On 23rd July 2010, adivasis of Gudalur conducted a protest march and
demonstration against the illegal detention of 3 adivasis by the forest
department officials. Exactly one month ago, Kannan, Kunjan and Kalan,
three adivasis belonging to Kattunaicken tribe from the Gundithal
village near Srimadurai had gone to the forest for honey collection.
They were arrested by forest officials belonging to the Mudumalai range. They were falsely implicated in a case of felling
trees from inside the forests. Besides, the three adivasis were
harrassed and beaten up. They were taken to Theppakadu and photographs
were taken of them near the teak wood that was kept there. Adivasi
Munnetra Sangam and various Forest Rights Committees that were formed
by AMS for the implementation of the Forests Rights Act had
been representing to the Government officials for taking action against
the forest officials responsible for this atrocity against adivasis.
But, no action was taken till date. After great trouble, the 3 adivasis
were released on bail.
Since no action was forthcoming against the erring forest officials,
adivasis decided to organise a protest demonstration jointly under the
banner of Adivasi Munnetra Sangam and Forest Rights Committees. On 23rd
July 2010, more than 600 people assembled in Gudalur at about 11 AM.
They marched through Gudalur town, shouting slogans against the
forest officials who committed this atrocity against adivasis and
demanding action. Both men and women belonging to many villages in
Gudalur and Pandalur taluks attended this rally.
Bomman, the Secretary of Adivasi Munnetra Sangam said, "The forest
department officials are repeatedly attacking the adivasis and are
demanding money from them whenever adivasis go to the forest to collect
honey, herbal medicines or for cultural events. These traditional
rights of adivasis are protected under the Forest Rights Act, but the
lower rung of the forest department are unaware of the provisions of
this landmark legislation. They continue to harrass the adivasis and
are denying these rights given by the Government. To highlight this
plight, we are conduting this protest demonstration."
They met the Revenue Divisional Officer and submitted a petition in
this regard.The RDO assured them that he will personally take
responsibility to request the District Collector and organise a meeting
of the District Level Committee which oversees the implementation of
the Forest Rights Act. On 26th July, another delegation from AMS met
the District Collector directly and requested her to call for a meeting
with forest officials and adivasi community leaders. This meeting is
expected in the near future, in which demand for action against the
forest officials and assurance to protect adivasi rights will be placed
by the adivasi community.
Revival of Adivasi Sacred Groves
Right from the days of our
land struggle two decades ago, Adivasi Munnetra Sangam has always used
our culture to mobilise the adivasi community. The unity and solidarity
of the adivasi community is built around the cultural identity of the
adivasis, and it is not based on any class-based political ideology.
For the adivasis to survive as a community in these days of
globalisation, it is extremely important to value and preserve our
cultural traditions.
About one year ago, this issue was brought to the agenda of the
community leaders and the village sangams more strongly. The last year saw the
revival of many sacred groves and community level rituals and
festivals. The team members working in different institutions and youth
volunteers associated with AMS have been meeting tribewise during the
last six months to raise issues within the community concerning their own tribe.
One area identified as an important step was to organise festivals in
all the sacred groves (Kaavu),
to identify the groves that have been encroached upon by others and
reclaim them, to ensure that regular festivals and rituals are
organised in these every year. After these discussions, already few
events like this have been organised in Ayyankolli, Ponnani and Gudalur
areas. Some people,
espeically Chathi from Paniya tribe, have taken special interest in
this cultural work and are mobilising the community on this task. On
May 7th, one such cultural ritual was organised in Kundakeyni kaavu
near Ayyankolli.
This Kaavu was in disuse for many years and the traditional elders
decided to restart the ritual here from this year. Men, women
and children participated in this event and the entire festival was
organised in a very solemn manner. Enthused by the response of the
community members, more such events are being planned and the youth
volunteers are being mobilised to take ownnership of this process.
