When the country is gearing up for another Lok Sabha election, basic amenities still remain a distant dream for thousands of Scheduled Tribes people in the State.
Though successive governments have been pumping huge amount of money for the welfare of the tribal people every year, thousands of families are still forced to lead a wretched life.
Kunhan, Sita, and their six children, between one and 16 years of age, are living at the Odappallam Kattunayakka settlement, a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTG) settlement on the fringes of the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary, for the past many years. Their small hut is built out of low-quality plastic and pieces of asbestos sheets. Torn clothes and plastic sheets hung on the sides of the hut are the only means of privacy for the eight-member family, including three teen-aged girls. Basic facilities, including toilet, roads, and electricity, are a distant dream for them.
As many as seven families live in the settlement and only a few of them have proper houses, says Sita. The condition of the other PVTG settlements in the district is no different.
According to the Census 2011, there are 4,84,839 tribal people, including 2,46,636 tribal women, in the State and about half of them have made the interiors of Wayanad their home.
The data available with the Tribal Development Department revealed that as many as 11,474 tribal families, including 8,263 families in Wayanad district, are landless.
‘‘Only 5% among them have own houses. Others have been staying in makeshift huts on the land of other tribal people, says tribal leader C.K. Janu. Successive governments had executed many projects to curb the school dropout rate of tribal children but it has not been addressed successfully, she says.
The State government has earmarked ₹6 crore for a special package for the uplift of Adiya, Paniya and Kattunayakka sects. But a single rupee has not been spent so far owing to lack of coordination among government departments, says A. Rajan, a tribal activist.
Though the government has executed comprehensive project for all-round development of five groups of PVTG, including Kattunayakka, Cholanayakka, Kurumba, Kadar, and Koraga, it has not made any difference to their life so far, says T. Krishnan, president, Prakthana Gothra Sanghom.
An amount of ₹37.1 crore has been utilised for construction of houses for the tribes in Wayanad, but many among them are still homeless, he said.
Though there are 35 tribal sects in the State, all the benefits are being enjoyed by four sects, including Kurichiya, Kuruma, Malayaraya and Kanikkar, he says.
The State’s largest tribal settlement is at Attathode on the banks of river Pampa in Pathanamthitta district. A majority of the tribes belong to the Malampandarom, a nomadic clan. Successive governments have been promising rehabilitation of the nomadic families wandering in the Sabarimala forests since the past one decade but to no avail, says Uthaman, a tribal leader at Laha.
Since the formation of the first exclusive tribal grama panchayat inside the Munnar forest division in 2010, much changes have taken place at Edamalakudy in Idukki. However, this grama panchayat was the lowest spending grama panchayat in the State in 2018-19. The villain is the norms related to Forest and Wildlife Department. As a result, 18 km stretch from Pettimudy to Edamalakudy still remains non-motorable, the main stay of close to 2,300 tribes people of Muthuvan community to connect to the outer world.
(With inputs from Radhakrishnan Kuttoor and Gigi K. Raman)
