ANTHROPOLOGY CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE JULY 2020
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CONTENTS
PAPER -1
PHYSICAL & ARCHAEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
1. IISER team maps evolutionary dispersal patterns
2. Explained: What are human challenge trials, and why are they controversial?
3. New Research: Protein identified as potential Achilles’ heel of coronavirus
4. Explained: This is how your body develops immunity against an infection
5. HIV, TB, and malaria deaths to increase in low and middle income countries in next 5 years: The Lancet Global Health
6. Neanderthals and Covid-19, beyond the hype
7. What is Covaxin, India’s Covid-19 vaccine candidate; how long before approval?
8. Indigenous people vital for understanding environmental change
9.Archaeologists use tooth enamel protein to show sex of human remains
10.Big brains and dexterous hands
SOCIO-CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
11. After Mizoram, Nagaland bans sale of dog meat
12. From Manusmriti to Indian Matchmaking, tracing the roots of arranged marriages
PAPER - 2
INDIAN & TRIBAL ANTHROPOLOGY
1. Reservation for Tribal Teachers
2. Initiatives of TRIFED amid COVID-19
3. The Forest Rights Act in Nagarahole.
4. The Lockdown Has Worsened the Plight of Odisha’s Indigenous Bonda Community
5. Bhil Tribe and their demand for separate State.
6. GOAL Programme | Going Online As Leaders
7. For Gujarat tribal children with no TV or Internet, school comes home on their teacher’s smartphone
8. Bastar has remained Covid-free. That’s because social distancing is tribal norm, experts say
9. World Health Day 2020: How nutrition gardens helped tribals in Odisha's Nagada
10. Tribes India e-Mart: Coming soon, an e-market place only for tribal sellers
11. TRIFED-UNICEF CAMPAIGN FOR SHG
12. How tribal communities in Kerala are helping to stop the spread of COVID-19
13. MAHE, NGO train Siddis for shot at Olympics
14. Adivasi Women Have Preserved Indigenous Seeds For Many Generations
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PHYSICAL & ARCHAEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
1. IISER team maps evolutionary dispersal patterns (Paper 1 - 1.4 : Evolution)
Relate to Natural Selection (Density dependent selection)
Study of biological movement is applicable to epidemiology, conservation and agricultural pests
The prestigious U.S. biology journal Evolution has published the findings of a team of researchers at the Pune-based Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) dealing with the dispersal patterns of organisms across different environments.
The three scientists, Professor Suthirth Dey at IISER’s Biology Department, Abhishek Mishra and Partha Pratim Chakraborty, carried out experiments to study the phenomena of ‘density-dependent dispersal’ by observing around 29,000 fruit flies to see if evolution had modified their tendency to move towards or away from crowded regions.
“Many animals, including humans, move from one place to another. Such ‘dispersal’ is generally to find resources like food or escape from potential threats. The study of
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 7 this biological dispersal finds applications in epidemiology, conservation of biodiversity as well as control of agricultural pests,” said Prof. Dey.
The scientists authored a paper titled ‘Dispersal evolution diminishes the negative density dependence in dispersal’, which was published in Evolution last week.
Mr. Mishra observes that a number of factors influence how, why or when individuals disperse, not least of it is their population density.
“This is similar to people’s preferences of living in rural (low-density) vs. urban (high-density) areas. Populous areas often offer greater opportunities and more socialisation, but also incur competition for space and high costs. As a result, we can see movement of individuals from scanty to crowded areas, and vice versa, depending on the relative costs and benefits,” he said.
Likewise, non-human species, too, experience similar pros and cons of ‘high’ versus ‘low-density’ areas.
“Just as some species live in large groups while others are solitary, movement occurs away from a crowd in some species and towards it in some others. This pattern, termed as ‘density-dependent dispersal’, is central to our understanding of which life forms occur where,” says Prof. Dey.
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Strangely, little is known about how or why ‘density- dependent dispersal evolves’.
“In fact, there had been no report of an evolutionary change in the direction of this movement in sexually reproducing species. It was to address this that the team published their findings in the journal. If we don’t know how the pattern of density-dependent dispersal emerges or changes over time, prediction of movement patterns becomes difficult,” says Prof. Dey.
The team first “evolved” tens of thousands of fruit flies for over 75 generations (or three years), thus making them “better” dispersers than their ancestors.
“We observed around 29,000 fruit flies over this period to see if evolution had modified their tendency to move towards or away from crowded regions. Not only did we find a sharp change in this behaviour owing to evolution, but a crucial discovery was that the dispersal rates of males and females had changed completely,” observes Prof. Dey, adding while females had been dispersing more than the males initially, the males overtook females in movement after evolution.
He said that this finding was perhaps the first evidence for an evolutionary reversal in the dispersal of the two sexes.
Prof. Dey says that by establishing that these behaviours
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 9 are evolutionarily malleable, the study highlights the need to frequently assess movement patterns of ecologically relevant species.
“On the one hand, moving further away from each other hampers the survival chances of endangered species. On the other hand, the very same behaviour accelerates the takeover of an ecosystem by invasive species. Similarly, this can affect pathogen spread via altered movement of disease vectors,” he said.
2. What are human challenge trials, and why are they controversial? Paper 1 - 9.8 and 12 (applied anthropology) : here we can use anthropological analysis to determine ethical and physiological considerations when determining the conditions for Human Challenge trials
While human challenge trials are not new, they are usually carried out in developing medications for diseases which are considered less lethal and have been better understood by scientists over the years, such as malaria.
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As laboratories around the world race to develop a vaccine for the novel coronavirus, many people have volunteered to take part in a controversial testing method called human challenge trials. As of April 27, a global initiative called 1DaySooner had registered 3,817 people in 52 countries who had signed up for such trials.
The method, which involves intentionally infecting volunteers with the novel coronavirus, is being promoted in order to “speed up” the process of preparing a vaccine.
How are vaccines usually developed?
In most regulatory regimes, vaccines take several years to develop, and their development typically proceeds through three phases of clinical trials.
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In Phase 1, small groups of people receive the trial vaccine. During Phase 2, the clinical study is expanded and the vaccine is given to people who have characteristics (such as age and physical health) similar to those for whom the new vaccine is intended.
In Phase 3, the vaccine is given to several thousand people and tested for efficacy and safety. During this phase, participants either receive the vaccine or a placebo. The efficacy of the vaccine is determined by comparing the prevalence of infection in the group that was administered the vaccine with the one which received a placebo. The hypothesis that those in the vaccine group will be infected significantly less is thus tested.
What are human challenge trials?
Under human challenge trials, participants of both the vaccine group and placebo group upon consent are deliberately exposed to the infection – thus are “challenged” by the disease organism.
Proponents of the method believe that such trials could save valuable time in developing a Covid-19 vaccine, as researchers would not have to wait for participants to contract the infection under real-world conditions.
A paper released on March 31 in The Journal of Infectious Diseases by researchers Nir Eyal, Marc Lipsitch, and Peter
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G Smith has proposed replacing Phase 3 with human challenge trials.
The paper said, “Controlled human challenge trials of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidates could accelerate the testing and potential rollout of efficacious vaccines. By replacing conventional Phase 3 testing of vaccine candidates, such trials may subtract many months from the licensure process, making efficacious vaccines available more quickly.”
According to experts, such testing would also require significantly less number of people than regular Phase 3 trials, which require thousands of volunteers.
As per the 1DaySooner website, “… by gathering detailed data on the process of infection and vaccine protection in a clinical setting, researchers could learn information that proves extremely useful for broader vaccine and therapeutic development efforts. Altogether, there are scenarios in which the speed of HCTs and the richness of the data they provide accelerate the development of an effective and broadly accessible Covid-19 vaccine, with thousands or even millions of lives spared (depending on the pandemic’s long-term trajectory).”
Human challenge trials: The ethical concerns
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While human challenge trials are not new, they are usually carried out in developing medications for diseases which are considered less lethal and have been better understood by scientists over the years, such as malaria.
Critics have questioned undertaking such trials for Covid- 19, a potentially deadly disease for even those who are less at risk, and which researchers are still in the early stages of studying.
In a 2016 document titled ‘Human Challenge Trials for Vaccine Development: regulatory considerations’, the World Health Organization (WHO) stated: “Human challenge studies have been conducted over hundreds of years and have contributed vital scientific knowledge that has led to advances in the development of drugs and vaccines. Nevertheless, such research can appear to be in conflict with the guiding principle in medicine to do no harm. Well documented historical examples of human exposure studies would be considered unethical by current standards. It is essential that challenge studies be conducted within an ethical framework in which truly informed consent is given.
“When conducted, human challenge studies should be undertaken with abundant forethought, caution, and oversight. The value of the information to be gained should clearly justify the risks to human subjects.
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Information to be gained should clearly justify the risks to human subjects,” it added.
3. New Research: Protein identified as potential Achilles’ heel of coronavirus (Paper 1 - 9.1 Immunogenetics and 9.8 Epidemiological Anthropology)
When SARS-CoV-2 infects us, the infected body cells release messenger substances known as type 1 interferons. These attract our killer cells, which kill the infected cells.
When the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 enters a human cell, it hijacks the cell mechanism. One of its proteins, called PLpro, is produced by the human cell itself after the virus hijacks the cell mechanism. PLpro is essential for replication of the virus. A new study in Nature has found that pharmacological inhibition of PLpro blocks virus replication and also strengthens our immune response.
When SARS-CoV-2 infects us, the infected body cells release messenger substances known as type 1 interferons. These attract our killer cells, which kill the infected cells. SARS-CoV-2 fights back by letting the human cell produce
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PLpro. This protein suppresses the development of type 1 interferons, which would have attracted our killer cells.
Researchers have now been able to monitor these processes in cell culture. If they blocked PLpro, virus production was inhibited, and the innate immune response of the human cells was also strengthened.
To understand in detail how inhibiting PLpro stops the virus, researchers in Frankfurt, Munich, Mainz, Freiburg and Leiden have worked closely together and pooled their biochemical, structural, IT and virological expertise. The research was led by Goethe University and University Hospital Frankfurt.
4. Explained: This is how your body develops immunity against an infection
Paper 1 - Chapter 9.1 (Immunological methods) 9.8 (Epidemiological Anthropology)
A new antibody study suggests immunity to Covid-19 may be lost in months, yet notes antibodies are not the only way the body develops immunity. What is the other way, and does it put a limitation on the study?
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A longitudinal study by the researchers from King’s College London — first reported by The Guardian on Sunday — has suggested that immunity to Covid-19 might be lost in months. The suggestion is based on a steep drop in patients’ antibody levels three months after the infection. A look at the findings, implications and limitations of the new study, and the broader question of how the body develops immunity against an infection:
What are the findings of the study?
The researchers analysed the immune response of 90 recovered Covid-19 patients and healthcare workers. In their study, which is not yet peer-reviewed, they found that antibodies that specifically help in neutralising the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 decreased 2-23-fold during an 18-65 day follow-up period. This is similar to the decrease in antibodies seen in seasonal coronaviruses associated with the common cold.
They suggested that immunity developed by the formation of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 lasts only a few months, and recovered Covid-19 patients are likely to remain susceptible and could get re-infected.
The analysis found “a potent” level of antibodies produced in 60% of participants during the peak of their infection; and that only 16.7% retained that level of
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 17 potency 65 days later. While the level of antibodies was at a higher level in patients with severe symptoms, the researchers said it is not clear why antibody response correlates with disease severity. The researchers noted that asymptomatic individuals also generate antibodies against the virus.
What are the implications and the limitations of these findings?
The researchers said the study has important implications when considering widespread serological testing, antibody protection against re-infection with SARS-CoV-2, and the durability of vaccine protection.
In a separate statement issued by King’s College London, Dr Katie Doores from the School of Immunology & Microbial Sciences, who led the study, said “further research is needed to determine the level of antibodies required for protection from infection.” “We also need to know more about the titre of antibody that is required to prevent re-infection in humans,” she said.