Moreover, AMS has also initiated steps to document these rituals and
festivals in various forms. The first document in this series of our 'Adivasi Cultural Series' on
the Kundakeyni Kaavu Festival can
be downloaded here. (PDF 0.6MB)
An Adivasi Cultural Centre is in the process of being established in the premises of the Vidyodaya school with all
these resources. Apart from the local resources, this Centre has also
been collecting lot of materials, songs, stories, audio-visuals and posters about
various other indigenous communities around the world.
Adivasi kids pursue higher education with AMS support
Today, education is an important agenda for the adivasi community. This
can be easily witnessed from the number of adivasi children pursuing
education after finishing 10 years of schooling. One of the education
coordinators mentioned recently in a meeting, "From our villages, there
wasn't anyone who appeared for 10th standard exams even a few years
ago. But, this year 6 students appeared. 4 of them failed, but the
number of children who are continuing their studies till the 10th
standard is slowly increasing. This is an important change - thanks to
the close monitoring of the drop-outs from school by the education team
and our work with the parents."
Financial constraint in completing school studies and continuing higher
education is being increasingly felt by adivasi parents. They don't
want to take their kids away from schools at the first hurdle - like it
used to be before - and are willing to explore possibilities.
Vidyodaya's education intervention has been focusing on this aspect during
the last few years. On the one hand, parents and children are setting
aside money through the 'children savings scheme' over many
years. On the other hand, soft loans are being advanced to needy
parents and children.
The financial support being extended for education needs is broadly
divided into two groups :
Scholarship
and Tutorial Fees : This is mainly for school going children and
normally a small amount of a few hundred rupees. When some poor
families cannot meet the expenses related to purchase of books,
materials, school bag or uniform etc., such an assistance is provided.
Educational
Loans
: This is mainly for children who want to pursue college education and
would take a few years to complete the studies. These loans are
provided only to those children who are regularly saving under the
'children savings scheme'.
During the last one year, there is tremendous response from the parents
and students for this programme and over Rs.120,000 assistance has been
given to over 80 children.
Particulars
Plan for
the year
Assistance
Given
Scholarship
& Tutorial Fees
* No. of children assisted
* Total amount of assistance (Rs.)
150
200,000
17
48,310
Educational
Loans
* No. of students assisted * Total amount of
assistance (Rs.)
50
80,000
65
73,900
The sangam has been establishing systems to identify the needs of
families, to assess the capacity of the parents to meet some part of
the costs on their own, the repayment schedule etc. Area Education
Committees that have been formed in the eight AMS area centres monitor
/ decide on such finanancial support to the needy children / families.
Till date, over
Rs.14000 has been repaid by students and this fund is being set aside
as a revolving fund with the sangam. This will be used again to support
more children in the coming years.
We are also mobilising funds for this "Education Fund" from friends and
well-wishers who want to support this growing aspiration of the adivasi
children to complete school and college education. We invite everyone
to pitch in and support AMS in this regard.
Speciality Health Clinics in Gudalur Adivasi Hospital
The
health needs of the adivasi community are also growing at a rapid pace.
As more adivasis are coming forward confidently to seek health care,
the
profile of adivasi patients being treated in our Gudalur Adivasi
Hospital has also been changing. Moreover, increasing number of
patients are willing to be referred to higher speciality hospitals for
treatment, that cannot be provided at Gudalur Adivasi Hospital. ASHWINI's
health care strategy is constantly fine-tuned to take into account this
growth and is upgrading the facilities within our system. During the
last couple of years, we have established a network of specialists /
hosptials who have come forward to support our health team. Referring
every patient individually for consultation to far-off hospitals is a
costly affair. So, the next step was to invite Specialist doctors to
our hospital to conduct speciality clinics. With good coordination
between all the village teams, needy patients come to Gudalur Adivasi
Hospital to get advice from these doctors directly.
This process is streamlined now and regularly ENT clinics and
Orthopaedic clinics are being conducted with the support of specialists
from St.john's Medical College,
Bangalore. Similarly, Paediatric surgeons from St.John's Hospital visit
our hospital and conduct surgeries on needy patients. As the
post-operative nursing care is provided here itself, the costs incurred
in providing the required treatment are reduced tremendously. The
patients and their families are relieved of travel and stay in unknown
hospitals. We have drawn up plans to build on this process and will be
setting up the required medical equipments in our hospital, which will
help these visiting specialist doctors in treating our patients.
