Among the Adivasis of Adilabad, it is not what you do that is important, but, perhaps, more significantly, how you do it that is. The importance of music in infusing attitudinal changes among the aboriginal tribes was first realised by Maoist extremists, who lured nearly 130 Gond and Kolam tribe youth into their underground movement until mid 2000s, using the same.
Music was also used by way of cultural programmes to bring about awareness on health issues; however, the effort hardly bore fruit as was evident from the number of deaths in 2013 (25), 2014 (37), 2015 (49), and nine so far this year. Nevertheless, the educational puppetry programme has brought in the much required freshness in approach towards epidemic diseases for aboriginal people living in remote and far-flung villages.
The Integrated Tribal Development Agency (ITDA), Utnoor, has deployed Hyderabad-based Sphoorthi Theatre for Educational Puppetry, Art and Craft (STEPARC) to spread awareness on health issues since the last five days. The message it wants to put across to the Adivasis is to reach out to government-sponsored medicare.
The Adivasi Gonds and the particularly vulnerable tribal group (PVTG) of Kolams seem to be averse to hospitals and, instead, root for their own system of herbal medicine during epidemics and during pregnancies. The puppetry troupe, which boasts of four Adivasi youths from various places in the district, talks about health issues and the efforts of the government in the relevant field through Gondi dialogue and music, which is easily relatable to the audience in villages, schools, and weekly shandies.
“The programme has left an impact on us,” said Athram Bheem Rao, a Kolam of Utnoor mandal headquarter, speaking about the impact of music in the tribal area. “The use of Gondi dialect in the form of dialogues between the puppets is easy to understand,” he added, after witnessing the show at Kumarikunta village on Tuesday.
“The youth in my team are well versed with the Adivasi ethos. They have designed the programme and wrote the songs and dialogues too,” said Padmini Rangarajan, founder of STEPARC.
“At the end of our show, we tell the audience to approach the doctor when the fever has just started through the song ‘ jura-jura yedki ’. Though our script’s length is 10 minutes, the enthusiasm of our audience has us invariably spending about 40 to 50 minutes talking about their health problems,” said Soyam Bheem Rao, a member of the troupe.
