In Kerala, Adivasis feel they are living on borrowed time. Their men are dying from alcoholism and diseases. Their women are becoming barren by the day due to several reasons. And their children are dying due to what they call malnutrition. VR Jayaraj examines this unfortunate saga
Twenty-one children, including infants and newborn babies, have died of “malnutrition” in Attappadi, an Adivasi region in Palakkad district with 27,000-odd tribals, since January 1 this year.
In the 18 months from January 2001, the tribal settlements of Attappadi saw 776 deaths. The number of births during the period was just 600.
Of the 1,040 women of the Muthuvan tribe in the completely isolated Adivasi region of Idamalakkudi in the forests of Idukki district, 205 have become infertile due to the unrestrained consumption of contraceptive pills.
Sceptics tend to see a pattern in such occurrences which could pass through the urban middle class minds as fleeting images of simple tragedies. How can children die due to lack of food, nutrition and medical care in a State which has been praised the world over for setting up a healthcare modelIJ How come Adivasis, a very small number of the population, the natural owners of the jungles, continue to wander without roofs over their heads in a State where thousands of acres of land is being promised to industrialists without stringsIJ How do the illiterate Adivasis living deep in the jungles get a regular supply of contraceptive pills when even those living in semi-urban areas are not very familiar with themIJ It is not just an error of judgement if one sees a pattern in all these. That is why M Geethanandan, leader of the Adivasi land Protection Council and one of the chief architects of the 2003 Muthanga Adivasi agitation, terms the “deaths due to malnutrition” in Attappadi as part of a programme of genocide. It could be too strong a term but almost all who take interest in Adivasi affairs think Geethanandan is right, at least partially.
When PK Jayalakshmi, an archer girl of the Kurichiyar tribe of Adivasis in Wayanad district, took oath as the State’s Minister for Tribal Welfare in the Congress-led UDF Government headed by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on May 23, 2011, there were expectations among the lesser children of God. The first words she spoke after being sworn in were these: “I am determined to do my best for my people.” But expectation has turned into tragic disillusionment two years later. “We saw her as one of us. Two years later, we are now returning to our old conviction that only fools would expect good deeds from ministers and Government,” says Padmanabhan, a young man belonging to Paniyar tribe.
Wayanad, which used to be a natural paradise several decades ago, accounts for 38 per cent of the total 3,65,000 Adivasis of the State, constituting almost 1.1 per cent of its population. More than half of them are homeless and landless and majority of those who have homes and lands are living in inhuman conditions where diseases like cholera spread like forest fire, where sanitation is non-existent, where decent food and clean drinking water are rare commodities. There are several programmes worth hundreds of crores of rupees designed for the uplift of the Adivasis but all that money gets leaked somewhere along the way from Thiruvananthapuram to the Adivasi colonies. A minimum of half-a-dozen Adivasis have died of cholera in Wayanad in the past three years but there has been no confirmation from the Health Department. The Government says there are only 8,000 landless Adivasi families in Wayanad but it is unable to find the 8,000 acres of land it “intends” to allot to them when the Emerging Kerala 2012 global investors’ meet it hosted in Kochi last September had promised tens of thousands of hectares of land for industrial units.
Adivasis have lived in the lap of the nature in the Western Ghats jungles from time immemorial, but the Government is offering modern amenities to them: last month, Chief Minister Chandy laid the foundation stone for a flat complex (apartment block) for rehabilitation of Adivasis! Sociologist TY Vinod Krishnan points out how the politicians, thinking of ways to eat up public money in the name of tribal uplift, are being hypocritical about this. “Even the Paniyar tribe, constituting 23 per cent of the total Adivasi population in the State, does not have 10 graduates. Now the Government is planning to establish an Adivasi university! This is how the system works,” he says.
Wayanad used to be a tranquil tribal zone but it changed forever with the large-scale migration of settler farmers from southern Kerala in the 1950s and 1960s. They came in, bought the lands of unsuspecting Adivasis at cheap prices and for bottles of illicit liquor. Then they encroached upon the forestlands and their growing political clout helped them organise pattayam (title deeds) for those lands leading to the eventual expulsion of Adivasis from their own lands. Thus the owners of the lands turned into workers toiling for the new masters. This was not an isolated phenomenon. Several leading politicians, who talk of tribal uplift in their speeches, now own tea and coffee estates in Wayanad where Adivasis are made to work for paltry wages. With new laws concerning conservation of forests coming into force, the Adivasis suddenly found that they had no place on this earth to live on.
That is why they laid siege to the State Secretariat in 2001 by putting up sheds on the roads in a desperate attempt to see if the Government would listen to their call. Then Chief Minister AK Antony came out of his office, ate with them, sat with them and danced with them and promised them land and homes within six months. But this was not to happen. Almost 18 months later, the Adivasis put up thatched tents inside the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary in Muthanga. In perhaps the largest-ever police mobilisation Kerala had seen, the Government descended on these Adivasis in its full might on February 19, 2003. The police unleashed plain terror by beating up and shooting down the Adivasis, including the aged, women and children. One Adivasi and a policeman were killed, but the Adivasis said they had nothing to do with the cop’s death. Hundreds were injured and about a hundred Adivasis were missing after the action. Nobody has bothered so far to examine whether all of them had returned. Two days after the action, State CPI(M) secretary Pinarayi Vijayan and Opposition leader VS Achuthanandan visited Muthanga to allege that there were several more deaths and the police had buried bodies in the jungles using earth-moving machines. However, they did not repeat that charge.
