
Some are addressed to the dead. Others to families that lost everything in the avalanches of mud and stone that wiped out Chooralmala and Mundakkai.
The disaster claimed more than 250 lives and erased three entire hamlets from the map of Kerala’s high ranges. It also exposed a slower, more silent catastrophe of the enduring weight of debt that continues to crush those who survived.
In the early hours of July 30, 2024, torrential monsoon rain set off massive landslides across Wayanad’s Meppadi panchayat where the three hamlets are located. The mountains split open and swallowed homes, coffee estates and farms. By dawn, the familiar green slopes had turned into a mass of red earth and ruin.
When the rescue work ended, survivors were moved to temporary shelters and later into government-paid rented rooms. But as the monsoon returned this year, fear has lingered — and so has the paperwork.
“Every few weeks another letter comes,” says Mary Thomas, a widow from Mundakkai who lost her husband, son and their small holding of coffee and pepper. “They remind me to pay for the land that no longer exists. My husband’s name is still on the loan file, as if he’s away somewhere and will return to pay it.”
What began as a plea for relief has now turned into a confrontation with a financial system that refuses to see disaster victims as anything other than defaulters.
According to figures submitted to the Kerala High Court by the district authorities, the families affected by the landslides collectively owed Rs 35.3 crore to 12 nationalised banks. These debts include agricultural, housing, personal, and educational loans.
The Kerala Bank, a state cooperative lender, has written off about Rs 4.98 crore, but the nationalised banks — including State Bank of India, Canara Bank, Union Bank, and Punjab National Bank — have declined to follow.
For the banks, it is a matter of policy and precedent. For the survivors, it is a question of existence.
“These loans were not luxuries,” says P T John, a farmer leader from Vythiri. “They were survival tools — for seeds, fertiliser, small irrigation, or for children’s education. Now even the land and homes that backed them are gone. But the debt is alive.”
More than a hundred students in the landslide-affected panchayats had taken educational loans for professional courses. Several lost one or both parents. Many cannot continue studies or repay. “My daughter was studying nursing,” says Joseph Varghese of Chooralmala. “She died that night. But the bank still sends reminders in her name.”
When recovery agents began contacting survivors, the Kerala High Court intervened. It stayed all recovery proceedings and pulled up the Union government for its refusal to waive the loans. The Centre’s affidavit had stated that it lacked any legal provision to order banks to cancel or restructure loans taken by disaster victims.
The court’s reaction was fierce. “We cannot remain silent spectators to these Shylockian methods,” it observed, calling the Centre’s stand a failure of compassion and responsibility.
At the district level, local bodies have pleaded for empathy. Shamshad Marakar, president of the Wayanad District Panchayat, says the issue has gone beyond economics. “What kind of country treats people who have lost their families and land as if they are wilful defaulters?” he asks. “These are not business losses. These are lives torn apart. Debt must not outlive disaster.”
Marakar has written to both the state and Union governments demanding a structured debt-relief framework for disaster victims. “You can rebuild houses, but how can people rebuild hope when every week another reminder comes from a bank?” he says.
A year later, the survivors of Chooralmala and Mundakkai are scattered across rented rooms in Meppadi, Kalpetta and Vythiri. The government pays the rent, but most families live with relatives. The trauma runs deep. Many have no documents to prove ownership of lost land. Others wait for compensation and death certificates.
Every attempt to restart life is hindered by debt. Farmers who lost fields cannot access new credit because their previous loans remain unpaid. Kudumbashree groups that lost members are being pressed for instalments on microloans, their collective guarantees turned into collective punishment.
“Five women in our group died in the landslide,” says Gracy Jose, who heads a self-help group in Chooralmala. “Now the NBFC calls every month asking the rest of us to pay for them. What do we pay with? The soil itself has vanished.”
The social costs are staggering. Anxiety, depression and insomnia have become common among survivors. For many, the sound of rain triggers panic. And now, the sight of a bank envelope does the same.
Kerala’s government has repeatedly asked the Centre to allow disaster-linked loan waivers. But the Union finance ministry insists that such relief is not legally tenable, as loans are governed by contracts between banks and borrowers. This bureaucratic rigidity, critics say, reveals a deeper moral failure.
“The Constitution guarantees the right to life,” says P T John. “If the State cannot protect that life from being destroyed twice — once by nature and again by debt — then what is that right worth?”
Kerala’s history offers precedent. After the 2018 floods, the state pushed banks to grant moratoriums and interest waivers, but the relief was temporary. Similar appeals after the Kavalappara and Pettimudi landslides yielded little. Each time, survivors had to depend on political goodwill or court orders.
“What we need,” says Shamshad Marakar, “is not another committee or circular. We need a law.”
India faces increasing climate-induced disasters — floods, landslides, cyclones, droughts. Every event leaves behind thousands of families trapped in debt. Yet there is no national statute that guarantees automatic debt relief or restructuring for verified disaster victims.
A National Disaster Debt Relief Act could fill that vacuum. It would mandate automatic suspension of repayment in notified disaster zones, followed by cancellation or restructuring based on verified loss. A central fund could reimburse banks, ensuring relief without jeopardising financial stability. Such a law would convert ad hoc mercy into enforceable right.
Economists warn that without structural reform, post-disaster debt traps will deepen rural distress. Families forced to sell compensation land or migrate to cities to escape creditors risk losing both livelihood and identity.
At a rented house on the edge of Kalpetta town, Mary Thomas keeps a small box of her husband’s papers: land deeds, bank passbook, the last notice. “I keep them because they are all that’s left,” she says. “Every time a letter comes, I think of that night. The rain was falling hard. My husband said, don’t worry, the hill has stood for a hundred years. By morning, it was gone.”
Her surviving son now works as a daily wage labourer. The family gets a modest monthly rent allowance from the government. But the loans remain. “When they call, I just say there’s nobody left to pay. Then I hang up,” she says quietly.
The story repeats across Meppadi and Mundakkai. People try to rebuild with small jobs or help from relatives. But many live in fear of being blacklisted by banks. “We are not beggars,” says John. “We are asking for fairness. If the government can write off corporate loans worth lakhs of crores, why not a few crores for those who lost everything?”
A year after the Wayanad landslides, the hills have greened again. Coffee saplings are sprouting on the edges of craters where homes once stood. The streams murmur with deceptive calm. But the survivors live under the same shadow — of notices, interest, and memories that refuse to fade.
For them, the landslide never ended; it only changed shape. It moved from the slopes to the ledgers.
“Let the government call it whatever it wants — waiver, relief, or justice,” says Marakar. “But it must act. Because if the State can’t stop recovery from the dead, then something far deeper than the mountain has collapsed.”