Does a drop in antibodies result in losing immunity against the virus?
Not necessarily. Antibodies are like fingerprints that give us evidence that a pathogen (the coronavirus in this case) has caused an infection and that the immune system has
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 18 responded. The antibodies usually remain in the blood for a period of time and quickly activate the immune system when the body is exposed to the pathogen again. Some antibodies not only recognise when the pathogen returns, but also protect the body for a lifetime from re-infection, as in the case of measles. However, in the case of seasonal flu, the antibodies give protection for a very small period.
In the case of the novel coronavirus, it is not yet clear how long the antibodies provide a recovered person protection. “Further studies are needed to determine the longevity of the antibody response and what level of antibodies is required to protect against re-infection,” the researchers said in a statement. Until then, the presence of antibodies only gives us the evidence that a person was exposed to the virus.
The researchers flagged the fact that antibodies are just one of the ways in which the body can fight a virus such as SARS-CoV-2.
So, what is the other way?
The researchers make an observation: “… the role T-cell responses generated through either infection or vaccination play in controlling disease cannot be discounted in these studies”.
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T cells are a key component of the immune response against a virus. A human body has two mechanisms of immunity response within the adaptive immune system. First is the humeral immune, which is also called antibody-mediated immunity and has been discussed above. However, when a virus enters a cell and can no longer be detected by antibody-mediated immunity, a cell- mediated immune response can take over to kill the virus.
Cellular immunity occurs inside the infected cell, and are mediated by cells called T lymphocytes. These are the T cells, which recognise the infected cell. Before that, these cells have to be activated by interacting with an antigen (virus)-presenting cell. Once the T cells are activated, they clone themselves generating numerous T cells, and destroy the infected cells.
During the process of activation, some of the T cells remain inactive as memory cells. These produce more T cells if the infection returns. Therefore, memory plays a crucial role in providing cell-mediated immunity. There are also helper T cells, which function indirectly by communicating to other immune cells about potential pathogens.
What is the evidence so far on cell-mediated immune response to infection with SARS-CoV-2?
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AIIMS Director Dr Randeep Guleria said data emerging on immune response shows that cell-mediated immunity is also activated in some cases and is giving protection through T cells in the blood.
In a study published in the journal Cell, researchers from Germany found that T cell clusters emerge over the course of disease in recovering patients. It said T cells reactive to SARS-CoV-2 have been identified in “individuals exposed to other common cold coronaviruses”, therefore suggesting that T-cell response detected in healthy individuals is likely to be activated from the memory T cells derived from this earlier exposure.
In a commentary published in Nature on July 7, researchers from the US said T-cell reactivity against SARS-CoV-2 was observed in unexposed people. “However, the source and clinical relevance of the reactivity remains unknown. It is speculated that this reflects T cell memory to circulating ‘common cold’ coronaviruses. It will be important to define the specificities of these T cells and assess their association with Covid-19 disease severity and vaccine responses.”
In another article, published in the journal Immunity, researchers from the US reviewed the immunology of Covid-19 and posed two questions relating to T-cell response: first, what is the contribution of T cells to initial
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 21 virus control and tissue damage in the context of Covid- 19; and second, how do memory T cells established thereafter contribute to protective immunity upon reinfection. The researchers wrote: “While the induction of robust T cell immunity is likely essential for efficient virus control, dysregulated T cell responses may cause immunopathology and contribute to disease severity in Covid-19.”
5. HIV, TB, and malaria deaths to increase in low and middle income countries in next 5 years: The Lancet Global Health
Paper 1 - Chapter 9.8 Epidemiological Anthropology (Infectious diseases)
According to health data, malaria deaths worldwide have reduced by half since 2000, but progress has stalled as mosquitoes and parasites gain resistance to treatment.
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Some low and middle income countries (LMICs) could see a surge in HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria deaths by as much as 10, 20, and 36 per cent, respectively, over the next five years due to the Covid-19 outbreak’s impact on health services, a new study published in The Lancet Global Health on Monday has found.
Researchers estimate that in areas heavily affected by these major infectious diseases, the public health impact of Covid-19 on years of life lost (the number of years a person would have lived had he or she not died of a particular disease) could, in the worst case, be on a similar scale to the direct impact of the pandemic itself.
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“The Covid-19 pandemic and actions taken in response to it could undo some of the advances made against major diseases such as HIV, TB and malaria over the past two decades, compounding the burden caused by the pandemic directly,” says Professor Timothy Hallett from Imperial College London, UK, who co-led the research.
“In countries with a high malaria burden and large HIV and TB epidemics, even short-term disruptions could have devastating consequences for the millions of people who depend on programmes to control and treat these diseases. However, the knock-on impact of the pandemic could be largely avoided by maintaining core services and continuing preventative measures,” he adds.
According to health data, malaria deaths worldwide have reduced by half since 2000, but progress has stalled as mosquitoes and parasites gain resistance to treatment. As many as 94 per cent of deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, where malaria claimed an estimated 380,000 lives in 2018.
Similarly, global HIV/AIDS deaths have halved in a decade driven by the availability of antiretroviral therapy (ART). In 2019, at least 690,000 people died from the disease worldwide, the vast majority in LMICs.
An estimated 49 million lives were saved through TB diagnosis and treatment between 2000 and 2015, but the
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 24 disease still claimed the lives of 1.8 million people in 2018 — with over 95 per cent of these deaths occurring in LMICs.
In this study, the researchers assumed a basic reproductive number (R0 – the average number of people each individual with the virus is likely to infect) of three to develop four different policy response scenarios to the Covid-19 pandemic — no action, mitigation (which represents a 45 per cent reduction in R0 for six months using interventions such as physical distancing), suppression-lift (a 75 per cent reduction in R0 for two months) and suppression (a 75 per cent reduction in R0 for 1 year). Then they used transmission models of HIV, TB, and malaria to estimate the additional impact on health that could be caused in different settings, either by Covid- 19 interventions limiting routine programme activities or due to Covid-19 cases overburdening the health system.
Overall, the findings suggest that the pandemic’s impact varies according to the extent to which interventions against Covid-19 cause long disruptions to activities, and how successfully those measures reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and prevent the health system from being overwhelmed.
The greatest impact on HIV is projected to be from interruption to the supply and administering of ART,
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 25 which may occur during times of high health system demand. In the worst case scenario, assuming no action or suppression-lift, countries with high rates of HIV, typical in parts of southern Africa (20 per cent prevalence among 15-49 year olds in 2018), could see up to 10 per cent more deaths over the next five years than would occur without Covid-19 disruptions — equivalent to 612 additional HIV deaths per million population in 2020-2024.
The researchers suggest that offering individuals receiving ART multi-month prescriptions or home delivery could ensure they can access treatment even in periods of highest health system demand.
For TB, the greatest impact is predicted to be from reductions in timely diagnosis and treatment of new cases, which could result from long periods of limited access to health services due to Covid-19 containment measures. In the worst case scenario, assuming suppression in countries with a very high burden typical in southern Africa (520 new cases per 100,000 population in 2018), TB deaths could rise by as much as 20 per cent over the next five years (equivalent to 987 additional TB deaths per million population in 2020-2024) compared to when services are functioning normally.
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6. Neanderthals and Covid-19, beyond the hype (9.1 Human Genetics)
What a gene discovery means to understanding the biology of this pandemic
For the last six months, geneticists around the world have been working to understand whether variation in people’s
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 27 genomes may make a difference to Covid-19 infection risk or severity. So far, geneticists have turned up only one small area of chromosome 3 as a possible link. People in Italy and Spain who were hospitalized with respiratory failure from Covid-19 have a “risk” allele in a region known as 3p21.31 around 1.7 times more often than the population at large.
Now, a new preprint traces this risk allele to our Neanderthal ancestors.
As a human evolution researcher, I’m always excited when such discoveries prove relevant to humans today. But when it comes to Covid-19, hype can be dangerous. People who hear about this genetic connection may get the idea that their 23andMe Neanderthal DNA data can tell them their risk of Covid-19 infection. That’s just not true.
Environment and behavior matter much more to spread of the virus than human genetics. For now, we must slow the spread of the virus by social distancing and wearing masks to reduce aerosol transmission. Vaccine development is the greatest chance for defeating Covid-19 in the long run.
Human genetics may contribute some insight into the biology of the virus and how it became such a threat. A picture of how human genes matter to infection may help
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 28 explain why so many people remain asymptomatic. It may also give greater insight about why the global pandemic has affected some populations less than others.
What Neanderthal DNA has to offer is a time dimension. Covid-19 is a new pathogen encountering human biology that goes back a half million years.
It’s not easy to find out which human genes matter to Covid-19 susceptibility. When most people think of genes and traits, they imagine simple traits like blood types. High school biology still mostly teaches these simple examples of Mendelian pattern of inheritance, where a single genotype determines the trait.
Only a handful of human traits follow such a simple pattern. For most traits, hundreds or even thousands of genes matter to variation. Each gene has a tiny effect, and small effects are challenging to find.
Human geneticists identify small gene-trait connections using a study design called a “genome-wide association study”, or GWAS for short. These studies take a brute force approach to genetics, examining millions of genotypes across the genomes of thousands of people. The larger the samples, the smaller the genetic effects that a GWAS study can identify.
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The state of the art in GWAS studies today involve enormous population samples like the UK Biobank. In that sample, 500,000 research participants have volunteered their DNA along with detailed health records. For traits that can be measured in the entire sample, like the height and weight of participants, researchers have identified thousands of genes that make a tiny difference. These miniscule effects add up, allowing geneticists to make a statistical prediction about a person’s height based on thousands of genotypes. It’s not just sheer size that makes these large studies valuable. With so many participants, researchers can tease apart the importance of genes when other factors also matter, such as age, socioeconomic status, or location.
Emerging diseases are hard to study with GWAS, because it is hard to gather such enormous samples. The Covid-19 Host Genetics Initiative (Covid-19 hg) is tracking studies of genetics in Covid-19 cases internationally. In the most recent Covid-19 hg release (June 2020), the UK Biobank samples include only 1190 confirmed Covid-19 positive cases. Right now, the best samples of Covid-19 patients with genetic data remain too small to find most of the human genes that may matter to infection or disease progression.
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Last month, the New England Journal of Medicine published an early genetic study of around 1500 severe Covid-19 patients in Italy and Spain, a paper led by David Ellinghaus. The study identified two areas of the genome associated with greater risk of Covid-19. One of these areas got most of the attention: it contains the ABO gene locus, responsible for the common A, B, AB, and O blood types. The results suggested that type A blood might mean as much as a 50% greater chance of severe Covid-19 symptoms.
Today, this month-old ABO result looks like it is becoming a cautionary tale of premature conclusions based on small sample size. The Covid-19 hg site has added more studies, now up to 6000 Covid-19 patients across Europe. ABO does not seem to make a difference across this now-larger patient group.
Scientists have been testing blood types for more than a hundred years. Across that time many erroneous studies have connected ABO to traits that have no plausible connection to the gene. The Covid-19 connection at least seemed plausible, but now it looks wrong. Maybe further research will find that ABO does matter to Covid-19 in some contexts but not others. But for the moment, the case helps to emphasize that claims about gene associations often turn out to be wrong.
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One genetic risk factor from the Ellinghaus study so far is holding up. That study found that the correlation of the 3p21.31 region with severe Covid-19 was strongest for a polymorphism known as rs11385942. At this site, some people have an extra adenine inserted into their genome. In their study of Spanish and Italian Covid-19 patients, Ellinghaus found that people carrying this extra “A” were around 1.77 times more likely to be in the severe Covid-19 patient group than those who lacked this gene variant.
