In conversation
Let the adivasi voice lead
HISTORICALLY, adivasi communities have best flourished in their own domain, where they had ownership of land and forests, which they protected prudently. Sadly, when adivasis are displaced because of dams, industries or other infrastructure, often there is either no or inadequate rehabilitation, resettlement and compensation. In Odisha and Jharkhand where poverty among adivasis is highest, displacement has also been maximum. Weak governance is the main reason for poverty and chronic undernutrition among adivasi children.
Adivasis rely heavily on forests for their livelihood and close to half of their daily food intake comes from the forest. It follows that restricting their access to forests has a direct impact on their lives, nutrition status and therefore the overall quality of health.
In the past, when adivasis lived in the forest, a wide variety of foods ranging from vegetables, fruits, milk and animal products were available. But after moving out of their habitat, poor income has restricted their ability to buy a variety of foods and this has had an adverse implication on their lives. Families also find it difficult to adjust to the new food practices; unsurprisingly therefore, there is considerable deficiency in food intake.
The Constitution provides protection along with the provisions for development and implementation of welfare programmes and schemes for adivasis. However, though there has beena lot of concentration on the development part the protection part has not been taken care of. All the affirmative action programmes of education, health and employment get undermined by the dominant trend in the political economy that actually throws them out from their livelihood and where their voice unfortunately goes missing or unheard.
In order to make a difference to their lives, it is important that for some time, the larger trends in political economy of development are altered to ensure that adivasis are really able to develop. The constitutional guarantee to provide protection to tribals must be ensured along with the effective implementation of the different affirmative action programmes and schemes.
The larger questions relating to land and forests should be addressed by giving tribals their entitlements to land, forests and other kinds of resources. If they have their own voice, possibly a state of their own, and autonomy over their territory, they should be better able to articulate their needs more forcefully. Therefore, the real issue is to change the paternalistic mindset of the government that something good for the people is being done to ensure voice and space is provided to them. This will help them regain their right to a better and productive life.
Virginius Xaxa
Break the mould of penury
WHEN the Forest Rights Act (FRA) was passed during British rule in 1865, large tracts of forests, a community resource for adivasis, became state property, restricting adivasis access to their main source of livelihood. It is worth noting that colonial intervention in the systems of ownership and management of forests and land was minimal in the northeastern states as compared to those in the mainland like West Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. Little surprise that in the North East, tribal communities can exercise a voice and are far more aware of their rights.
Traditional tribal habitats, particularly in mainland India, are rich in mineral and other resources and this has attracted mining, hydroelectric and infrastructure projects. The communities who live here have borne the brunt of displacement as resettlement efforts have been pathetic.
The loss of habitat and source of livelihood continues to be a major cause of misery, not merely because of chronic undernutrition in adults and children, but also because this has led to a loss of identity among adivasis.
Loss of forests and displacement has necessitated migration, in most cases as unskilled workers in brick kilns and construction sites. Migration tells most on little children. Their hurried and ‘forced integration into the mainstream’ has left them most vulnerable. While parents work, the older children look after their siblings, living in the most unhygienic conditions, often without food and water for long hours. At least in their earlier habitat, there was some likelihood that children could collect edible fruits, berries, roots and flowers, but all that is lost in the new settings.
Apart from the loss of livelihood, an indifferent administration and a suboptimal public service delivery add to the problem. Further, the prevalence of a wide range of illnesses, non-availability of safe drinking water and poor sanitation are key factors that contribute to undernutrition in children under two. In some cases, early marriage and early pregnancies in adolescent girls also result in chronically undernourished children. Since the young mother is undernourished, her baby is undernourished while in the womb and in a majority of cases, stunted after birth.
Currently, the quality of public services at the balwadis and anganwadis meant to cater to children below five is extremely poor. At least 75% of Primary Health Centres in these regions do not have a doctor or nurse. Further, most anganwadi workers are often not adivasis themselves and live far away. Consequently, they don’t have an empathetic attitude towards tribal children and often ignore their needs.
The government has failed our tribal communities in many ways. Apart from disenfranchising them ostensibly for industrialization, even earmarked budgets have been diverted. Even where the allocation is sufficient, the money is either not disbursed or programmes not implemented optimally because of administrative inefficiencies. There are also instances of the Tribal Sub Plan funds being diverted for projects of little direct benefit to adivasis. Under the Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas or PESA, the management of forest land, local forests and water bodies should be handed over to adivasi communities but the number of instances where such transfer of power has happened is minuscule. The same goes for restoration of land to adivasis under FRA and roll out of MGNREGA, a key source of income, which is currently inadequate.
Tribals are an integral part of our society who live under and operate a unique system. They are unfamiliar with modern laws and find it difficult to cope with a forced move into modernization.
For change to occur, the need is for a more responsive administration. If the state governments were to ensure that services like provision of drinking water and proper sanitation as also public health services work well, it would make a huge difference. Anganwadi and balwadis must be made more functional and the tribal affairs ministry needs to be more proactive in addressing the rights of the adivasis. Clearly, a special mandate is needed for them; only then will adivasis be able to break out of poverty and discrimination and live fulfilling lives on their own terms.
