Tribal Women, Development and Gender Dynamics

Dr. Sharada, Director, Population First in conversation with Dr. Soma Parthasarathy, Researcher/Practitioner  - Gender, Sustainable Development, Environment and Livelihoods.       

Dr. Sharada: You have been working on tribal rights issues for so long, please tell us what is the status of the tribal populations today, particularly the tribal women.

Dr Soma K Parthasarathy: As far as the government statistics are concerned, everything seems to be showing a positive trend. However, there are concerns about food security and dipping sex ratio in several parts of Adivasi dominant areas. On other issues also the numbers seem to show outreach but one cannot generalize about the quality of the care. If you look at health care, traditional tribal societies had their own knowledge systems that were hugely about preventive health care which have been overwhelmed by the advancement of modern allopathic systems.  Communities were dependent upon their own healers - Guni and traditional dais, and their own traditional knowledge systems. The breakdown of their access to resources, as well as their ability to define how they use their resources and the kind of work they do, have compelled them to become much more dependent on the state because their access to their herbs, and to their foods reduced with the outsiders' claims on their land.   Now, with the kind of lack of access to and decay of knowledge systems that they have lived with, they are having to become more dependent on a health system, which is not designed for them. That, along with the loss of the natural resources and poverty, their nutrition intake has changed, increasing the incidence of anaemia and vulnerability to diseases among them. They used to eat far more non-veg, because they were hunter gatherers who grew more of seasonal foods, plants and vegetables. So, it is important to restore their traditional knowledge systems to make them better able to manage their own health and not become dependent on a curative health system

As regards education, the kind of education that's going into these areas is the formal education system, which is dependent on a set of curriculums, which is seldom designed to incorporate their systems of knowledge and sense making, The text books show houses and portray roles vastly at variance with what the rural adivasi child experiences in their lived reality.  For a tribal child there is a home built in the vernacular architecture of the materials of their region they live in houses that are traditional designed and their work place is in the forest and fields, or as migrants. What the curriculum is doing is, totally displacing their traditional knowledge and bringing in a new set of knowledge, and concepts located in a vastly different environment. This causes an alienation and compels them to accept ideas far removed from their experiences and ill-suited to their ecological location. I am not saying they should not have info and understanding of other regions and practices but often their practices are presented as backward, which leaves them feeling low self esteem while their practices are often those that other societies need to learn from for their simplicity, low carbon footprint and ecological sustainability.

Let's look at sex ratio, which is viewed as an indicator of a positive attitude towards women. Tribal areas have traditionally had better sex ratios earlier. But today even in tribal areas, it is coming down. We need to understand this from the context of the value of the girl child, the value of women, and the value of women's work. Bride price was a part of the recognition, of valuing the girls labor, it meant that she was valued for the work contribution she would be making to the family - her ability to create progeny, to work as a reproducer and a producer, it gave her some respect in her marital home. Also, marriage was not a cultural necessity. They value the symbolism of bride price over being considered as commodities of purchase.  But all these cultural traditions that created some degree of gender parity among men and women are disappearing.

Since independence, private ownership of land, which was not there in the tribal population, started gaining importance and going in the patriarchal form. Earlier, the youngest daughter was considered the inheritor of the common lands in Meghalaya khasi tribe for instance. And it was the rest of the women and men in the community who would support her to manage that land and the children of the clan, theirs was a matrilocal culture. But all this is getting eroded with the privatization of land and the concept of private property. So, we are moving from territory to property.

Dr A L Sharada: So, how do you see the future of tribal populations in India? Do you think they will get imbibed into the mainstream society, lose their identity? What is being done to restore or to maintain the identity of the tribal communities?

Dr Soma K Parthasarathy: The tribal communities are struggling to claim their autonomy, to be able to govern themselves. There are legal provisions, but that they are implemented so weakly implies that their culture, traditions and their way of life is subjected to the objectives of development and they are often seen as the collateral damage in that journey. So, if we are to restore a life of dignity and wellbeing, then it has to be in terms of the constitutional rights that they hold, which means restoring to them the right for self-governance, which the PESA Act in schedule 5 and 6 areas provides. We need to restore to them the rights over their territories and the ways of life. The Forest Rights Act does address these historical injustices and makes provisions to correct them by according them individual and community forest rights and for women to have rights, as well as to be in decision making bodies of forest governance.  This Act is however being either not effectively implemented or flouted or undermined by state agencies. Similarly, under the compensatory afforestation act, government of India, Companies are meant to compensate for the loss of forest lands but communities remain deprived, while other communities are also threatened with loss of their lands in the name of compensatory forestry. Too often the projects of mining and development are causing displacement of tribal populations to new areas, taking away the land from the adivasis and leaving them to struggle rather than recognizing their right over their land.