It may sound large, but this GWAS result actually reflects a fairly small amount of the variation in Covid-19 risk in the population. In the European populations that have been examined so far, this extra “A” allele has a frequency of around 8%. Around 15% of people carry at least one copy of the allele, compared to around 24% of the Italian and Spanish Covid-19 patient sets. That’s a significant increase. But still, 76% of severe Covid-19 patients in these European samples lack this “risk” allele entirely.
It’s also important to consider the ways that these early GWAS studies may miss important factors. Researchers starting from samples of severe Covid-19 cases are in a poor position to correct for socioeconomic status, age, and other effects that may change the effects of host genes on the virus.
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Even if this gene discovery does not predict much about Covid-19 risk, it still may give a starting point to investigate the biology of the disease. To go further, geneticists will need to examine the 3p21.31 region more closely. GWAS by itself does not identify which gene variant actually causes an effect on a trait, or how it works. The positive GWAS result at 3p21.31 tells researchers they are getting warm. But even the strongest hit, the extra “A”, may be only an innocent bystander, linked to a nearby genetic change that affects Covid-19 in some way.
The region covers several genes that may be interesting. The rs11385942 itself falls within an intron of the LZTFL1 gene. Nearby CCR9 and CXCR6 produce chemokines, a variety of signaling molecule that can attract immune cells to sites of infection in the body. One of the more famous members of the chemokine gene family, CCR5, is well- known in human medicine for a common gene variant that produces strong resistance to HIV. It is possible that similar immune effects lie behind the association of 3p21.31 and Covid-19. Or it might be a different clue to the host response to the virus.
Without more study, it’s not clear whether the increased risk comes from greater susceptibility to initial infection, greater progression to symptomatic status, or faster
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 33 progression to respiratory failure. It may be all of the above.
If the last ten years of human genomics teaches us anything, it’s this: As researchers study larger samples of patients, they will identify more parts of the genome that matter to Covid-19, with smaller and smaller effects. The collective effect of many genes may add up to a more revealing picture than the single locus that is showing up so far.
So how do Neanderthals figure in to this story?
The authors of the new study, Hugo Zeberg of the Karolinska Institutet and Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, looked closely at the 3p21.31 region to see which of the SNP alleles in this region are found in ancient genomes from Neanderthals. Over the last ten years, Pääbo’s team has obtained high- quality genome sequences from three Neanderthals: the Vindija 33.19 individual from Croatia, the Altai Neanderthal from Denisova Cave, Russia, and the Chagyrskaya 8 specimen from Chagyrskaya Cave, Russia. All these Neanderthal genomes share the extra “A” that scored highest for Covid-19 risk in the Ellinghaus study.
Out of these specimens, the Vindija 33.19 individual in particular carried 12 out of the 14 linked SNP alleles for
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Covid-19 risk from the 3p21.31 region. This strong match suggests that the DNA sequence, or haplotype, that carries these SNP alleles may have originated with Neanderthals. The Altai and Chagyrskaya Neanderthal specimens did not carry as many of these SNP alleles, but do appear to carry closer relatives of this risk haplotype than most living people who do not carry it. It is not a feature of all ancient genomes; the Denisovan genome lacked the SNP alleles that Ellinghaus and coworkers tied to Covid-19 risk.
At the same time, Zeberg and Pääbo looked at a database of genome samples from around the world. According to their preprint, the Neanderthal risk haplotype is rare or absent today in most of East and Southeast Asia, and also absent in sub-Saharan Africa. In Europe, the haplotype has a modest frequency of around 5–10%. It also occurs in Native American samples at a similar low frequency. In present-day samples from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, the risk haplotype is very common, 40% or more in some places.
I have to say, this is one area where the preprint’s analysis doesn’t fully add up. Zeberg and Pääbo claim that the “Neanderthal core haplotype” is absent in sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia. But 1000 Genomes Project data have the extra “A” allele at frequencies around 5% in African
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 35 population samples. Possibly some African individuals have inherited this allele separately from the Neanderthal haplotype shared by many other modern people. Or the Neanderthal haplotype occurs in a substantial number of Africans that the preprint has somehow missed. In either case, it calls into question the importance of the Neanderthal connection for Covid-19 risk. Hopefully Zeberg and Pääbo will straighten this out before submitting their paper for publication.
There’s nothing magical about getting a gene from Neanderthals. Evolution will make use of any source of genetic variation, as long as it happens to have an advantage in the environment where a population lives. With around 2% of human genomes tracing back to Neanderthal ancestors, we can expect that one in fifty GWAS hits will probably be to Neanderthal gene variants.
Genes from the Neanderthal population reflected a half million years of adaptation to their own environments. The physical environments of Neanderthals were different in some ways from those of their contemporaries in Africa. They experienced different seasonality, temperature and sunlight regimes, as well as a different range of plant and animal foods. Their social and disease environments may
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 36 also have differed in some ways from those of Africans. But there was also a lot of overlap.
Stephen Jay Gould once suggested that if we could rewind the tape of evolutionary history and start it again from the beginning, it would come to a very different outcome. His idea was that evolution makes use of random variations, meaning that chance and contingency rule in the long run. Our Neanderthal ancestors and African ancestors began from a common place and gene pool, sometime before 500,000 years ago. Once they started to separate, each population ran a different tape. Each experienced different evolutionary changes. Their tapes ran in different ways.
A few of the genetic changes in Neanderthals might have been useless or deleterious if they happened instead to Africans. They were adaptive or tolerated in the Neanderthals’ environment but not in Africa. These are cases where we might say that rewinding the tape would make no difference. A few of those genetic changes have left a striking sign in today’s population: so-called “Neanderthal introgression deserts” are stretches of human chromosomes where no living person has a sequence like Neanderthals.
Some other parts of the genome show an opposite pattern, with Neanderthal sequences surprisingly common in today’s people. One of these may be the haplotype across
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3p21.31, now 40% or higher in some parts of South Asia. Such common Neanderthal variations are examples where rewinding the tape might have yielded a different outcome. Africans might have evolved this gene, but instead the Neanderthals did. The outcome might reflect contingency — some advantage specific to Neanderthal environments. Or it might be chance, with Neanderthals getting the luck of the draw. Either way, it looks like the haplotype may have been valuable to the ancestors of today’s South Asian people.
What we have learned from Neanderthal DNA is that our species had an evolutionary trick that Gould never considered: We created our own mix tape. Repeated mixture and hybridization between ancient branches of our family tree meant that one population could capture the favorable mutations of another. Modern people took some of the best parts of the evolution of our relatives and made them our own.
In 10 years since the first Neanderthal genome sequence, we’ve learned a lot about how their genes mattered to our recent ancestors. Some of the most common Neanderthal genes today relate in some way to immunity or pathogen defense. These include variations of the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) gene system, a Neanderthal haplotype across the OAS1, OAS2, and OAS3 genes that encode
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 38 enzymes related to innate immunity to RNA viruses, a variant of the STAT2 gene related to innate immunity, and others.
In 2018, David Enard and Dmitri Petrov examined the 20% of proteins — more than 4000 in all — known to interact in some way with viruses. They found that the genes that code for these proteins were more likely to include Neanderthal introgression than other parts of the genome. In particular, proteins that interact with RNA viruses have the most Neanderthal gene variations today. Enard and Petrov did not specifically consider coronaviruses in their study, but these are also RNA viruses.
Examples like these give fascinating insight into our biology and history. Scientists have begun to revise the way we think about viruses and other pathogens in our evolution. Viruses are mostly invisible to paleontologists who are used to studying ancient skeletons. Today the hottest action in Neanderthal science includes in vitro analysis of cells expressing Neanderthal genes. Human evolutionary science has come a long way.
That makes it even more of a mistake to apply obsolete ideas about genetics to a newly-emerging pandemic. Epidemiologists continue to emphasize that the most important steps to reduce Covid-19 transmission are social distancing and wearing masks to reduce aerosol spread of
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 39 the viruses. No gene makes people immune.
The virus is raging in the United States today, and people’s Neanderthal ancestry is not making any visible difference to that. The highest incidence is among Blacks and Latinos, a function of the higher rate of spread in urban areas and — over the last few weeks — in Texas, Florida, and Arizona. The Navajo Nation and some other tribes have also experienced very high incidence of the virus. Epidemiologists point to many factors that underlie the disparity of Covid-19 spread in these groups, from multigenerational households and reliance on public transportation, to obesity and other long-term health stresses, to a greater proportion of people working in front-line professions.
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None of those factors are genetic. Behavioral and cultural factors are leading this pandemic, many of them reinforced by a history of poverty and racism.
It may be that more details about the host genetics of Covid-19 will lead to insights about some of the virus’s mysteries. It remains to be explained why so many infected people remain asymptomatic, and why some people become superspreaders. As geneticists gain access to larger samples of Covid-19 patients, they will find more and more genes that contribute to disease progression.
But for now, it’s important to be clear about the emerging pandemic. There is no genetic test that can predict Covid-19 risk. Generalized ancestry from one population or another does not protect anyone from infection. Neanderthals are an interesting sidelight to understand the research, but they’re not a guide for anyone’s health.
7. What is Covaxin, India’s Covid-19 vaccine candidate; how long before approval? (Paper 1 - Chapter 9)
India's Covid-19 vaccine candidate Covaxin: How does
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Covaxin compare to other vaccine candidates around the world? Where does it figure in the global race for a Covid-19 vaccine? Covaxin coronavirus vaccine candidate: Bharat Biotech plans to begin its phase I and II trials in July, but is unsure of the overall timeline for testing and approving its vaccine.
The Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) has allowed Bharat Biotech India (BBIL) to conduct human clinical trials for ‘Covaxin’, an indigenously developed Covid-19 vaccine candidate. Trials are scheduled to start across India in July.
What is ‘Covaxin’ and how was it developed?
The vaccine candidate was developed by BBIL in collaboration with the National Institute of Virology (NIV). NIV isolated a strain of the novel coronavirus from an asymptomatic Covid-19 patient and transferred it to BBIL early in May. The firm then used it to work on developing an “inactivated” vaccine — a vaccine that uses the dead virus — at its high-containment facility in Hyderabad.
“Once the vaccine is injected into a human, it has no potential to infect or replicate, since it is a killed virus. It just serves to the immune system as a dead virus and
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 42 mounts an antibody response towards the virus,” said the company, adding that inactivated vaccines usually have a proven safety record.
Covaxin then underwent pre-clinical testing on animals such as guinea pigs and mice to see if it is safe before the firm approached CDSCO for approval to move on to human trials.
What does the approval mean for India?
The Drug Controller General of India, who heads CDSCO, has given BBL approvals for phase I and II clinical trials. This brings India a step closer to finalising a domestically developed Covid-19 vaccine at a time when the country’s cases continue to surge.
The first phase, usually conducted on a small group, tries to find what dosage of the vaccine is safe for use, whether it is effective in building their immunity to the virus, and whether there are side effects. The second phase is conducted on a group of hundreds of persons fitting the description of those for whom the vaccine is intended, using characteristics like age and sex. This phase tests how effective the vaccine is on the population group being studied.
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How many more stages of testing would the vaccine have to go through before approval?
Vaccines, like most new drugs, are meant to follow a testing process of four stages, starting with pre-clinical tests and ending with phase III studies conducted on thousands of patients. After approval from the regulator, the firm has to continue monitoring the use of its vaccine on patients and submit post-marketing surveillance details, which checks for any long-term unintended adverse effects.
BBIL plans to begin phase I and II trials in July, but is unsure of the overall timeline for testing and getting final approval.
“At the moment we are not sure how the vaccine is going to perform in the humans, as clinical trials are about to commence. Based on the success results of phase I and phase II, we will progress to the larger clinical trials. Thereafter, the licensure timelines will be set out upon receiving regulatory approvals,” said BBIL.
What other Indian companies are working on a Covid- 19 vaccine candidate? What stage are they at?
These include Zydus Cadila, Serum Institute of India and, since earlier this month, Panacea Biotec.
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While Panacea is still in the pre-clinical stage, it is not clear whether Zydus and Serum have completed their preclinical studies and have also applied to CDSCO for approval to conduct human trials yet.
