Introduction
Wayanad district in Kerala is one of the least populated districts and our study is on the ‘Adivasi’ (tribal) population in Wayanad. These communities form the poorest of the total population and they are considered alarmingly low in terms of literacy. Several studies and research had been conducted for development of these communities and several revolutionary movements had occurred in the past intertwined with the communist party movements. As time elapsed the government had also taken this issue seriously and several policy measures had been taken by law and implemented at various stages and levels through its different bodies.
The latest of such schemes introduced for the tribal community is the State government’s free medicine and health insurance scheme.
Our study was aimed at understanding the tribal life style in view of government policies.
In our short journey in understanding the people, their behavior, their needs, and the ultimate word development has forced us to
re-think on the idea of development and question the effectiveness of government’s tribal policy.
Wayanad district and Tribal life style
Wayanad, predominantly an agrarian district and the etymology of the word Wayanad comes from ‘vayal’ which means paddy fields. Even though Adivasis are the indigenous population of this place, they do not have representation in decision making including the local governing bodies. Majority of Adivasis in Wayanad are agricultural laborers and marginal farmers. Recently few have shifted to minor construction works administered by the forest department and also minor works under the employment guarantee scheme of government.
Some of the main Adivasi communities of the district are Paniyas, Naikans or Kuttunaikans, Kurumar and Kurichians. All these tribal groups had different backgrounds and different languages which lack a proper script. This made it hard to preserve their culture and these languages can be identified as a mixture of Tamil and other south Indian languages for one group, an influence of Telugu and Kannada for the others.
One common thing that we could identify among all the tribal population was their basic attitude towards life which is live for a day and no future perspective.
Institutional and policy analysis
As an indicator to measure the welfare and development of the tribal population, we considered education first. We were informed about ‘Kanavu’ an unconventional school situated in Cheengode in Nadavayal village which was setup by writer, activist and film maker K. J. Baby.
Being in ‘Kanavu’ was a different experience. ‘Kanavu’ which means to dream stands to its name and promotes educating life aimed for the real and absolute development of the tribal population preserving their tradition, culture and making sure we don’t lose our history and for them, its life story itself. The vision of ‘Kanavu’ is educating life, which says the end goal of education is establishing peace in this world and they believe in learning through activities and from nature and not through books alone. It says there is no difference between curriculum and co-curriculum and no difference between life and education and thus all activities in life are under curriculum. It is a traditional holistic approach that they follow and they teach ‘Kalaripayattu’, basic first aid and treatment methods and screens informative and good movies as part of education.
They have also obtained the government sanction as ‘Kalaripayattu’ Academy where students from other states can also join. They also shows interest in bringing educated and experienced people in different dimensions of life and sharing experiences through interactive sessions where learning process happens in a mutually benefiting way. Students of ‘Kanavu’ are children from tribal communities and all the students stays in the school and live like a family. Apart from this, the talents and interests of inmates are identified and special trainings are provided based on this. There are artists, dancers, and other trainings for music, pottery are also provided and classes for Yoga also fall in schedule. All daily jobs like cleaning, cooking, washing etc are carried out by inmates who are divided into groups and each group is assigned different duties based on a time table.
Practically ‘Kanavu’ teaches all activities necessary in life preserving the tribal culture. They teach their history, traditional folks and activities involving agriculture and thus making their life near to nature and forest as it used to be for the tribes in the forest. Our finding is that this method of education is the apt one for tribal life style and government should take note of it.
Although ‘Kanavu’ now struggles with shortage of fund, students and other government or external support, the idea and concept of education developed by K. J. Baby is the found to be the best for the real development of the tribal life.
Later we decided to shift our focus more on other tribal colonies and the findings were alarming. In particular with the situation in some of the tribal colonies of the ‘Paniya’ group which was rebuilt by the government, had serious problems. In association with the governments policy measures, there was no proper implementation as the construction of the colonies were poor and left unfinished in most cases and then as a procedural formality, primary school for the tribal people were made functional which became dysfunctional soon as the tribal children were soon found to be reluctant to schooling facility which demanded restriction of their kinesthetic behavior and lack of proper awareness of parents was seen as the major factor contributing to this.
Much worsened was the situation with the adults as the change in excise policies of the government lead to increased alcoholism amongst the tribes of ‘Paniya’ and almost every home prepared more than enough liquor for themselves and consumed the whole amount.
Initially it was said that they produced it for selling, but now with this group as they were completely unorganized and have enough job and enough money to sustain themselves for their needs, their life style changed in a wild manner. It was seen that in a family all the members including the children were drunk and there was nothing unusual about this for them.
