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Ground Realities of Development Among the Lodhas in West Bengal

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Ground Realities of Development Among the Lodhas in West Bengal Ground Realities of Development among the Lodhas in West Bengal SANTANU PANDA & ABHIJIT GUHA Department of Anthropology, Vidyasagar University, Medinipur, Paschim Medinipur 721102, West Bengal E-mail: [email protected] KEYWORDS: Lodha. Scheduled tribe. Marginalized community. Land distribution. Development input. Paschim Medinipur. West Bengal. ABSTRACT: The Lodhas are regarded as a marginalized and economically backward tribe of eastern India and both the Central and the State Governments have allocated funds under various development schemes to improve the socio-economic condition of the tribe since the Independence of the country. The condition of the tribe however has not improved considerably although, various development inputs were given to the tribe. This field-based study done by anthropologists and voluntary social workers revealed that the Lodhas remained poor and marginalized as compared to other tribal communities of the region. Under this background, a research was carried out to make an assessment of the ground realities of the situation regarding the utilization of the development inputs given to the Lodhas in three administrative blocks of Paschim Medinipur district of West Bengal. INTRODUCTION conduct an anthropological research on the efforts of The first women graduate among the Lodha the governmental and non-governmental agencies for community (a small marginalized tribe in West Bengal the socio-economic development of the Lodhas in and adjoining States) named Chuni Kotal committed Paschim Medinipur district of West Bengal. suicide on 16 August l992 in Midnapore. She was a Opportunities came to us when in the month of student of the anthropology department of Vidyasagar November 2005, we had to conduct a social University. Chuni Kotal had alleged that a teacher of anthropological fieldwork in connection with a the department had often used to harass her and insult research project on “Socio-economic Impact her by casting aspersions on her lower caste origin. Assessment of Development Programmes. Among the The West Bengal Government had constituted an one Lodha / Sabar of Binpur-II & Nayagram Block of man enquiry committee at that time which had Paschim (West) Medinipur District”, under the acquitted the teacher (Ganguly Commission of Rastriya Sama Vikas Yojana scheme of Paschim Enquiry, 1992). The suicide of Chuni had created an Medinipur district sponsored by the Planning uproar in the media and the political circles and which Commission of India, New Delhi. The project was often reappeared in the academic literature (Chanda, sanctioned by the then District Magistrate of Paschim 2005: 130-141; Devi, 1992: 1836-1837). Medinipur. Data on the development inputs given to As we are trained in anthropological studies and Lodhas were collected for this project and an impact also member of the academic community of the assessment report was also submitted to the District department of anthropology at Vidyasagar University, Magistrate in 2006. We have written this article based the aforementioned event aroused our interest to on the data collected for the project and also on further South Asian Anthropologist, 2013, 13(1): 75-84 New Series ©SERIALS 75 76 Santanu Panda and Abhjit Guha research done by the first author of the paper for his They also practice the killing of the wild games, like doctoral dissertation in anthropology submitted to birds, lizards and alligators to consume their flesh as Vidyasagar University in 2012. food and sell the skins and hides of these animals in the market. (Narayan,’88: 37-38). MATERIALS AND METHODS In volume III of the People of India (1994) edited The primary data for the research have been by the Director General of the Anthropological Survey collected from three hundred thirty two (332) Lodha of India, it was reported that the Lodhas are mainly households (the total population is 1382) in the three concentrated in the western part of Midnapore district blocks, viz., Binpur II, Nayagram and Narayangargh in West Bengal and their traditional rights of access of Paschim Medinipur district of West Bengal through to forest have been curtailed. The People of India intensive anthropological fieldwork conducted for volume added ….they make surreptitious forays into about two consecutive years. These data included forests, which result in criminal cases being filed qualitative and quantitative information collected against them. Consequent to the colonization scheme, through household census, structured and unstructured some have taken to agriculture. Besides, they questionnaire scheduled and also with the help of supplement their income by working as daily-wage genealogy, case