How does Covaxin compare to other vaccine candidates around the world?
Covaxin has reached a more advanced stage of testing than two other vaccine candidates that BBIL is developing through global collaborations — one in collaboration with Thomas Jefferson University, and the other with the University of Wisconsin-Madison and vaccine maker FluGen. Both candidates are currently in the pre-clinical stage, according to the World Health Organization’s draft landscape of Covid-19 candidate vaccines.
However, it is far behind in the global race. The frontrunner is AstraZeneca, whose candidate ChAdOx1-S with the University of Oxford is already at phase III trials. Serum Institute has an agreement to manufacture this vaccine.
Moderna is close to beginning phase III trials for its LNP- encapsulated mRNA vaccine candidate with the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Apart from Covaxin, which is not listed among the vaccines being tried globally, at least six other candidates
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 45 are in Phase I/II trials and another five are in Phase I trials globally.
Globally, Zydus Cadila’s DNA plasmid and measles vector vaccines as well as Serum’s codon deoptimised live attenuated vaccine, which it is developing with Codagenix, are still in the pre-clinical stage, according to WHO.
8. Indigenous people vital for understanding environmental change (Ecological Anthropology Paper-1)
How local knowledge can help manage ecosystems and wildlife
Summary: Grassroots knowledge from indigenous people can help to map and monitor ecological changes and improve scientific studies, according to new research. The study shows the importance of indigenous and local knowledge for monitoring ecosystem changes
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and managing ecosystems. The team collected more than 300 indicators developed by indigenous people to monitor ecosystem change, and most revealed negative trends, such as increased invasive species or changes in the health of wild animals.
The study, published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, shows the importance of Indigenous and local knowledge for monitoring ecosystem changes and managing ecosystems. The team collected more than 300 indicators developed by Indigenous people to monitor ecosystem change, and most revealed negative trends, such as increased invasive species or changes in the health of wild animals. Such local knowledge influences decisions about where and how to hunt, benefits ecosystem management and is important for scientific monitoring at a global scale.
"Scientists and Indigenous communities working together are needed to understand our rapidly changing world," said lead author Pamela McElwee, an associate professor in the Department of Human Ecology in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. "Many Indigenous peoples have unique abilities to notice ecosystems altering before their eyes by using local indicators, like the color of fat in hunted prey or changes in types of species found together. Scientists wouldn't be able to perform these kinds of
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 47 observations over the long run for many reasons, including costs and the remoteness of some areas. So Indigenous knowledge is absolutely essential for understanding the cumulative impacts of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation."
Indigenous and local knowledge is the practical information that people use to manage resources and pass on between generations. Such knowledge benefits conservation initiatives and economies that depend on natural resources in vast areas of the world.
The study follows the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services released last year by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. That report was the first global ecological assessment to use Indigenous and local knowledge as a source of evidence.
The new study, by researchers at many institutions who were part of the global assessment, provides background on how the report tapped into Indigenous knowledge systems and lessons learned. Working with these local sources of information in ecological research and in management requires a deliberate approach from the start, additional resources and engagement with stakeholders reflecting diverse worldviews, McElwee said.
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"Partnering with Indigenous peoples can help scientists and researchers understand how natural and cultural systems affect each other, identify trends through diverse indicators and improve sustainable development goals and policies for all," she said.
9.Archaeologists use tooth enamel protein to show sex of human remains
A new method for estimating the biological sex of human remains based on reading protein sequences rather
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 49 than DNA has been used to study an archaeological site in Northern California. The protein-based technique gave superior results to DNA analysis in studying 55 sets of human remains between 300 and 2,300 years old. The work is published July 17 in Scientific Reports.
The method targets amelogenin, a protein found in tooth enamel, said _rst author Tammy Buonasera, postdoctoral researcher working with Glendon Parker, adjunct associate professor in the Department of Environmental Toxicology at the University of California, Davis. The technique was developed in Parker's laboratory.
Buonasera, Parker, Jelmer Eerkens, professor of anthropology, and colleagues compared three methods for sex determination: the new proteomic method; DNA analysis; and osteology, or analysis of the size, shape and composition of the bones themselves. They applied these methods to remains from two ancestral Ohlone villages near Sunol, California. The site is being excavated by the Far West Anthropological Research Group of
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Davis in collaboration with the Muwekma Ohlone tribe.
Amelogenin is a protein found in tooth enamel, the hardest and most durable substance in the human body. The gene for amelogenin happens to be located on both the X and Y sex chromosomes, and the amelogenin-Y protein is slightly different from amelogenin-X. The method works by retrieving a tiny amount of protein from a tooth. All proteins are made up of a chain of amino acids, so the protein is analyzed to give the amino acid sequence, which then defines the protein. Each of the 20 naturally occurring amino acids is specified by a three-letter code in DNA, so it is possible to work backward from the amino acid sequence and figure out the likely DNA code.
Superior to existing methods The researchers were able to determine the sex of all of the remains using the new protein method and all but have using DNA methods. Results from osteology and proteomics agreed in almost all cases, although
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 51 examining bones themselves was only effective for about half the skeletons.
The protein method allowed them to estimate sex for children, which is not possible from osteology. It was reliable even when the signal from DNA was weak. "This is a more sensitive technique for older skeletons where we would expect more DNA degradation," Parker said.Being able to determine the biological sex of human remains provides a greater window into the persona of each individual. Anthropologists are interested in determining biological sex because sex interacts with health and can have a large impact on how people form an identity and are treated within a society, Eerkens said.
"Almost every human society around the world incorporates sex and gender as a way to classify people, and these can affect your status and who you associate with in society," Eerkens said. While gender and biological sex are not the same thing, they are linked, so the ability to estimate sex gives archaeologists important insight when attempting to understand the cultural aspects of gender, which are not as readily preserved.
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For example, in a society based on small villages, people often have to find mates outside their village. Depending on cultural rules, either men or women will leave the village to marry.
10.Big brains and dexterous hands (Biological factors in human evolution Paper-1)
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People are very skilled with their hands, but take a very long time to learn various dexterous abilities. It takes babies generally around five months before they can purposely grip an object. Learning more complicated skills such as eating with fork and knife or tying one's shoelaces can take another five to six years. By that age, many other primate species already have oàspring of their own. Why do we take so much longer than our closest relatives to learn fine motor skills?
Brain development in primates follows fixed patterns
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Sandra Heldstab, an evolutionary biologist in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Zurich, and her colleagues Karin Isler, Caroline Schuppli and Carel van Schaik observed 36 different primate species over a period of more than seven years to try to answer this question. She studied 128 young animals in 13 European zoos from birth until the age at which they had reached adult-level dexterity. What surprised her was that all species learned their respective manual skills in exactly the same order. "Our results show that the neural development follows extremely rigid patterns - even in primate species that differ greatly in other respects," says Heldstab.
Large brain needed for dexterity The researchers found, however, big differences in the specific fine motor skills of adults from different primate species. Large-brained species such as macaques, gorillas or chimpanzees can solve much more complex tasks using their hands than primates with small brains such as lemurs or marmosets. "It is no coincidence that we humans are so good at using our hands and using tools, our large brains made it possible.
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A big brain equals great dexterity," says Heldstab.
Humans develop fine motor skills later than primates
Dexterity comes at a cost, however: In species with large brains like humans, it takes a long time for infants to learn even the simplest hand and finger movements. "It's not just because we are learning more complex skills than lemurs or callitrichids, for example. It's mainly because we do not begin learning these skills until much later," says Heldstab. The researchers think that the reason for this may be that the larger brains of humans are less well developed at birth.
Essential to have enough time to learn
In addition, learning takes time and is ineffcient, and it is the parents who pay for this until their offspring are independent. "Our study shows once again that in the course of evolution, only mammals that live a long time
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and have enough time to learn were able to develop a large brain and complex fine motor skills including the ability to use tools. This makes it clear why so few species could follow our path and why humans could become the most technologically accomplished organism on this planet," concludes Sandra Heldstab.
SOCIO-CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
11. After Mizoram, Nagaland bans sale of dog meat
(Paper 1 : Chapter 2.1 - Cultural Relativism)
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This article is posted to allow you to question and reflect on the question of Cultural Relativism and Animal rights (similar to the debate vs Human rights)
The Nagaland government has decided to ban commercial import and the sale of dog and dog meat. The Mizoram government had taken a similar decision in March.
“The State Government has decided to ban commercial import and trading of dogs, and dog markets, and also the sale of dog meat, both cooked and uncooked,” Nagaland’s Chief Secretary Temjen Toy said on July 3.
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He added that the decision in this regard was taken by the Cabinet headed by Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio.
The announcement followed an appeal by the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations (FIAPO), an apex body of animal rights groups, to the Nagaland government to ban the sale, smuggling and consumption of dog meat besides enforcing stringent animal welfare laws.
“We are once again hit by shock and horror at recent images that have emerged from ‘animal markets’ in Dimapur (Nagaland’s commercial hub) where dogs are seen in terrified conditions, tied up in sacks, waiting at a wet market for their illegal slaughter, trade and consumption as meat,” FIAPO executive director Varda Mehrotra said in a statement on July 2.
The FIAPO said it has been engaging with the Nagaland government since 2016, underlining how dogs suffer because of the demand for meat. It also claimed to have carried out undercover investigations on dog meat in the northeast.
Dogs smuggled The organisation said dogs are smuggled regularly to Nagaland from Assam and West Bengal. A dog, caught in
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Assam for rupees 50, is sold for ₹1,000 in Nagaland’s wholesale market.
“Dog meat sells for rupees 200 per kg on the streets of Nagaland, which is about rupees 2,000 per dog,” it said.
Nagaland and Mizoram-bound vehicles carrying dogs tied in gunny bags with their heads sticking out are frequently caught in Assam. But many such vehicles slip through the security cordons.
12. From Manusmriti to Indian Matchmaking, tracing the roots of arranged marriages
Ignoring the commercial part of this article, it throws some light on social institution of MARRIAGE from a sociologist point of view throughout the history of India in different societies. The books and definition referred in this article can be noted.
Is Marriage still relevant in India Today ...? Sociologists agree that the arranged marriage system is drawn from the idea of maintaining caste purity. At the same time, the concept of arranged marriage was also deeply rooted in political and economic necessities.
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The concept of the Indian marriage, particularly of an arranged marriage is of immense fascination in the West.
As a young student in America a few years back, I would frequently meet inquisitive foreigners, intrigued by the unique socio-cultural practices in India. From food to films and family, there was much about the Indian social and cultural landscape that was of interest to the average American. Undoubtedly though, the most common subject to come up during these discussions was that of arranged marriage. A heated conversation with one of my professors, I remember, was one wherein she decidedly told me how she was repulsed by almost everything she
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 61 read about India- the poverty, the unhygienic and crowded public transport systems, slums, and so much more. Yet she truly desired to fly down to India at least once in her lifetime, to be witness to an Indian marriage ceremony.
The concept of the Indian marriage, particularly of an arranged marriage is of immense fascination in the West. The recent Netflix series, ‘Indian Matchmaking’ addressed to an international audience, provides a glimpse into the strange Indian way of finding a mate. “In India marriage is a very big fat industry,” says ‘Mumbai-based’ matchmaker Sima Taparia, as she opens the show. Taparia, the protagonist of the eight-part series, owns a marriage bureau called ‘Suitable rishta’ in Mumbai. Her clientele is primarily restricted to affluent families in India and Indians abroad.
For the benefit of her audience, Taparia introduces the concept of marriage in India in the following words: “In India, we don’t say arranged marriage. There is marriage and then there is love marriage. The marriages are between two families. The two families have their reputation and many millions of dollars at stake. So the parents guide their children, and that is the work of a matchmaker.”