Vijayan of Attappadi is convinced that the “system” does not want Adivasis to be part of it. “The bottomline seems to be that we are unwanted. We are not a big force in any manner. A population of just over 3.6 lakh is not a big force electorally. Otherwise, this would not be happening to us at Attappadi,” he says. A systematic demographic invasion has broken the Adivasis’ prominence in Attappadi and pushed them into unimaginable privation and other miseries. Seven decades ago, Adivasis constituted 92 per cent of the population in Attappadi. Now they account for just 40 per cent. The non-tribal population was just 1,100 in 1951, but that number has now grown to 39,000. Those who came as visitors and farmers to Attappadi took roots on the soil of the mountains, hills and valleys and pushed the original inhabitants into the periphery. The Adivasis are now in the grip of spurious alcohol, tuberculosis, cancers and several other diseases. The visitors plundered their lands either through purchase or through forgery of title documents.
“Our men are dying from alcoholism and diseases. Our women are becoming barren by the day due to several reasons. Our children are dying due to what they call malnutrition. When we ask the panchayat authorities for help they say there is no money. The minister had come here recently to study the children’s death and he said there was no shortage of money. The plain fact is that they are all lying. Can you imagine this can happen in KeralaIJ Aren’t we the children of the same God who created othersIJ” asks Vallikunji, an Adivasi woman of 45 from Sholayoor, Attappadi. At this rate, there will be no Adivasi left in entire Attappadi and the neighbouring Agali in another 50 years, laments Valli, who lost her husband three years back.
NGOs working in Adivasi regions say that their plight (rather crisis, says a voluntary health worker) is not accidental but perfectly engineered. They say there are obvious signs of complicity from the part of the Government, government officials, law-enforcing agencies and, above all, the politicians, with the powers that are taking away the lands and lives of the Adivasis. “The anti-Adivasi sentiment among the rich classes has become so abominable that Attappadi is no more the name of a place. The word is used by the rich and powerful to refer to anything uncivilised and dirty, implying that Adivasis do not deserve to be part of the mainstream society. But at the same time, they find nothing wrong in plundering their lands and resources through fraudulent means,” says an ex-researcher with Ahads (Attappadi Hill Area Development Society).
It is not yet clear when the first “pill” had found its way to Idamalakkudi, the tribal village tucked away deep in the forests of Idukki district of Kerala. But almost all women of fertile age here are addicts of contraceptive pills like Mala-D. The excessive and unscientific use of the pill has already left 205 of the total 1,040 women of the settlement infertile. Idamalakkudi used to see an average of five childbirths a month till five years ago, but reports now say that not even a single child was born there in the past three months.
Women of Idamalakkudi — starting with girls who had their first periods — started popping the pills to avoid having to stay at the Valappuras (Valaymappuras), the isolated quarantine homes. life is hell in these isolated sheds where, according to the Muthuvan custom, every woman in period is to spend three-to-seven days and every woman has to stay for a month after delivery. The condition of the sheds is so inhuman that women would give anything to avoid having to go to them. And therefore, the pill was a God-send. Health workers say that the excessive and unscientific use of the pill by women in the settlements has led to 70 per cent drop in childbirth in Idamalakkudi in the past three years. They warn that the Muthuvans, said to be the tribe with oldest traditions and customs among Kerala’s Adivasis, could vanish with the next two or three generations if the situation is allowed to continue.
“It seems that is exactly what those behind the suppliers of these pills to Idamalakkudi women want,” says a voluntary health worker from Idukki. His arguments are vivid: Idamalakkudi is a totally isolated place. The people there are not in touch regularly with the outside world and not many go to towns to fetch the essentials. Therefore, it is not easy for these pills to reach the village. “Those who supply them with the pill in Munnar and Tamil Nadu towns are aware of the problems it could create, which include cancers and certain infertility. It is not difficult for the Government to break this supply chain, save the women of the village from the miseries of the traditional Valappuras by constructing tidy ones. Then why is there no effort in this directionIJ Is there a conscious intent that works behind letting Muthuvan women eat the pill as they willIJ Is there a conscious effort to let the tribe sink into oblivionIJ” he asks.
From Wayanad to Attappadi to Idamalakkudi, the Adivasi scene of Kerala raises serious questions concerning social justice and demographic equilibrium. Situation in the other Adivasi areas is not different in any way. In a country like India, asking for a system of land rights like those existing in some Pacific island nations where all lands are held by tribes and even governments have to buy land from them for their purposes can be seen as a call for war against the system. That is not what Kerala’s Adivasis are asking for. All they ask for is to let them live like human beings, return what has been taken away from them or to provide them with the minimum they want. When that does not happen and when direct and indirect repression continues to take place, it may not be wrong for someone among them to suspect that there is a well-engineered move to let them fade away into oblivion.