Dr A L Sharada: What do you see as a solution for this, because everybody, the corporates, the mining mafia, and the government, seem to be so insensitive to the need to protect their cultural diversity, identity, rights and giving them their space.

Dr Soma K Parthasarthy: I think it's necessary to look at the Adivasi communities, from a lens of political ecology. They are, the inheritors of the traditional wisdom of living with nature, their lives are ecologically embedded. But a lot of that evidence of such lives has been wiped out, simply because a different kind of political economy has been imposed upon them. So, if we are serious about our commitments to the climate agenda, if we are serious about the commitments in the constitution for equity and equality of all citizens, then we should be looking at ways of enabling them to take greater control of their lives and their resources, and setting in place models where they can determine their futures in the framework of gender equality enshrined in the constitution and by respecting what they consider a dignified way of living. Their value systems are hugely related to how they live as a community. Their lives in their societies have been defined by a communitarian responsibility and to nature they see themselves as a part of. And that is a starting point from where we can begin to learn and respect what they have to offer, as a way of life, even as a system of living for the future. 

Dr.A L Sharada: I really wish there are some people who are listening to that and paying attention.

Dr Soma K Parthasarathy: You know, we've got entangled into looking at the legalities of things rather than noticing the value they have to offer. So, the government departments see the forests as territories that are a part of their turf and sees forest areas as their domain. They see tribal people as the encroachers and they criminalise the Adivasis and label and penalize them as destroyers of environment. Whereas, theirs is a method of conservation and environmentalism which has so much wisdom to offer in terms of how communities can be sustained and live in harmony with nature.

This modern fortress environmentalism is actually creating monocultures of the mind and adverse fissures which are causing more conflict. The tribes living in these areas sustain their regions, despite the activity and yet we don't learn our lessons from them. They live with a principle of enoughness and fulfilment for a community rather than in terms of surplus and competition. And these are lessons that I think are important to learn.

Dr. A.L.Sharada: We observe in our villages that more and more households have men working in the cities and the families adopting more rural/urban life styles. How is it going to impact the conservation of tribal cultures and communities?

Dr. Soma Parthasarathy: Let's not talk about the Adivasi lives as a romanticised idea. Let's talk about the pragmatism that is there in each household, Tn some households there will be one or two people who are going out for work. So the fractures and friction are happening within the household. When does the process of needing to look elsewhere for work start? It invariably starts for two reasons; the push factors are invariably about hunger, and not being able to make ends meet. The other push factor is the aspiration that children get into jobs, so that they don't need to live with the stigma of being 'encroachers' and 'criminals' ' backward' and 'primitive' peoples. So, they don't want their children to have to live in this kind of conflict. Invariably, it will be the adult male worker who will go out to seek a living, The women will not go invariably because there are fields and cattle and elders and children to be tended to. And because 80% of the work is performed by women - the care work related to nature, the work of foraging for fuel and fodder, preparing the fields, seed protection, care of domestic animals, etc. Men are also pushed to migrate because of indebtedness and the debt is mostly for seeking health services. And they are borrowing money to go to private practitioners in the absence /inadequacy of government health services. They are borrowing because of a livelihood crisis. They are now having to depend on unsustainable agriculture, while they were earlier sustaining themselves on forests resources, and on animal herding.

Thus, migration gives rise to two sets of value systems within the same house hold. And how do they then negotiate that between themselves? The boys are invariably unwilling to work on soil, and see these as undesirable jobs. Instead, they prefer jobs to drive cars, taxis, and look at ways to migrate for work, in government or even private and informal sector services, while women are left behind to tend to the land and cattle. However, they are also organizing into self-help groups, so that they can live and manage the available livelihoods from the local resources. 

The last point is that the communities are getting divided along gender lines also.  Because women are the ones left behind and the men are moving out, the worldviews and value systems are becoming contradictory between the men and the women. Often men are moving into the market, into relationships bringing in values of great masculinity and less of mutual respect. That is also a reason for the dowry system making inroads in these communities, increasing dowry demands and violence along with the falling sex ratio issues. These are alarming trends. But women are also raising their voices to be heard and represented and  are also claiming their rights.