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Over the course of the next eight episodes, Taparia and her clientele’s insistence on fair, tall, beautiful partners, the need for compromise and flexibility, horoscope matching etc., has opened up heated conversations across social media on what is being perceived as a problematic depiction of marriage. At the same time, the series has also opened up a debate on the very nature of ‘arranged marriages’.
The ancient roots of the arranged marriage system
It is interesting that despite the fact that Indian art and literature from ancient times has been obsessed with the idea of infatuation and romance, when it comes to marriage, the decision taken by the elderly family members is given utmost importance. Sociologists working on the marital systems in India agree that the arranged marriage system is drawn from the idea of maintaining caste purity.
A 2009 study on the economics of marriage undertaken by Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Maitreesh Ghatak and Jeanne Lafortune, suggests that “despite the economic importance of this decision, “status”-like attributes, such as caste,continue to play a seemingly crucial role in determining marriage outcomes in India.” “In a recent opinion poll in India, 74 per cent of respondents declared to be opposed to inter-caste marriage,” write the
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 63 economists, adding that even now matrimonial advertisements in newspapers continue to be classified into caste buckets.
The Manusmriti, the text on which the caste classifications were put in place among Hindus, provides an interesting insight into the way ancient society in India understood marriage. “It advocates marriage to be a social obligation, rather than an individual’s private pleasure,” writes psychologist Tulika Jaiswal in her book, ‘Indian arranged marriages: A social psychological perspective’.
Hindu scriptures written between 200 BCE and 900 CE list out eight different ways of acquiring a mate: Brahma, Daiva, Arsha, Prajapatya, Asura, Gandharva, Rakshasa, and Paisacha. Out of these, only the first four were considered religious, while the remaining four were alliances resulting from romance or abduction. “The first four kinds pertain to arranged marriages in which the parental couple ritually gives away the daughter to a suitable person, and this ideal continues to be maintained in the Hindu society,” writes sociologist Giri Raj Gupta in his article, ‘Love, arranged marriage and the Indian social structure.’ Gupta goes on to explain that as opposed to the religious and caste aspect of arranged marriages among the Hindus, the Muslims and Christians in India viewed
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 64 marriage as a ‘civil contract’. However, even in that case, marriages were almost always arranged by the families.
At the same time, the concept of arranged marriage was also deeply rooted in political and economic necessities. Author Sabita Singh in her detailed study of marriages in medieval Rajasthan writes that political marriages were particularly common during the period of state formation when marital alliances were used for “enlarging one’s territory, ending enmity, and for increasing power and status”.
As Singh explains, “the evolving patterns of such matrimonial alliances reflected the changing status of the Rajput clans within the medieval political hierarchy.”
“When the Rathores of Marwar rose to prominence in the mid-fifteenth century, marriage alliances with them were keenly sought after. Similarly, with the entry of clans like the Shekhawat and Baghela into the mansabdari system of the Mughals, their increased prestige was reflected in the matrimonial arena as well,” she writes.
Warfare and territorial ambitions were infact the biggest factors behind the existence of polygamy among the ruling elite. “Polygamous marriages of most Rajput rulers and chiefs was one way of maintaining political network
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 65 of sagas which could always be called upon in an emergency,” writes Singh.
Economics as well as geography at the same time were factors behind the existence of polyandry in large parts of India, particularly the mountainous regions.
Not just in India
Despite the multiple ways in which arranged marriages have existed in India, it is important to note that it is definitely not a practise that is restricted to the South Asian subcontinent. The institution of marriage has played socio-political and economic roles across the world. In Japan, for instance, the institution of arranged marriage which is still quite prevalent, is traced back to the 16th century when the military class or ‘samurai’ introduced the practice called ‘miai’ to protect military alliances among warlords.
The predominance of arranged marriages continues to be seen in Turkey as well, where as recent as 2016, a report published by the Turkish Statistics Institute revealed that 45 per cent of young Turkish women aged between 15-24 agreed to finding a partner through an arranged marriage.
Yet another interesting case is that of China, where in 1950 the new Marriage Law was enacted by Mao Zhedong. The objective was to abolish the feudalistic style of arranged
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 66 marriages, to give priority to individual consent in marriage. The revision of the marriage law was connected to the land reforms made during the Communist revolution, and it officially put out the message that women were no longer “objects of their father’s commercial transactions or their husband’s dominions.” Despite the reforms though, a 2017 report in the BBC notes that parents remain heavily involved in their children’s marital decisions and often resort to matchmaking services. The series ‘Indian matchmaking’ needs to be watched and critiqued keeping in mind the socio-political, religious roots of the institution of marriage in India and around the world, as well as the way in which it has evolved. A report published in the New York Times in the year 2000 reveals how South Asians have been increasingly resorting to matrimonial websites to choose a partner for themselves, keeping out their families from the business. Interestingly though, despite the appearance of free will in choosing a partner for oneself, the report reveals that individuals continued to use the age-old criteria of caste, complexion, religion etc. Seen in this context, perhaps Seema Taparia’s hotly debated match making skills, will appear to be nothing more than a reflection of the society we live in.
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INDIAN & TRIBAL ANTHROPOLOGY
1. Reservation for Tribal Teachers
Context: A five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court held it unconstitutional to provide 100% reservation for tribal teachers in schools located in Scheduled Areas across the country.
Key Highlights of the Judgement
The case stemmed from a legal challenge to January 10, 2000 order issued by the erstwhile State of Andhra Pradesh Bench providing 100% reservation to the Scheduled Tribe candidates, out of whom 33% (1/3rd)shall be women, for the post of teachers in schools located in the Scheduled Areas of the State. Now, the court held that 100% reservation is discriminatory and impermissible. The opportunity of public employment is not the prerogative of few. A 100% reservation to the Scheduled Tribes has deprived Scheduled Castes and Other Backward
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Classes also of their due representation. The court referred to the Indira Sawhney judgment, which caps reservation at 50%.
The court noted the 2000 notification was a “misadventure” the erstwhile State had embarked on to save an identical one issued in 1986. The 2000 notification was given retrospective effect to bring to life to its predecessor of 1986.
The government is “duty-bound” to periodically review the reservation process to ensure that the benefits “trickle down and are not usurped by” the affluent in these categories (OBCs and the SC/STs).
RESERVATION IN INDIA
Reservation is primarily given to 3 groups: Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes, abbreviated as SC, ST, and OBC respectively. These are groups that have faced social and economic discrimination in the past and/or the present and were severely underrepresented in public life.
Originally reservation was only given to SCs and STs but was later extended to OBCs in 1987 after
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the implementation of the Mandal Commission report. Today anyone whose forefathers belonged to ST/SC community gets the benefits of reservation irrespective of his present socioeconomic status. There are income caps on EWS (Economically weaker sections) and OBCs (Other backward classes).
How effective has been this reservation system in India?
It is observed that even after 70 years of reservation the backward classes haven’t been benefitted the way they should have been and reservation keeps getting extended after every 10 years. One of the major reasons for this is no income cap on ST/SC reservations unlike OBC and EWS reservations where there is an income cap so that once a person is benefitted by reservation and is capable of earning a livelihood, he is no longer entitled to reservation.
As there is no concept of creamy layer in ST/SC reservations, even the son, grandson and great grand son of any other class A officer gets the benefits of reservation who himself got reservation.
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So majority of the benefits get siphoned off by the affluent ST/SC’s and are not able to percolate to the lower strata. Even the Supreme Court has directed the central government to introduce creamy layer concept in ST/SC reservation, but this is not possible because of vote bank politics.
2. Initiatives of TRIFED amid COVID-19
Context: TRIFED under Ministry of Tribal Affairs is proactively responding to the COVID-19 pandemic situation. These initiatives of TRIFED amid COVID-19 are aimed at lending extra support to the tribals in this unprecedented times.
TRIFED is responding by addressing the issues arising out of the long period of lock-down with a set of immediate, medium term and long term initiatives. Key Highlights of the Initiatives
The actions relating to protecting tribal interests during Covid-19 Lockdown (and the staggered period thereafter) as required can be classified under three heads as follows:
Publicity and Awareness Generation.
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Personal Protective Healthcare. NTFP Procurement.
Short Term measures: Social Distancing Awareness
Van Dhan Samajik Doori Jagrookta Abhiyaan: It was launched with an aim of educating Tribals engaged in gathering NTFPs in forest areas, on covid-19 response, key preventive behaviour like social distancing, home quarantine, hygiene tips through a two-tired training program (Training of Trainers and SHG training), using digital means such as webinars, facebook live streams etc.
Medium and Long Term measures : Livelihoods
Amendments in the list of exemptions amid COVID-19: To ensure relief to crores of tribals dependent on gathering of forest produce, the Ministry of Home Affairs was approached for necessary amendments in the list of exemptions in the guidelines for second phase of lockdown. o The Ministry of Home Affairs has issued Revised guidelines on 16th April 2020 allowing Collection, harvesting and processing of non-timber Minor Forest
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Produce (MFP) by scheduled tribes and other forest dwellers. o These exemptions are timely as the peak harvesting season has set-in in many regions. Apart from above, Ministry of Tribal Affairs have asked TRIFED to focus on revamping the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for MFP to enhance tribal livelihood in these testing times. Following the direction of Ministry of Tribal Affairs, TRIFED has initiated steps for operationalizing MSP operations in all states at primary markets called haat bazaars.
Other Initiatives
VAN DHAN SAMAJIK DOORI JAGROOKTA ABHIYAAN: TRIFED teamed up with UNICEF and WHO for launching a digital campaign spreading awareness about the importance of social distancing amid the coronavirus crisis in India.
UNICEF is providing the necessary IEC materials ( posters, flyers, leaflets, brochures, booklets, messages for health education sessions, radio broadcast or TV spots etc) for the campaign christened as “Van Dhan
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Samajik Doori Jagrookta Abhiyaan OR Van Dhan Social Distancing Awareness Movement”.
3. The Forest Rights Act in Nagarahole.
The varied responses of Adivasis living in and around Nagarahole Tiger Reserve NTR to the prospect of living within the forest as offered under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006.
The Forest Rights Act: Genesis and Implementation The FRA, enacted in 2006, is a historic legislation that aims to redress the historical injustices inflicted on forest- dwelling Scheduled Tribes (STs) and other traditional forest dwellers by recognising their rights over forestlands. This injustice stems from exclusionary forest protection policies and laws that have held sway since the colonial period.
The FRA recognises two types of rights to land: individual and community.
According to the act, the occupation of land of up to four acres for the purpose of habitation or cultivation prior to 13 December 2005 can be recognised as the individual
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 74 rights of a family; meanwhile, the community rights provision recognises collective ownership and the collection, use, and disposal of minor forest produce traditionally collected.
Another important provision, Section 3(2) of the FRA allows certain facilities, which are prohibited under forest and wildlife protection laws, to be established inside the forest for the welfare and development of the inhabitants. These include schools, dispensaries, shops, roads, electric lines, and drinking water. However, such facilities are provided based on the collective recommendations of the gram sabha, and not the requests of individual families. As is well known, forest policies adopted by the colonial and postcolonial administrations in India dispossessed many Adivasi communities of their lands (Asher and Agarwal 2007).
In many cases, Adivasis resisted such exclusion, leading to the formulation of region-specific policies, especially in areas with large Adivasi populations, to protect their land and provide them a certain level of authority and autonomy over their resources. Examples of such laws include the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act, 1908, the Santhal Parganas Tenancy Act, 1949, the Assam Land and
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Revenue Regulation (Amendment) Act, 1964, and the Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (Bijoy 2008; Upadhya 2005). However, while national-level forest protection policies have existed since the colonial period, a centralised, pan-Indian legislation to protect the rights of Adivasis was absent till the FRA was enacted in 2006. The implementation of the FRA in different parts of India highlights its variable impact. In Chhattisgarh and Gujarat, for example, although not all rights were granted, Bandi (2015) argues that the FRA gave a “psychological boost” to the Adivasis by assuring them that their land would not be taken away.
