Tryst with tribals of Arakku valley

Tryst with tribals of Arakku valley

A Tribal woman in Arakku valley

Women carrying fire wood is a very common sign in any mountainous region. During my travel to Arakku, I too saw many such women carrying big bundle of sticks on their heads and there is nothing un-usual about this sight. We all would have seen this umpteen times in during our trips to hill stations and tribal heart land, but something changed my understanding and perspective towards tribals in this trip.  

It all started off with a comment by my driver, when we passed by one such woman carrying a head load of wood. The driver said 

“these tribals enjoy quite a lot and whenever they want to build a door, cot they venture in the forest and get the best wood and it is totally free for them and the government also doesn’t bother to question them and we bloody have to pay a big price for all these things “

There was angst in the driver’s view and his disappointment was clearly evident.

The statement by driver made me think if there is something more than that what meets the eye? And a volley of questions started popping in my mind.

Why does the Driver think that it is un-fair?  Is it really un-fair?

Who are these tribals and why do they need to venture into forest and get the wood? Doesn’t the tribals have the right to get the wood they require from the forests?

Is there a good reasoning for the Tribals to revolt against the mining projects and could there be a reason as to why Naxals are able to influence the Tribals?

Why are the tribals in such a backward state even after 60 years of independence? Don’t they have any access to the facilities provided by government?

I started to realize that the difference lies in the perspective, context and the background from which each one of us come and how it influences our opinions.

From a common man’s perspective (Driver, You, Me & general public): It may be totally un-fair that the govt. adopts a different yard stick among its citizens.

1. Special access to tribals to venture into the forest
2. Special educational quota
3. Special Job quota

From a Tribal’s perspective

1. The entire forest belongs to them and  they have enjoyed free hold of it for generations and thousands of years
2. Outsiders (Civil society & Govt of India) encroaches their territory and imposes rules on them. Essentially questioning their authority over what was in their possession for generations. It is like somebody from outside coming and taking away their assets (Land, forest produce, homes), & freedom and imposing restrictions on Where to roam, when to roam, what to do and when to do.

Suddenly my perspective about the tribals started to change and my understanding started to de-mystify.   I started to observe things with bit more detail in this trip. Some of the things that I observed during this trip are

1. Who are these tribals?

Simply put they are the forest dwelling people and are also called Girijans. These people have been dwelling in the forests for quite a number of centuries and seems they are the true native population of land.  Initially they seem to have settled down in the plains and on the fringes of the forests near the rivers. However when external people (Aryans / Non-native Indian population) started occupying plains these people have been driven down to interiors and finally seems to have settled down in forests. Though there seems to few tribes which have been living in forests for few thousands of years

2. What do they do and how do they survive?

Tribals were happy in their own world of forests. They had their own areas of cultivation where they used to grow their agricultural requirements, hunted in the forest for their food requirements and were happy,  till the outsiders started stepping into their territory robbing their freedom to roam, forcefully grabbed their cultivable / hunting grounds.  

3. Are there many different tribes?

Yes there are many different tribal groups. In Arakku valley itself there are some 15+ different tribal clans that make Arakku their home. The Tribal museum at Arakku valley is a treat to watch. Some of the artifacts used for cooking, trapping birds/animals, food processing machines etc.. Are really wonderful and exhibits the advancement of pragmatic science  being applied. They seem to have a wonderful culture and customs but unfortunately today it seems to have been totally lost or in the process of extinction. 

5. What about their culture & religion?

Predominantly they seem to have their native gods which seem to be nature based and there has been an influence of Hinduism. There are references in Ramayana and Mahabharata about the Vishnu avatars having interacted with Tribals. Unfortunately the spectrum is changing and more than the change the reason for the change is very disturbing. While I am not against any religion, and believe in Universal god I am also saddened that some sections of some religions are exploiting the poverty of these tribals. Apparently tribals are getting converted en-masse to Christianity and they are being lured by financial support and gifts.  It is really tragic that people are moving away from their inherited religion and culture that they have been following for thousands of years for mere financial reasons.

 Again if we think from their perspective the equation totally changes. They believed in Hinduism and their tribal religion & traditions and none of these have helped them much in improving their socio-economic status.  The governments’ failure to uplift them is clearly evident and shows the sorry state of affairs and they are just being exploited. From a tribal’s perspective it might be perfectly logical to adapt to a religion which is solving their immediate needs. Today whether we agree or not economic up-liftment is has got a major influence is the socio economic status of communities in the society.

6. What is the impact of country’s development on these tribals?

Pretty much nil. The infrastructure for these tribal’s haven’t improved much in the past 60 years. I observed a few houses and ventured into couple of tribal’s home (Dotting the highway) and at the best the home can be described as

1. Simple one room hut.
2. Cooking is done outside the hut using wood which they get from forest
3. No bathrooms any where nearby the house
4. No potable water, they still have to walk quite a distance for potable water access.



Tribal huts

Tribal family

7. How are they used by govt.?  and what does the govt. do to them and what do they get from govt.

Simply put not much and they are just exploited.

Not much when you compare what the outside settlers got.  Outside settlers got money from the natural resources, land for building dams, resorts etc..