Deep Joshi
Social activist; Magsaysay award winner, Delhi
The politics of disenfranchisement
GLOBALLY, India is ranked at 136 in the human development index, among the lowest in the world, and within the country, it is our adivasis who fare the worst. They face numerous challenges and deprivation is rampant across all communities. As a result, approximately 88% of all adivasis are impoverished.
Chronic undernutrition caused by poverty is one manifestation, particularly in children, whose life expectancy is far lower than those of children in other groups. However, those who struggle with undernutrition caused by poverty are unfortunately invisible.
Apart from hunger, displacement and land alienation there is another factor – bondage and semi-slavery – as adivasis are forced to borrow from moneylenders after losing their land, and are often unable to repay the loans.
The biggest casualty is household food security. Across the country, inadequate availability of food has had an adverse impact on the lives of adivasi children. Child deaths among adivasis because of lack of food have been reported from many states, with Maharashtra recording the largest number of child deaths due to undernourishment. Persistent hunger in adivasis continues to be a serious problem.
Even in Kerala, a state with far better social indicators, 40 child deaths were reported due to undernutrition. Here, too, land acquisition by non-adivasis has driven adivasis into nutrition deprivation.
The midday meal scheme, usually run by women’s self help groups, has in many instances been handed over to corporations, but centralizing the food basket has created a serious problems for adivasis since most of them do not eat rice and wheat. Their nutrition and sources of nutrition are linked to their dependence on forest and land, a situation which is marked differently from non-tribals.
Similarly, the adverse impact on health and nutrition due to indiscriminate mining without any safeguards has been severe. For instance, since the process of manufacturing aluminium is poisonous, the mortality is higher for those families who live in the vicinity of such projects.
If the status of adivasis has to be improved, not only their proclivity to be in debt, but also the restoration of land that has been lost due to debts and finally the protection of adivasi land, is imperative. The enforcement of laws governing access to forests for adivasis must be urgently implemented along with construction of roads that can be only used by adivasis so that they are able to reach markets and avail other services such as healthcare and education.
There are fortunately a few instances of good practices such as the Kudumbashree initiative in Kerala. With nearly four million members, this movement has empowered underprivileged women to address their basic needs such as food security through employment. Today, they live a dignified life on their own terms. However, in the rest of the country, especially in central and eastern India, even where the adivasis voices are demanding that their rights be restored, who is listening?
Palagummi Sainath
Journalist, Mumbai
Empower local bodies in tribal areas
IT is truly unfortunate that in almost all adivasi areas, children are highly undernourished and this has now become a generational problem. A prime cause is the mother’s inadequate nutrition and malnutrition – iron deficiency is very high and very often she survives on a single staple that does not provide enough micronutrients. This results in a low birth rate child (less than 2.5 kg) who obviously has a lot of problems. The mother is unable to feed her child well, because she is usually anaemic and as a consequence, so is the child. Another important cause is poor sanitation and inadequate drinking water. Even if a child has enough calories, it often has a diarrheal infection – what we call a leaky pot. Finally, there is the question of diversity in the diet. A child needs enough calories, proteins – (either daal or non vegetarian food or eggs or milk) and adequate micronutrients. What we refer – what is refer to as ‘hidden hunger’ is about micronutrient deficiency particularly iron, zinc, vitamin b12.
If you want to attack this problem, you have to start with the mother – a good diet for women affects the child both in the womb and outside. We call this very critical period a 1000 day opportunity (nine months in a mother’s womb and two years outside).
The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) in the ’70s was designed not only to look at the problem of malnutrition but also healthcare and education. So the government delivery services and ICDS were tailored for the child in and out of the womb. This was a holistic, life cycle approach. You can’t reach a child below two in an anganwadi – you can only reach it through the mother.
In India, malnutrition is more acute in tribal areas. Here access to public services is poor; nutritional literacy is poor. The supporting services (malnutrition is not just about lack of food) like clean drinking water, sanitation, primary healthcare and immunisation also have to be in place. What is required is an integrated approach to what we now call nutrition security.
Tribal areas are rich in biodiversity and in minerals – mining has been a major cause for displacement and in the past they have been treated very shabbily. When displacement is envisaged, we must give a checklist. What were the original sources of food? Do they now have a balanced diet? Has it got the calorie, protein and micronutrient content? The human dimensions of displacement are very serious and seldom discussed. Once you start putting faces before figures and look at the problem in a more humanistic way, then things will fall in place.
We definitely require coordinated action among several ministries and they should deliver as one, there must be convergence. The lack of integration and coordination is undermining the utility of expenditure. Budgets for tribal areas are high there are many tribal area development programmes, but despite this poverty and malnutrition are high, education is poor, children development is poor. A very important element of governance is to understand that when you have a multidimensional problem, you can’t deal with it unidimensionally.
I feel we should empower the local bodies in tribal areas. I am very encouraged by the opportunity we have to involve local bodies in tribal areas, making the community aware of what are the nutritional problems and what are the agricultural remedies – nutritional sensitive agriculture.