According to the Community Forest Rights–Learning and Advocacy (CFR–LA) report (2016), in several regions, such as Gadchiroli district, Maharashtra, Biligiri Rangaswami Temple Tiger Reserve, Karnataka, and Dindori district, Madhya Pra desh (MP), community rights were successfully established (CFR–LA 2016).The report also claims that local communities stopped commercial forestry in many areas where community forest rights were confirmed (CFR–LA 2016: 13). However, it also notes that, in many areas, forest departments have been more hostile towards granting community rights than individual rights (Agarwal 2018; CFR–LA 2016; Kumar et al 2017).
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According to the report, one reason for this is that forest departments believe that recognition of community rights will weaken their control over the forest. Thus, the forest departments have adopted various strategies to retain their control over forests, entangling and derailing the issue in several places in the process (CFR–LA 2016). Another concern raised by scholars about the sustenance of community resources is that the current generation of Adivasis is more interested in generating an income from the forest than protecting it. Hence, they often indulge in illegal extraction of forest resources, threatening the long- term survival of community forests—an argument put forward by forest department in Uttar Pradesh against the recognition of community rights (Agarwal 2018). Field- level studies on the implementation of the FRA offer important insights into the successes and failures of the act in different regions and point to possible reasons for these varying outcomes.
However, most studies do not provide an in-depth understanding of how local Adivasis, who are the subjects of the FRA, have responded to or engaged with the act. One exception is Ramanujam’s (2017) study of the Baiga Chak region of MP, which shows that despite the
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 77 impressive implementation of the FRA on paper, fractures have emerged on the ground. Here, many people are not interested in claiming community rights despite having received titles. He notes the various local conditions contributing to this response, such as degrading forest quality, which made people sceptical about their future inside the forest, and the gradual withdrawal of NGOs, which compromised their readiness for collective action. Additionally, some people depend on the timber-felling operations of the forest department of MP for their livelihoods, while others resent it since it destroys the place of their gods and ancestors’ spirits and affects their sources of medicines, food, and fodder. Moreover, the younger generation aspires for an urban lifestyle rather than a life in the forest (Ramanujam 2017).
The range of local responses to the FRA provides insight into the gaps between policy formulation and implementation, suggesting that centralised policies and laws formulated at the national level may be incapable of accommodating local conditions and aspirations. In the next section, I discuss Such specificities for the NTR. Nagarahole Tiger Reserve: A History of Evictions NTR is spread across two districts of Karnataka—Kodagu and Mysore—older forests; swampy grasslands, known
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 78 locally as hadlu; settlements of Jenu Kurubas, Betta Kurubas and Yeravas, the three main Adivasi communities of NTR, all listed as STs in Karnataka Several Adivasi settlements continue to be situated inside NTR, although their presence has reduced drastically since the 1970s, when these forests came under a stricter wildlife conservation regime following the enactment of the Indian Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.
Many Adivasis spoke about evictions that continued for more than a decade after 1972, resulting in the complete abandonment of some of their older settlements, such as Halehalli and Ajjapura, which were situated deep inside the forest and away from the main roads. These displaced communities were forced to shift, either to other settlements within the reserve and closer to the main roads, or to locales in the forest periphery (such as Hosahalli and Maradahalli). Some Adivasis moved to settlements that were entirely outside the forest, such as Kanakapura, or to the line houses maintained inside the coffee plantations for its workers. This coercive action of the forest department officials created a sense of fear among the Adivasis of NTR, and over the next three decades, many families were gradually forced to leave their homes and agricultural lands. Prior to the 1970s,
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 79 most Adivasis used to cultivate paddy or practice kumri cultivation inside the forests.
After the 1970s, the demand for labour inside NTR reduced severely due to the complete ban on all human activities in the forest. Consequently, Adivasis ventually became heavily dependent on coffee plantations and agricultural labour outside the forest, which significantly modified their earlier, everyday associations with the forest.
NGO Interventions in Nagarahole
During the 1980s, the evictions led to the establishment of several Adivasi rights NGOs in the region. providing educational and nutritional support to Adivasi children; facilitating the establishment of Adivasi-led organisations and collaborating with these organisations in filing court cases against the forest department; organising protests to demand rights and welfare for Adivasis; and conducting awareness programmes on women empowerment,
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 80 indigenous knowledge, and traditional Adivasi practices. Many Adivasis are also employed by these NGOs.
The NGOs organise events that celebrate the traditional practices and lives of the Adivasis, In addition, some of these NGOs have aligned themselves with national and global indigenous rights movements, and their members often participate in events organised by these larger rights networks within and outside India. Local Adivasi organisations created by these NGOs are also entrenched in these networks. Since the enactment of the FRA, their advocacy for claims to ancestral lands under the banner of self rule has received a further impetus. Since the 1990s, a few other NGOs that advocate for forests and wildlife conservation—besides those working on Adivasi rights— have emerged. Their agenda of conserving wildlife and forests by creating inviolate forest areas has led them to support and actively participate in shifting Adivasis outside the forest. Hence, Adivasi rights NGOs and conservation NGOs have clashed on many issues.
While Adivasi rights NGOs blame conservation NGOs for forcing people out of the forest, conservation NGOs argue that Adivasi rights NGOs encourage activities prohibited in the forest, such as collecting forest produce and cutting
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 81 timber, and also inhibit the development of Adivasi communities by keeping them inside the forests. In turn, Adivasi rights NGOs blame conservation NGOs for co- opting a few prominent Adivasi leaders of NTR by offering them cash incentives and jobs on the condition that they subscribe to a government-sponsored compensatory relocation scheme.
4. The Lockdown Has Worsened the Plight of Odisha’s Indigenous Bonda Community
Women who are central to the Bonda economy, say that they cannot harvest forest produce and the local haats are closed. The lockdown has jeopardised not only their livelihoods but food and nutritional security as well. Bondaghati (Odisha): Perched on the southern edge of Odisha, in Malkangiri district, is the forested hill region of Bondaghati, home to one of the 13 Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) in the state, namely the Bonda. They are believed to be
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 82 part of the first wave of migration out of Africa, about 60,000 years ago.
The Bondas, who have had an intimate connection with the forest and the sustainable life it signified, have been affected by deforestation and changes in traditional farming practices for some time now. Collecting minor forest produce (MFP) partly for their use and partly for sale at the weekly haat is what has given them some cash income.
Due to their remote habitat, buyers or traders hardly visit Bonda villages to procure their harvested MFP. Therefore, it is at the local haats that most Bonda women sell their harvests. Some of the major forest produce they harvest for income generation, includes hill brooms; the siyali leaf, used for making plates; siyali seeds; siyali bark, used to make rope; and salap, a kind of mild alcoholic juice harvested from the salap tree mostly found in Bondaghati. Most of these products are perishable except for siyali bark which is mainly used to make rope. Berry
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 83 varieties such as sindhikoli and chotodimbri are also harvested. They too are highly perishable.
The unprecedented situation brought upon by an extended lockdown has jeopardised the livelihoods, food and nutritional security of around 12,000 Bondas who live in 32 villages covering an area of around 130 square km, in Khairput block, as per the 2011 Census. According to tribal rights activists, “In the absence of urgent and pragmatic action by the state government, the situation can further worsen.”
Over the years, the Bondas have been seeing the yield from subsistence agriculture reducing. Subsequently, the income generated from selling surplus agro-produce has also reduced. Bonda women brew traditional liquor from millets, rice and jackfruit, selling it at the local haats, which provides them a steady flow of cash all year round. MFP and traditional liquor are critical sources of income generation for these communities – and both
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 84 activities are out of bounds for them due to the lockdown.
Whether it is working on land, collecting MFP, or selling it in haats, women are central to the Bonda economy. It is they who talk about the impact of the lockdown on their existence. Budai, Chhanki and Sombari belong to the upper Bonda communities, which inhabit the villages located on the slopes of Bondaghati. They fall under the Mudulipada and Andrahal panchayat (the villages of all three fall under the former). Those who reside on the foothills of Bondaghati are known as the lower Bonda communities.
For the upper Bonda communities in particular, the impact of the closure of local haats has been catastrophic. “The local haat is the nerve centre of Bonda communities and the heart of their village economy,” says Sukesh Mridha, project coordinator with the Centre for Youth and Social Development, a nonprofit organisation, in Malkangiri. The haats are not significant for their economic aspect alone;
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 85 they also provide a space for the reclusive Bonda people to communicate with each other, share ideas, news and information, Mridha explains. Several local civil society organisations, even the authorities, have on occasion conducted sensitization programmes at the weekly haats to ensure a wider outreach of key information for the Bonda communities.
The lockdown has made the task of disseminating vital information on COVID-19 among the Bonda communities a daunting challenge. PDS bottlenecks According to civil society organisations, about 70% of Bonda households are covered under the public distribution system (PDS). Santosh Sukla, secretary of Parivartan, a not-for-profit organisation working with the indigenous communities in Malkangiri, explains the reasons why several Bonda households are excluded from the PDS.
“Non-linkage of Aadhar with ration cards have deprived the Bonda people of PDS supplies, and
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 86 some people have lost their cards, too,” says Sukla. In the case of many Bondas, the names on their ration cards are not exactly the same as in their Aadhar cards, and that prevents them from accessing the PDS. “Although the state government has recently announced that every household will get PDS rations, even those who don’t have Aadhar cards, local authorities are not paying heed to it, says Sukla.
However,those who have their PDS cards have received ration for three months from the government. In order to address the bottlenecks in the PDS system, a Skype interaction was conducted with Minister of Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare Co-operation, Ranendra Pratap Swain. The interaction was organised by Vasundhara, a not-for- profit organisation in Bhubaneswar, working with the indigenous communities on issues of lands rights, forest governance and livelihood development. The issue of food and nutritional security However, development practitioners from
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 87 the region believe that accessing PDS food supplies is not sufficient to holistically address the issues of food and nutritional securities among the Bonda people.
“Their nutritional intake is far below the accepted standard,” says Rajesh Pattanayak, district project officer, Public Health Resource Society (PHRS), a not-for-profit organisation working with the Bonda and forest dwelling communities, on promoting food security and access to better healthcare services in Malkangiri. Pattanayak has several reasons for holding this view. Since the Bondas depend on rain-fed agriculture, access to nutritional food in the off-season depends on the quantum of harvest and income raised from selling forest produce gathered mostly by women.
Due to the variation in rain, temperature and soil moisture, the Bondas have consistently reported substantial yield reduction of their traditional crops such as millets, pulses and cereals lately. Clearly, the
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 88 pandemic and the lockdown induced by it has exposed long-standing issues regarding the nature of engagement that the state and civil society organisations need to have with the remote Bonda communities. Engagement cannot be a euphemism for one-way communication. It needs to be a conversation which pays heed to their voices and worldview and paves the way for interventions ensuring their livelihoods, food and nutritional security, and cultural confidence.
5. Bhil Tribe and their demand for separate State.
(PAPER – 2 INDIAN & TRIBAL ANTHROPOLOGY)
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Bhils or Bheels are an Indo-Aryan speaking ethnic group in West India. They speak the Bhil languages, a subgroup of the Western Zone of the Indo-Aryan languages. As of 2013, Bhils were the largest tribal group in India. Bhils are listed as indigenous people of the states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan—all in the western Deccan regions and central India—as well as in Tripura in far- eastern India, on the border with Bangladesh. The word Bhil is derived from “Veel” which means “bow” in the Dravidian language. The Bhil tribe is called the “Dhanush Purush of India” because they are very adept in Dhanush learning. Sub- categories of the tribe 1. Ujaliya / Kshatriya Bhil: – Ugaliya Bhil is
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 90 basically the Kshatriya who went into the forests at the time of Mughal invasion. 2. Langot Bhil:- They are the original Bhils living in the forests, their custom is still old. These mainly live in Madhya Pradesh.