study, participatory observation, focus labourers, when hunting or fishing yield little return group discussion, and panel interviews. (Singh,’94: 695-696). The Census of India 1981, showed that the total THE LODHAS population of the Lodhas including the Kharias and The Lodhas are now classified as one of the the Kherias of West Bengal was 53,718. The Lodhas ‘denotified communities’ by the Government of India. were concentrated in erstwhile Midnapore District and In West Bengal, Lodhas are mainly concentrated in their total number according to the Census of India the districts of Paschim (West) Medinipur and Purba 1981 was 16,534. Besides West Bengal, they were (East) Medinipur. In the pre-Independence period they also found in the Mayurbhanj and Baleswar districts were treated as a ‘Criminal Tribe’ by the British of Orissa, Originally, they inhabited hilly rugged Government of India till the revocation of the Criminal terrains covered with jungle. Their mother tongue is Tribes Act in 1952. In the first Census of India after Lodha, which is close to Savara, an Austro-Asiatic Independence the Lodhas were recorded as a language. They are fluent in Bengali language. scheduled caste and their total population was returned Traditionally, they were forest dwellers but now they to be 8,346 souls only in West Bengal (Mitra,’53: 89). have started cultivation either as owners of land or as According to the Census of India 1951, the Lodhas agricultural labourers, and are also engaged in hunting were found to be distributed in the districts of and fishing. More than 80 per cent of them follow Burdwan, Birbhum, Bankura, Midnapore, Hooghly, Hinduism with traditional belief in spirits and nature Howrah, 24 Parganas, Calcutta (now Kolkata) , (Mandal et al., 2002: 32). Murshidabad and Jalpaiguri. In 1951, they were not The Lodhas of Midnapore are said to be identical found in the North Bengal districts like Nadia, with Savars and Sahars, but in Orrissa they are Maldah, West Dinajpur, Darjeeling and Cooch Behar. different. They marry young but they do not allow In the same Census report, the total number of Lodhas widow remarriage or divorce. Their traditional in erstwhile Midnapore district was 7040, that is 84.35 occupation is collection of jungle produce, but in per cent of the then total population of Lodhas in West Midnapore they also work as agricultural labourers Bengal. (Mitra,’53: 89-90). Lodhas are also found in and firewood collectors and sellers (Mitra, 1953:77). the Singbhum district of Jharkhand and the According to Danda (2002) a former Director of the Mayurbhanj district in Orissa. They live near the Anthropological Survey of India, the Lodhas belong fringes of forests and also near the villages of hindu to Mundari speaking population who are mostly found caste groups. They are basically a group of food in the forest covered areas of Singhbhum district of gathering people and mainly subsist on the collection Jharkhand, Mayurbhanj district of Orissa and of wild roots, tubers and edible leaves from jungles. Midnapore district of West Bengal, which is also Ground Realities of Development among the Lodhas in West Bengal 77 known as ‘Jungle Mahal’ since the colonial period of the Lodhas, might endanger the clandestine that were found to inhabit mainly in the three activities of the local power elite (Bhowmick,’66: 70). aforementioned states of India. They speak a dialect In a paper written much later in the Newsletter composed of distorted Bengali, Oriya and words of of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Mundari origin (Danda, 2002: 103). Britain, Bhowmick explained the socio-psychological The Government of India repealed the ‘Criminal processes which created a vicious circle of Tribes Act’ in 1952, established by the Colonial rulers. underdevelopment, poverty and mistrust among the Even after ‘denotification as criminal tribes’, the Lodhas. We quote him as follows: “The chronic Lodhas continue to suffer from the social stigma and poverty and low aspiration level and lack of zeal of the non-tribal neighbours who still behave these people have created socio-cultural and economic unsympathetically towards them. Over the decades, constraints which, in turn, have made them lazy and the Lodhas gradually have changed their occupation lethargic. This has also made them unresponsive to from hunting gathering to agriculture as an alternative any sort of change or innovation introduced for their means of livelihood owing to deforestation (Danda, uplift” (Bhowmick, ’81: 7). 2002: 110-111). In this empirical and policy focused study, we have made an attempt to observe the Lodhas in three Activists on the Welfare of the Lodhas different locations (including the one in which In one of the pioneering anthropological study, Bhowmick did his fieldwork and action oriented the Lodhas were depicted as a semi-nomadic
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