Arakku is just 100 km from Vizag which is a Tier 2 city and Arakku is well connected through road and train. Thanks to Vizag steel plant for which iron ore comes from these & nearby mountains and as a result railway has been established quite long back with the help of Japanese government. However the difference between city life & the tribal life looks like to be that of ages and it almost the difference between Haves and Have-nots.  I started to  wonder if this is the plight of the tribals in areas near to the cities then what would be the plight of those living in deep interiors like Odisha and north east. I now understand as to why tribals are against the POSCO project in Odisha. Suddenly the movie AVATAR seemed to make lot of relevance and the way Tribal life has been depicted in the Tamil movie Peraanmai seemed to be a reality.

Today some of the tribals still continue to live in remote areas of the forests and some of them live in the government designated areas in forests and they have small parcels of land to cultivate and they are working on the coffee / tea   plantations. Many of them have started moving to cities to take up manual labor work.

The govt. takes over the land and the govt. does pay compensation for the acquired land from tribals but at throw away prices. The irony in India is that, the govt. acquires it at throw away prices and gifts / sells it to corporates. These corporates make a windfall gain. The money that govt. gives is a big money for the tribals and without proper avenues to invest and guidance they just booze it off and end up in a state where

-          They no longer have land to cultivate

-          They no longer have recurring income to run their  families

-          They no longer have access to the forest for wood, vegetables, fruits etc..

-          & finally they migrate to cities as manual laborers.

Though we have lot of schemes for tribal welfare it seems it hardly reaches them. For them Govt. of India / British / Portuguese/ French are the same. They come, exploit and relegate them to the position of downtrodden people.

The way our democracy works today is at the best can be described as the one that reacts to events & situations without a clear vision. Govt. today runs without much accountability and this has to change and we need to bring in a greater transparency, accountability to the delivery mechanism and periodically review the effectiveness of the schemes and fine tune it.

This situation has to change and it has to come from the government & civil society. The govt. need to seriously deliberate on ways and means of uplift these people and revisit it’s approach / schemes. There is no point in continuing the same methodology, if it has not worked for 60 odd years it is most unlikely to work in the future too. Besides reviewing the policies, schemes there is a paradigm shift that is required on the willingness from the Govt.  to genuinely uplift them.

Tribal Dhimsa dance -  The stadium is an invisible circle and their movement is on the lines of Chinese Yin-Yan (Male  & Female) balance. It was a wonderful sight to see them dance with such a  powerful spirit and the dance movements were absolutely wonderful. It  made we wonder as to how they choreographed and practiced to dance to such precision.

 Quintessential things required to change the current situation:

The following are the quintessential things that are required to bring in a socio-economic improvement in their lives.

1. Good education
2. Job Opportunity to participate in the main stream activities through a tweaked quota system
3. Good skill development so that the tribals become employable
4. Making them as stake holders in the mining and other projects which displace their homes and cultivable lands
5. Moving away from a nature destruction to sustainable development mode for natural resource intensive industries
6. Preserving their culture and tradition and ensure that they don’t need to look towards abandoning their religion / culture for the sake of money

My views:

Some of the changes that I would like to bring in upon are

1.       Broad basing the list of people who can use the quota system:

Today once a person has been tagged to caste / creed they enjoy the benefits of the quota system perpetually.  In the case of Tribals, though they are classified as ST only a sub set of people continue to enjoy the benefit and GOVT. should seriously think about providing the preference to ST’s who have not enjoyed the benefit of the quota system. Essentially they should exclude the list of people whose parents have enjoyed the quota system once.

2.       Enhancing the primary education system for these tribals

Today irrespective of what quota, we give in higher education like Engineering colleges, Medical colleges, IIT etc..  it is very unlikely that the tribals will benefit any of these. The reason being there is very minimal focus on primary education.  In order to bolster the primary education govt. needs to ensure that the primary education system in the tribal belt is strengthened so that these tribals can really compete in the higher levels. Without fixing this, there is no point in trying to provide a quota at the higher education and job market level where they are bound to have higher failures.  Though the GOVT. has implemented RTE act we also need to have a mechanism which enables people to come to school especially from these tribal belts.

3.       Enhancing the lively hood of the tribals when their land is being taken over by Govt. / Companies.

                                                                           i.      Constitute a corpus fund and let the mining companies pay a fixed % of money as royalty to the corpus fund every month till the mining is done in that area.  Ideally the ownership of the land should vest with the tribals and it should be a lease to the corporate by the tribals. In addition to this the tribals should be made as stake holders of the project and they also should get a share of the profit that these mining companies make.

                                                                         ii.      The corpus fund should be used for promotion of SHG(Self help group) business initiatives of the tribals.

                                                                        iii.      Train the tribals to become semi-skilled laborers and ensure that at least one person in the family gets a job in the project or some other organization of the company

                                                                       iv.      Ensure that the  Corporate setup, operate a good primary, secondary school and it should be monitored by Govt. or a tribal council

                                                                         v.      Mined land development rights:  It is very common in urban areas that when govt. takes private land for road/ rail/ infrastructure projects they also give development rights to the private owners in alternate areas. Similarly Govt. should look at giving the tribals the land back to them once the land has been mined completely. This way the mined land could be afforested again / converted to cultivable land again which could give a good livelihood for the tribals.

Finally if there is a will to bring in the change, it definitely can be planned, implemented and we can bring these tribals to the main stream.  It is just that the Govt. needs to feel that these tribals are also part of our INDIA and  the Govt needs to feel that the tribals have an equal stake as any other citizen to be part of the great Indian story.

---------End----------