In Rajasthan, Rana Poonja Bhil ji is remembered, who along with Maharana Pratap, defeated the Mughals. The portrait of Bhil this warrior is inscribed on the royal insignia of Mewar and Mayo College. As of 2013, the Bhil community was the largest tribal community in India with a total population of 1.7 crore.
Tribal occupation The source of income for the Bhils is agriculture and animal husbandry. Poultry and labour also source of income of this community. The Bhils have knowledge of the manufacturing of handloom products also. Many years ago, Bhil rajas (kings) permitted immigrants from the plains to settle in the hill regions. To safeguard their independence and rule, the Bhil fought against the Moghals, the Maratha, and the British. Many Bhil are being threatened by the Sardar Saravor Dam project, which when completed will flood the land
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 91 where many Bhil currently live. Though re-settlement plans have been discussed, they remain incomplete.
Why separate State The demand for creating a separate Bhil state in India is mainly arising from the tribal belt of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. These Bhil people want that migrant people of this community should be brought back to their original place with full dignity. These people also demand that the tribal communities should have first right on natural resources. There is a demand to make the Bhil state by merging some districts of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. These districts are Dungarpur, Banswara, Pratapgarh in southern Rajasthan, Ratlam, Jhabua, Alirajpur, Dhar, Petlawad, etc. of Madhya Pradesh, while the eastern districts of Gujarat include Panchmahal Godhra, Dahod and Dang while the northern districts of Maharashtra include Nashik, and Dhule.
11 crore population
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According to the census of India, the country had a Tribal population of 3 crores in the year 1961 which increased to 10.42 crore in the 2011 census, which has a decadal growth rate of 23.7%.
The highest number of tribes lives in Madhya Pradesh i.e. 14.7% of the total percentage of tribes in India followed by Maharashtra (10%) and then in Odisha at 9.2%. Keep in mind that tribes constitute 8.6% of the total population of India and 11.3% of the total rural population of India.
6. GOAL Programme | Going Online As Leaders
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Union Minister for Tribal Affairs Shri Arjun Munda launched the “GOAL (Going Online As Leaders)” programme of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA).
What you need to know about GOAL Programme?
The GOAL (Going Online As Leaders) Programme of Ministry of Tribal Affairs has been launched in partnership with the social networking giant, Facebook. The GOAL programme is designed to provide mentorship to tribal youth through digital mode. The digitally enabled program envisages to act as a catalyst to explore hidden talents of the tribal youth, which will help in their personal development as well as contribute to all-round upliftment of their society.
In this program, 5000 scheduled tribe youth (to be called as ‘Mentees’) will get an excellent opportunity to get training by experts from different disciplines and fields (to be called as ‘Mentors’).
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There will be 1 mentor for 2 mentees. The program aims to enable Scheduled Tribe (ST) youth in remote areas to use digital platforms for sharing their aspirations, dreams and talent with their mentors. Starting with 5000, the programme can be extended to cover any number of tribal persons who show keen interest in being mentored to achieve their goals.
Other Details about the Programme
The IT based system is designed to match mentors and mentees so that they are from similar profession and preferably speak same language. The selected mentees will remain engaged in the program for nine months or 36 weeks comprising of 28 weeks of mentorship followed by eight weeks of internship. The program will focus on three core areas – Digital Literacy, Life Skills and Leadership and Entrepreneurship, and on sectors such as Agriculture, Art & Culture, Handicrafts & Textiles, Health, Nutrition, among others. All the selected mentees will be provided with smartphones and Internet access (for one year) by
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Facebook along with exposure to various external forums that will give opportunity to the participants to showcase their entrepreneurial skills and leadership abilities. Efforts will be made to integrate the program with other government schemes such as Mudra Yojana, Kaushal Vikas Yojana, Jan Dhan Yojana, Skill India, Start Up India, Stand Up India, among others.
7. For Gujarat tribal children with no TV or Internet, school comes home on their teacher’s smartphone
The Home Learning Programme, for classes 3-12, was launched on June 15 to ensure that the new academic session is not affected by the pandemic. But in villages like Zerjitgadh, this has brought new challenges.
IT’S 8.30 am, and time for Pravinsinh Jadeja, a primary school teacher in Gujarat’s tribal district of Dahod, to leave home for work. But instead of the freshly painted
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 96 two-room school in Zerjitgadh village, the 43-year-old takes a detour on a narrow mud road, cutting through farms and hillocks, to an open backyard.
This is his classroom for the day. And the seven children with him, studying in Class 3, are all he could find on the way for an hour-long session with online material on his smartphone and books in his bag.
The seven are among the 60 out of 87 children in classes 3-5 at the primary school who do not have Internet or TV to access the state government’s Home Learning Programme aired on DD Girnar. And Jadeja is among about 30 teachers across 10 villages in Dahod who “have gone out of their way” to voluntarily ensure that these students don’t fall by the wayside.
“We have been with these children from the time they started going to school, and we want them to be a part of this new learning process,” says Jadeja.
“Only three students in the school have TVs at home, which cater to a maximum of about 20 other students keeping social distancing norms in mind. The others are being tutored in groups at their homes by teachers. The school has three teachers, including the principal,
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 97 who take turns to visit children and conduct classes,” says an official.
The Home Learning Programme, for classes 3-12, was launched on June 15 to ensure that the new academic session is not affected by the pandemic. But in villages like Zerjitgadh, this has brought new challenges.
Jadeja’s class begins on his 5.5 inch Android smartphone with a live session on DD Girnar’s YouTube channel. The lesson is titled “Pani Anmol Che (Water is Precious)”, and Jadeja frequently hits pause to ask questions to the seven students seated on a cot.
The session is interrupted by heavy winds and a patchy network, and also by the mooing of a cow and the song of a cyclist passing by. But Jadeja is quick to draw attention back to the next task — maths homework, and assignments for the next class on Friday.
“The major task is to locate the students, many of whom accompany their parents or grandparents to farms. Another challenge is to keep them involved…the idea of learning from a phone is new. It is also important to ensure that they understand what
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 98 the educator is saying,” says Somsinh Mohaniya, the school principal.
“Without a blackboard and chalk, it’s difficult to understand what is being taught,” says Mittal Ninama, a Class 5 student. “But it is fun to study from the teacher’s mobile, and we wait for him.”
“These teachers are our only hope,” says Soma Bhagat, whose backyard is the classroom for the day. “My three sons and their wives work as contract labourers in Vadodara. There is no smartphone or TV at home. So I ensure that my grandchildren are ready by 9 am for the home classes.”
Dahod has 1,53,195 students enrolled in classes 3-5 of government primary schools. The latest daily data shows that only 60,425 (39.44 per cent) accessed the Home Learning Programme on Wednesday. Of the 2,13,228 students in classes 6-12 of government schools, only 90,318 (42.35 per cent) accessed the programme that day.
According to 2018 data from the Department of Telecommunications, the service area-wise Internet subscription stood at 8.26 million in rural Gujarat, and 23.16 million in the state’s urban areas.
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“Dahod is socio-economically backward, with rampant migration over the years. Earlier, children used to travel with their parents but have now started to stay back for education. We are trying to ensure that they continue to do so,” says D B Patel, District Primary Education Officer.
8. Bastar has remained Covid-free. That’s because social distancing is tribal norm, experts say
The whole world might be battling the Covid-19 pandemic, but the tribal region of Bastar in Chhattisgarh has remained free of worry on this count. Bastar, with a population of about 35 lakh, has not registered a single case. Local leaders, administrators and experts say this has happened for two main reasons
The tribals’ traditional way of life is conducive to maintaining social distancing, and The government has been proactive in spreading
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 10 0 awareness about the precautions necessary to combat the disease. Tribal people have not only physically resisted the entry of outsiders in their villages, but have also voluntarily informed local anganwadi workers and health department officials to quarantine those who returned to the villages and tried to enter their houses secretly.
Social distancing a tribal norm Anthropologist Rajendra Singh, the first person to earn a doctorate on the life of Abujhmadia tribals, explained how social distancing is the norm for tribals of the region. The boundaries of their houses are very large, to keep the neighbours at a distance, unlike urban residences or even modern villages, where houses are bunched together.
Tribals maintain adequate physical distance, as they walk mostly in rows, instead of groups. Work’ for them mainly means collecting things from the forest, which is again not a group
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 10 1 activity, so they are able to maintain distancing. They only go to the markets once a week. Singh added that this is why the government’s role in helping Bastar’s tribals in the time of Covid-19 was limited to just alerting them to be extra vigilant towards distancing.
“All anganwadi workers and health officials needed to do was to just speak to them in their dialects and convince them to maintain social distancing at all time. The tribals took care of everything else themselves. Barriers were erected at the boundaries of several tribal villages to prevent outsiders from sneaking in.
In case migrant workers coming back from other states managed to enter the village, they were immediately brought to the attention of local health workers, and sent into isolation by the villagers themselves.”
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 10 2 Tribal political leader and former Union minister Arvind Netam agreed that their traditional way of life was the “proper way” to keep a disease like Covid-19 at bay. “The world must learn from them,” Netam said. “Tribals are also naturally immune to several diseases, as they still thrive upon forest products like fruits, root vegetables and various herbal products. “They might know the scientific significance of the lockdown, but tribals are very aware about keeping distance from others, and are able to maintain social distancing in their routine life.
9. World Health Day 2020: How nutrition gardens helped tribals in Odisha's Nagada
Tribals in Nagada suffer from severe malnutrition, other health issues.
A tribal woman in Nagada stands next to her nutrition garden
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There are approximately 582 people who belong to the Juang tribe in Odisha’s Nagada. This tribe is one of the 13 particularly vulnerable tribal groups in the state.
Nagada is a cluster of hamlets, located at Mahagiri mountain range in Odisha’s Jajpur, about 94 kilometres away from district headquarters.
One of the main reasons why Nagada remained untouched by development over the years was its inaccessibility.
Government outreach services were unable reach inhabitants of this cluster because it was in a remote area with poor infrastructure, including a lack of roads. Tribals in Nagada suffered from severe malnutrition and other health issues as a result. The village lacked basic amenities needed for survival.
Nagada made headlines in July 2016, when 19 children died from severe malnourishment within a month. The state government immediately took action to not only
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 10 4 address malnutrition, but also improve issues of infrastructure development. Metal roads were constructed, ponds were excavated, electricity was brought in, anganwadis were made and houses were constructed under the Pradhan Mantri Gramin Awaas Yojana.
The government also focused its attention on enhancing the livelihoods of the community, providing nutritious food to children under the age of six years and more through different line departments and social assistance schemes.The Odisha Livelihoods Mission (OLM) also took instant action to address the needs of the community.
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 10 5 A tribal woman in Nagada examines produce from her nutrition garden
The Odisha government and OLM felt that a focused intervention was needed to create an enabling environment for the overall well-being of the people in Nagada. This called for combining strategies for immediate and long-term intervention, with non-profit Trickle Up chosen as a partner by OLM to lead the initiative.
Trickle Up realised that while food security could be ensured for poor households in Nagada through the public distribution system, it was not enough for overall development of the mind and body.
Food diversity was required to receive wholesome nutrition and develop to a person’s full potential.
This was absolutely critical for pregnant mothers, lactating mothers and for children below six years of age.
The community in Nagada lacked the resources and proper awareness to ensure food diversity and optimum intake of nutritious food.
The Solution
The Trickle Up team working in Odisha faced this
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 10 6 challenge by deciding to implement what is known to be one of the best solutions to tackle the difficult issue of malnourishment: The creation of nutrition gardens for families.
The promotion of nutrition gardens can reduce 70 per cent of the diseases caused by deficiency of vitamin A, according to a survey by the Food and Agriculture Organization in 2011.
A nutrition garden appropriately utilises space at the front and rear ends of a house to grow fruits and vegetables that can not only sustain the family, but also support their dietary requirements. Seasonal vegetables are grown by utilising locally available waste and other materials as manure or fertiliser. They can be used for long periods to fulfill the daily needs of the household.
