India's forest tribals struggle on edge of economy

Reuters ^ | 10 Mar 2004 08:08 | Sumana Ramanan

[VinayFromBangalore]

CHARI, India (Reuters) - On a hot afternoon in Chari, a village just north of Bombay, wide-eyed Warli children with distended bellies pick desultorily at weeds growing from the cracked soil.

Slender women with drawn faces go about their tasks silently, one lifting water from the lone well in the area, another stacking hay outside a mud hut.

The Warlis are among the more than 90 million "adivasis", meaning original inhabitants, who make up nearly ten percent of India's billion-plus population but are quickly falling by the wayside of the country's newfound prosperity.

Displaced from forests by big dam projects and power plants, but inadequately compensated, India's once self-sufficient tribal communities now struggle to eke out an existence on the fringes of one of the world's fastest-growing economies.

"We don't have houses. We have no electricity, no water and no money," said Janardhan Walvi, Chari's former sarpanch, or local council head. "The forests are being cut. We have remained backward because we have no resources."

On almost every indicator of well-being, India's tribal communities fall below the national average, according to government estimates.

Only a third can read or write, compared to half nationwide, and most live in poverty. They suffer malnutrition and illnesses such as sickle cell anaemia at a far higher rate than average.

Tribal people have also shouldered a disproportionate share of the burden of development, accounting for half of those displaced from their traditional homes since India's independence in 1947.

UNABLE TO COMPETE

Bombay billboards exhort consumers to take out loans for cars, homes and washing machines. But just 120 km away in Chari, Pandu Nimla can't raise the funds to drill a well.

Unwilling to approach rapacious moneylenders, he has tried for months to get money from a government scheme without success.

"Those who really need the money don't get it, and those who don't do," he said, with a hint of anger in his voice.

This is just one of many examples of the tribal people's inability to negotiate the economic system, said Pradip Prabhu, founder of the Kashtakari Sanghatna, an organisation that has worked for 25 years among the Warlis and other tribal people in the region.

"Living with nature is based on co-existence and high levels of respect, especially of the strong for the weak," he said. "This gives rise to a non-competitive, non-appropriative culture. They do not have the aggression required to negotiate in the labour market."

Out of the forests, the Warlis, who number around half a million, move into mainstream cultivation, often without secure property titles. Without enough land for all of them, many are then forced into unskilled labour, working for daily wages on construction sites or nearby factories.

A shortage of teachers means the schools suffer too.

"The biggest problem facing our community is the lack of education," said Chintaman Wanaga, a Warli and the region's member of parliament. "The second is a severe dearth of water."

Of the deforestation, locals say criminal cartels that profit from illegal felling have only made it worse in the past decade.

"The forests are finished," Wanaga said.

LOSS OF IDENTITY

In paintings that have gained critical recognition in and outside India, Warlis mourn their eviction from the forests as the loss of both a centuries-old home and a cohesive culture.

A painting that shows a circular dance, for example, may also depict a moneylender, says art historian Yashodhara Dalmia.

"Through their paintings, the Warlis reveal their own stories by dexterously weaving them into ritual patterns of song and dance," said Dalmia.

Prabhu argues that the cultural vacuum gives rise to social problems such as alcoholism and suicide, particularly in villages where the material conditions of life have improved.

"The availability of money and the breakdown of a culture that provided for community leisure has resulted in the rise of these ills," said Prabhu. "They also simply don't know how to convert their surplus into savings."

But Wanaga, who belongs to the Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which heads India's ruling coalition, notes some more positive Warli legacies. Unlike the Hindu traditions, Warli brides do not pay dowries and widows are encouraged to remarry.

"This one thing has not changed despite closer contact with mainstream Hindu society," he said.

For the first time since independence, India is formulating a policy that respects tribal land rights and allows them to develop "according to their own genius", echoing the country's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

Parliamentary seats are set aside for tribal people, and the creation four years ago of two new states with large tribal populations helped them win some power at the state level.

But on the national scene, tribals do not enjoy the political clout wielded by dalits, once the untouchables of the Hindu caste system, who are represented by a party that has ruled India's most populous state, northern Uttar Pradesh.

[Cronos]

You mean the aboriginals. India's massively diverse -- these aborigines seem to be australoid, as opposed to the majority caucasian population with some fringes of Mongoloids in the north-east of the country.

[lewislynn]

Obviously a rising tide doesn't lift all boats...at least not in India.