They prepared this liquor from jaggery and rice and their food habits were also wild as there was no specific diet for them and they are having a habit of eating whatever they get which again includes certain wild animals like Monitor Lizards found in the forest. They lack structures for their family and the community is functioning in a total immoral dimension in any way we look at it. This is completely against their tradition and now that they don’t have any person to control them as there used to be according to their tradition called as the ‘Moopan’, anything was possible for them and not even the police would question them as agitation in the tribal colony can create political chaos.
This is a place were there is no moral values, no discipline according to a civilized person’s view,
No security and no value for human relations. Almost 90% of the people we saw were drunk and interestingly, they were all extremely strong as when they work, they engage in heavy manual labors. But the situation is still worse even though we could not witness any alarming health issues and the most common disease that created problem amongst the tribal community was sickle-cell anemia. There was also issues regarding new born babies found dead due to lack of care and attention from the part of parents, and there are families with more than 10 members were all of them slept on the same floor.
We realize that this is the situation of a place were several policy measures are implemented by the state and local self government for the upliftment, reform, welfare and development of the people. It is a sad fact that the situation now is much worse than compared to what it was years back when government first decided to take initiatives for tribal welfare.
We extended our study to Muthanga village where the ‘Kurumar’ community lives adjoining to the forest area under the Muthanga wild life sanctuary. We took statements from different people regarding the massacre of police firing and tribal agitation from the ‘Paniya’ groups.
Shifting our focus to the government policy implementation and checking the root causes for such protests, Fr James a veteran activist, revolutionary thinker and a genuine humanitarian was our helping hand. Father believes the policies should be based on culture. He says the primary reason for the deterioration of culture among certain tribes in the present generation is alcoholism which is again connected to poor governance. He says the attempt of a revolution from the ‘Paniya’ group who realized this had been suppressed in Muthanga and this has pushed back the initiative of real development of the tribal people by at least 50 yrs backwards. He says that the government is forgetting that the tribal people are the real owners of the land. Fr. James is also an artist who along with the tribal people have made magic with bamboo.
Their merchandise includes portable chairs, other furniture, and which extends up to bamboo house and the specialty is that all of them are fully made from bamboo. Father doesn’t take any initiative for marketing it and waits for the tribals to come up with ideas. This shows the talent and range of activities of the tribal community and it is an untapped resource. The government policy is rather to promote few employment opportunities for semi-skilled workers who are starters in bamboo crafts. One of the chief crafts men among the tribe is Kunjikkanan who has become an expert in bamboo crafts.
Another major problem faced by the ‘Kurumar’ is the decrease in agricultural production due to uneven monsoon and other climate change issues which are never addressed while planning for the tribal welfare by the government. Fr. James also criticized some of the policies of the forest department regarding cutting down of the indigenous varieties of trees in Wayanad and planting more teak and eucalyptus trees which has changed the overall structure of the forest and turned the semi-evergreen landscape to dry forest now. He says its commercial exploitation from the part of government and he quotes Mahatma Gandhi that nature can provide for our needs but not for our greeds.
Coming to the Health aspect, our focus was limited as there was no alarming health issue that could be witnessed among the tribes and the functioning of the primary health centers were satisfactory according to the tribal people and the basic attitude of the tribal people are that they are reluctant to take medical checkups unless there is compulsion and hospital visits are relatively low. There is a lack of proper awareness among the tribal community with regards to the health checkups and their need in the present day environment and even though government over the years have conducted several camps, this problem of lack awareness is still unsolved.
To make an overview, the findings are more likely to be supportive to the common argument of ineffective policies and improper implementation.
Suggestions
One of the major disadvantages of government policy which was seen throughout the process of our research was the wrong concepts and ineffective planning of policies.
It can be suggested that understanding of the tribal life style, tradition and culture is what is needed and the difference in concept of human welfare and development among the tribal people and a normal civilian should be accepted by the government. This understanding can be the base for planning and when it comes to literacy and education, institutes like ‘Kanavu’ should be taken as the model for educating the tribal community.
When it comes to agriculture, tribal people should be encouraged to grow indigenous varieties of crops and the most important decision which can become helpful for tribal community will be stopping unwanted intervention by government and its departments into tribal colonies and their life.
Their concept of unplanned, short-term perspective life can be the apt method for their lifestyle and history of the tribal people proves it.
Ending note
To conclude our report, what is evident from the entire process of our study even though the duration was short, is the lack of proper need based planning from the part of government.
What it does is creation of certain schemes in order to comply with the laws and for utilizing the allotted fund for tribal communities. Corruption has played an evidently important role in almost all the policy implementation procedure and it is in a position were policy formation itself is questioned on grounds of corruption.
Considering the culture that existed in this part of the world and the love and the trust in human relations which can still be seen today among certain tribal families, considering how government interventions have changed the face of this place, the point is clear that it is a question of justice. This has been a mixture of foolish and corrupted administration for years now. The government tribal policy is like a
no-objective package. The entire tribal ministry, a total failure. There is too much of intervention and too much of injustice. We need a revolution.
