By : Satyaki Paul
In the last week of June, the Rampachodavaram Integrated Tribal Development Agency (ITDA) Project Officer C.V. Praveen Adithya plead to the tribal peoples of Devipatnam Mandal to vacate the project area and shift to the rehabilitation colonies. This was due to the Polavaram project wherein the tribe would be gradually rehabilitated into colonies.
The Koya tribes (also known as Koi, Koyalu, Koyollu, KoyaDoralu, Dorala Sattam) that are in discussion reside in hamlets in the Chintoor Agency of East Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh. They were celebrating in the second week of July, while others have already celebrated in June. The tribe in itself can be divided into numerous sub-parts (as mentioned above) and they interact in Koya basha which is a Dravidian form of language related to Gond. They are natives of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Odisha.
The Bhumi Panduga is a tribal festival wherein they mark the beginning of farm operations every year with this festival. This is a 3-day search programme in the forest vicinity for catching wild animals with bows and arrows. Later, the catch is distributed amongst all of the households in the hamlet equally throughout a banquet each night. The
Thus, this is the last time they’re celebrating the festival (Bhumi Panduga) in their ancestral villages in the closed neighborhood of the Polavaram irrigation challenge as they’re refugees now and the Union Government is getting ready to shift them to the rehabilitation colonies. The COVID19 pandemic had already caused socio-economic problems amongst tribes, and such moves will only add to their distress which might affect their mental state also.
Nonetheless, this brings us to the question that: why not development and preservation go hand in hand? The answer is not simple at all. If we follow Nehruvian principle of tribal “Panchsheel” then development of tribal population is quite possible. The North-eastern tribal community is a shining example of such form of policy formulation from the indigenous peoples itself. The “top-down approach” of imposing things on tribal community will do more harm than good. In such contexts, anthropologists can be employed in the field by the Central Government itself to assess the situation. As because tribes are the most marginalized communities of our Indian society, and supressing their voices will cause further deterioration. A participatory approach can be utilized wherein the indigenous people can develop problems to their solutions through the aid and assistance of any anthropologist as an interlocutor. As an example, LK Mahapatra’s work on assisting the hill tribes on shifting agriculture can be cited.
In conclusion, I can only say that hastily executing projects will only cause distress which will gradually emerge out. So, it is indispensable to carry out proper social survey in order to not disturb the already distressed tribes due to COVID19 pandemic.
Note : The author works as a Ph.D. Research Scholar at the Department of Anthropology, University of Calcutta, and the co-author of the book Anthropology For All (2021).