Last year the then finance minister provided Rs 200 crore for nutrifarms in tribal areas and where there is a high malnutrition burden in order to ascertain what kind of crops to grow. For every nutritional malady, there is an agricultural remedy. We must take a humanistic view, not merely administrative or financial. I hope with a new and growing awareness we learn to work together, have time-bound targets, and progress indicators – the birth weight of a child; the incidence of anaemia for instance. We must have the will and heart to ensure that there is nobody whose potential is wasted. That nobody misses out on the opportunity for a healthy and productive life because of malnutrition.
M.S. Swaminathan
Geneticist; Founder Chairman, MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai
Bring livelihoods closer home
IN our region malnutrition has many causes. But now our land has been taken away to build highways and what we have is not good enough to cultivate, so we are able to do only a bit of farming and at a small scale. Earlier, we would have eggs, now we cannot afford them.
When the land was taken from us, we were told that we would stand to gain, but we ended up facing more losses. We got very little as compensation and mostly the money was insufficient and often misused. Though the law envisages rehabilitation and restoration for adivasis, it is rarely implemented correctly. Those who have some education save money, but a majority spend it on alcohol.
Those rehabilitated cannot cultivate vegetables and pulses in their new fields. They do not know what kind of diet is good for children and are unable to provide the right kind of food. Government schemes have brought some improvement in what children are being fed, but the scale is too small to make a difference. For us adivasis, the benefits and reach of government schemes is barely visible.
Women are malnourished and have many children in a short time span. These children are born undernourished and remain underweight. Mothers are often unable to breastfeed and give their children cow’s or processed milk. Denied the immunity that breast milk gives, these children then become prone to infections. Children here are very weak and severely undernourished.
Some parents are able to ensure that their children get proper nourishment, but in families where there is no support system in the form of grandparents or other family members, there are problems. It is hard for a mother to take care of children alone. At times poverty prevents children getting proper nutrition. Since there are no livelihood opportunities, many men stay at home and are without any income.
There are no anganwadis in our village. When we requested the panchayat to set up one, we were told that since there was a centre in the next village, we should take our children there. The distance is too much for children. So, very few go to the anganwadi because mothers don’t have time as they would rather earn some money to run their household. Besides, in the anganwadi, all the children get is khitchri which is inadequate for growing children.
The government needs to set up anganwadis in every village so that we are able to provide good quality food that children need. Children must be taken care of properly and not in the way things are happening now. Meals are only given to children under three. Those below two and above three are left out. Besides, the centre is open only till 12 pm. If it was run till 4 pm, mothers would be able to leave their children at the centre and work without any worry. Anganwadis should be strengthened so that pregnant women get more care and supplies such as iron and folic acid tablets and take home rations where children get at least two to three meals in a day along with an iron syrup so that malnutrition can be controlled. Only then can the lives of our children improve.
To fight undernutrition, families need work where they reside so that they don’t have to migrate. We also need to regain some of our land. We have approached the government, right up to the chief minister and asked him to shift the security forces from our area but no one listens. All our land has been taken. Now, we are left with just one pond where our cattle can get some water.
If only our land is restored, will we regain our lives once again.
Sanji Toppo
Field worker; from the Oraon tribe, Bhunda village, Ranchi
Bring back local wisdom
OUR lives were very different in the past – along with the main crops, we grew indigenous leafy vegetables that were nutritious and healthy. But everything changed with the introduction of new farming techniques. With an increased demand for hybrid cultivation, such nutritious plants are no longer grown and children no longer benefit from their nutrients. Hybrid cultivation has also destroyed seasonal vegetables that were grown earlier.
Another hazard is the use of urea which is sprayed by women who tie their little children on their backs while working in the fields. This is harmful and a cause of ill health among adivasi women and their children.
Hybrid cultivation was initially subsidized but later became so expensive that the adivasis were forced to look for other kinds of employment such as working on construction sites, leaving behind their basic skill – farming. Here, they face a lot of difficulties and because of their ignorance, are also exploited. When they return home after six months or so, they find their houses broken and in need of repair. So whatever money they earned is spent on repairs and for the treatment of those who are sick.
These are some causes that lead to poverty, hunger and undernutrition. Another health hazard is alcohol-ism; it leads to a deterioration in health and some even die before they turn 50. In such cases their children suffer the most, as the parents are sick and can neither treat their own illness nor educate and look after their young.
To really make a difference, the government must first increase the reach and improve the quality of anganwadis. Currently, the required quantity of ration is not distributed either because the villages are too far away or due to scarcity. Not just anganwadis, even government health facilities are either missing or defunct in adivasi areas.
Second, the use of local seeds and manure must increase and the use of fertilizers and pesticides should be prevented. Third, alcoholism stands as an obstacle to any development and this needs to be addressed. Fourth, the government should support day care centres that would look after children between six months to three years in terms of giving them appropriate food and education. This would allow parents to go out into the fields and work, and at the same time their children’s health would improve. Their daily struggle would end and they would get a new lease of life.
Dildaar Hussain
Field Facilitator, Action Against Malnutrition Public Health Resource Network, Bhunda, Ranchi
* The interviews were conducted by Mohuya Chaudhuri.