Another important event organised by our
health team was the special Heart Check up camp in Gudalur.
This was conducted with the support of Narayana
Hrudayalaya in Bangalore. With the support of Charities Advisory Trust,
we have established a "Heart Fund". Congenital heart problems among
adivasi patients, especially children, are screened and corrective
surgeries are conducted using this fund. Till now, screening (ECHO
testing) of these patients was done at Bangalore, but when Narayana
Hrudayalaya doctors accepted our invitation to organise a special camp
in Gudalur itself, we were thrilled. On June 5th, 2010, a special team
with all the required medical equipment visited our hospital and
conducted a free heart check-up camp for two days. Wide pubilcity had
been given for this camp in the villages and the needy patients were
already informed. 36 adivasi patients participated in this camp and got
their hearts tested.
As
this was a rare opportunity even for the general population of Gudalur,
this camp was thrown open for the non-tribal patients also and
advertisements were inserted in the local television network. About 70
non-tribal patients also participated in this camp. In all, this event
would have saved at least Rs.300,000 for these patients, because
otherwise, they would have been forced to travel all the way to
Bangalore. We thank Narayana Hrudayalaya for conducting this ECHO camp
in Gudalur and for their continued support to the adivasi community.
Conserving Traditional Forest Species
Adivasis
live a life close to nature and have taken great pride in their
life-style
that protects the environment and the bio-diversity of the forests.
They play an important role in the conservation of plants and animals
in the Nilgiris Bio Sphere. The newly enacted Forest Rights Act gives
a lot of responsibility to adivasi communities and the Forest Rights
Committees in conservation efforts and has institutionalised their
role. They have been proactively taking steps for conservation efforts
and are extending a helping hand to the Forest Department and the
district
administration.
Adivasi families associated with AMS are being assisted by ACCORD in
their efforts to conserve nature and their traditional practices.
Recently, ACCORD has launched a project to raise traditional tree
species that are in danger of extinction in the Nilgiri Bio Reserve.
More than 4500 plants belonging to endangered species like Saraca
asoca, Dalbergia Latifolia, Glochidion elipticum, Garcinia sp. etc.
have been raised in a nursery and are being planted by adivasis living
close to Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. Over a period of time, the adivasis
hope to protect and conserve such endangered tree species, which will
also gradually reduce their dependence on the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve.
This project is being financially supported by ATREE, Bangalore under
its CEPF Western
Ghats programme.
On 3rd July 2010, as part of this project, planting of such traditional
tree species was done in the Kottaimedu adivasi village in the presence
of the Mr.Harikrishnan, RDO, Gudalur and Dr.Rajeev Srivastava, the
Field Director, Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. Adivasi community leaders,
Bomman, Sivarajan, Suresh, Neelakantan participated in the planting
exercise. They explained to the officials how they are concerned about
the destruction of forests by estates and other commercial interests.
The land chosen for planting was once virgin forests, so they want
to recreate the forests once again in that place. The RDO and FD
appreciated the efforts of the adivasis and extended full support of
the administration.
AMS joins facebook
We
have always tried to keep pace with the changing technology landscape.
And, importantly, to exploit the opportunities thrown up by such
advancements in favour of the adivasi
community. As more and more people, especially the younger generation
the world around are communicating with each other through the social
networks, we too thought it important to have our presence there. So,
AMS joined Facebook recently. Our facebook address is http://www.facebook.com/amsgudalur.
We
have just started, but we hope to communicate to a larger audience
about the issues faced by the adivasi community in various social
spheres through this social networking site. Besides, we are also
planning to create new interesting pages in facebook - for our
campaigns for justice, for our research work and simply to keep in
touch with all
of you. We invite all interested people to join.
Regular updates
about
our other
activities are available in the newsletters of Ashwini
and
Just
Change
.