Approximately 60 households from Nagada adopted the practice of having a nutrition garden in their household during the kharif season, while 34 households adopted this practice during the rabi season.
Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives supported training needs to start and maintain the gardens. They also supported the procurement of seeds. These gardens ensure regular supply of the required amount of nutritious vegetables to the families.
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 10 7 A new addition to the behaviour change process was the introduction of the food festival in the community.
During this festival, the community is encouraged to cook together and eat together, while the field staff demonstrates new and nutritious ways to cook and eat papaya and yam – the abundantly available local produce that the community is not used to eating.
The initiative aims to add to the nutrition value of the food, while changing eating habits. These processes have not just contributed to behaviour change, but also initiated healthy habits into the system of community living in Nagada.
Nutrition gardens encourage the optimisation of locally available resources for communities that stay in areas with fewer resources and limited connectivity.
The aim of Trickle Up is to have nutrition gardens throughout the year so that it actively contributes in reducing malnourishment rates in the community.
10.Tribes India e-Mart: Coming soon, an e- market place only for tribal sellers
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*Objective : To bring around 5 lakh tribal artisans online, thus connecting them to a larger national and international market*
Around 5 lakh tribal items across 20,000 categories, including textiles, paintings, home decor items, jewelry, and metal crafts, will be available on the website. Tribal artisans will soon be able to sell their products at the click of a mouse with the government gearing up to launch a specialised e-marketplace for them this Independence Day. “We will launch the website – Tribes India e-Mart – on Independence Day on August 15. It will be similar to selling your products on e-commerce giants
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 10 9 Amazon or Flipkart. The difference is just that it will be only for tribals,” Managing Director of TRIFED Praveer Krishna said.
A trial run of the e-marketplace will continue from July 30 to August 14. The government had set up Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India in 1987 with an aim to provide fair price for products of tribals across the country. The agency functions under the Union Tribal Affairs Ministry. Krishna said tribal artisans will be trained and asked to register themselves as sellers on the website.
“The staff at our 15 regional offices across the country and state government officials working with TRIFED will train these tribals and help them get registered,” he said. The objective is to bring around 5 lakh tribal artisans online, thus connecting them to a larger national and international market, he said.
Around 5 lakh tribal items across 20,000 categories, including textiles, paintings, home decor items, jewelry, and metal crafts, will be available on the website. The products of tribal sellers will undergo a strict quality
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 11 0 check and a committee will fix prices for each item.
There will be local collection centres from where the products will be supplied across the country. For every Rs 100, Rs 70 will go to the tribals sellers, Krishna said. “We will start with around 5,000 tribal artisans on July 30. The target is to connect 5 lakh tribal artisans to the platform and give them access to a larger market,” he said.
“This is in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of an aatmanirbhar (self-reliant) India. Our motto is ‘go vocal for local, go tribal’,” he said. The worth of a shirt they (tribals) sell in local markets for Rs 200 is Rs 1,000 in Delhi, Krishna said, explaining the economics behind the idea.
Best quality organic products will be delivered to buyers, who will have the option to return the item within 15 days if they are not satisfied with it, he said. On Saturday, Union Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda launched tribal products on Government e-Marketplace (GeM).
This will help government departments and officers purchase tribal products directly from the website without
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 11 1 going through a lengthy process of floating a tender and receiving bids, Krishna explained. With more and more people going online to meet their various needs be it for business operations, shopping and communication, an important strategic push has been to adopt an all- encompassing digitization drive to map and link its village-based tribal producers, Munda said.
TRIFED has also partnered with other e-commerce portals such as Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal and PayTM to provide market access to its tribal artisans.
11. TRIFED-UNICEF CAMPAIGN FOR SHG
Context: TRIFED-UNICEF campaign for SHG (Self Help Group) is to be launched to ensure Tribal Gatherers carry on their work safely without facing any problem.
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Key details about TRIFED-UNICEF Campaign for SHG
In order to ensure tribal gatherers carry on their work safely, TRIFED has collaborated with UNICEF for developing a digital communication strategy for promoting a digital campaign for Self Help Groups (SHGs) involved in this work, highlighting the importance of Social Distancing.
UNICEF would provide the necessary support to be circulated to the SHG centers in the form of Digital Multimedia content, Webinars for Virtual trainings (basic orientation on COVID response, key preventive behaviours), Social Media campaigns (on social distancing, home quarantine, etc.) and Vanya Radio.
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 11 3 TRIFED has reached out to the Art of Living Foundation’s #iStandWithHumanity Initiative with a Stand With Tribal Families component in providing much needed food and ration for survival of the tribal community.
About Self Help Groups (SHGs)
Self-Help Groups (SHGs) are informal associations of people who choose to come together to find ways to improve their living conditions. It can be defined as self governed, peer controlled information group of people with similar socio-economic background and having a desire to collectively perform common purpose.
Villages face numerous problems related to poverty, illiteracy, lack of skills, lack of formal credit etc. These problems cannot be tackled at an individual level and need collective efforts. Thus SHG can become a vehicle of change for the poor and marginalized. SHG rely on the notion of “Self Help” to encourage self-employment and poverty alleviation.
Origin of SHGs
The Origin of SHG in India can be traced to formation of Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in 1970. The SHG Bank Linkage Project launched by NABARD in 1992 has blossomed into the world’s largest microfinance project.
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 11 4 NABARD along with RBI permitted SHGs to have a savings account in banks from the year of 1993. This action gave a considerable boost to the SHG movement and paved the way for the SHG-Bank linkage program. In 1999, Government of India, introduced Swarn Jayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY) to promote self-employment in rural areas through formation and skilling of SHGs. The programme evolved as a national movement in 2011 and became National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) – world’s largest poverty alleviation programme. Today, State Rural Livelihood Missions (SRLMs) are operational in 29 states and 5 UTs (except Delhi and Chandigarh).
About TRIFED
The Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India (TRIFED) came into existence in 1987. It is a national-level apex organization functioning under the administrative control of Ministry of Tribal Affairs.
TRIFED has its Head Office located in New Delhi and has a network of 13 Regional Offices located at various places in the country.
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 11 5 The ultimate objective of TRIFED is socio-economic development of tribal people in the country by way of marketing development of the tribal products such as metal craft, tribal textiles, pottery, tribal paintings and pottery on which the tribals depends heavily for major portion of their income.
12. How tribal communities in Kerala are helping to stop the spread of COVID-19
In many tribal colonies, branches of the thorny Indian coral tree have been fixed on the doors of most houses to prevent the entry of strangers.
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Tribal communities in Kerala have been practising physical distancing as a way to curb the local spread of COVID-19.
The people have been following the government's directions to prevent the virus infection among the community. According to the forest and tribal welfare officials, the community is well aware about COVID-19 precautions. The people are following practices like frequent hand washing and wearing masks correctly, said officials.
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 11 7 In many tribal colonies, branches of the Indian coral tree (Mullumurukku) have been fixed on the doors of most houses to prevent the entry of strangers.The thorns in the branches are meant to discourage people from entering unnecessarily.
Shelvi, a resident of Marayoor Indira Colony in Idukki, said, “The Health Department officials informed us about the virus infection. As per the direction from the Health Department, we wash our hands when we return home after work. In addition to this, we follow physical distancing."
Wayanad district Scheduled Tribes Development Department officer, C Ismail, said, “The department has already provided masks and soap to the tribal families in the district. The soap and masks were provided with their ration food items. The health workers and tribal development officials have provided information to the community about the virus and the people are aware about the seriousness of the infection. They are practising hand wash and physical distancing to prevent the spread of the virus.”
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Tribal people in Kerala practising hand washing
“In addition, the department will provide assistance to make more masks for the tribal community. The
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 11 9 Tribal Development Department will select trained persons from their community to stitch the masks and the department will manage the costs," he added.
Samagrashiksha Kerala (SSK) Idukki district programme officer, Dhanya T Vasu, told TNM, “The Deputy Director of Education (DDE) office provided sanitisers to each Multi Grade Learning Centre (MGLC) to sanitise the hands of the tribal children before they attend the online classes in the MGLCs. The tribal people and kids wear masks before reaching the centres. Soap is available in all shops in the tribal hamlets.”
Idukki Tribal Development officer, Santhoshkumar, S told TNM, “The Tribal Development Department provided two free soaps each to the tribal people to assure hand washing. After COVID-19 began to spread, the tribal people decided to move from their homes only for urgent needs."
The remote tribal settlement of Edamalakudy inside the Munnar forest division announced a lockdown from July 1 to prevent the spread of the virus.
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 12 0 Vyas, a resident and a volunteer of an MGLC at Edamalakudy, said, "The tribal people decided to follow the lockdown, and outsiders were not allowed to the village. Those who wished to travel for emergencies to Munnar, Mankulam or any other town, were required to stay in their homes under quarantine for the next 14 days.”
“We provided awareness about the infection and the people have followed the directions,” he said.
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13. MAHE, NGO train Siddis for shot at Olympics
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 12 2 Bridges of Sports (BOS), a non-profit focusing on providing access to children to learn, play and excel in athletics, have worked with communities in Karnataka, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh. It has trained over 1800 children in athletics.
Started with the support of few Indian Olympians, the organization is supported by Infosys Foundation, Micheal and Susan Dell Foundation, IIMB, Deshpande Foundation, and N/Core. It has recently signed an agreement with the Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE).
As a part of an agreement between BOS Foundation and MAHE, 17 athletes (10 – 17 years age group) from BOS Foundation, will receive scientific, athletic training from sports scientists during the performance training camp to be held in Manipal from May 20th – 6th June.
The majority of the athletes come from an Indo- African tribal community called the Siddis and have struggled for basic amenities due to lack of resources and social exclusion. All of these athletes are being trained to compete for the 2024 Olympics.
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 12 3 The Siddis are settled primarily in Yellapura, Haliyal, Mundgod and Sirsi taluks of Karnataka. They have been in India for over 500 years. Studies have pointed that Siddis in Karnataka, much like in other parts of India, have remained isolated, and economically and socially neglected, predominantly settled in forest dwellings.
This limits access to resources and opportunities in more ways than mere logistics. In 1987, the Sports Authority of India (SAI) started a scheme to train members of the Indo—African Siddi community. Around 65 members of the community were initially chosen to be trained in athletic events as part of the ‘Special Area Games Scheme’. The scheme was discontinued six years later, and although further efforts were made to revive the scheme in the 2000s, it was criticized for its short-sightedness, lack of inclusiveness and proper coaches.
In an attempt to revive these efforts, BOS are building a sustainable sports ecosystem in North Karnataka which is home to one of the most naturally athletic Siddi Community. The organisation’s annual grassroots community
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 12 4 league—PATANG (planning athletic training and nurturing grassroots) helps in talent identification, after which the athletes are enrolled in and supported at each level of their development.
Children within 20% of the national records are given specific training by youth coaches. Along with daily monitoring and development, they are also provided with basic nutrition support, training shoes, and equipment. Only the best talent—who are within 15% of national records are then trained by senior coaches and are given complete nutrition support, sport science, and sports psychology support. Besides athletic training, BOS also conduct sessions for parents, team building activities, and personality development workshops for the athletes.
Who are Siddi tribe?
Siddis are a unique tribe that has African ancestry and lives in South Asia. They are mainly found in three Indian states—Gujarat, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh—and according to the latest census, their total population size is about 0.25
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 12 5 million. The first documented record of Siddis in India dates to 1100 AD when the Siddis settled in Western India. By the thirteenth century, substantial numbers of Siddis were being imported by the Nawabs and the Sultans of India to serve as soldiers and slaves. The major influx of Siddis occurred during the 17th–19th centuries when the Portuguese brought them as slaves to India.
The Siddis (Afro-Indians) are a tribal population whose members live in coastal Karnataka, Gujarat, and in some parts of Andhra Pradesh. Historical records indicate that the Portuguese brought the Siddis to India from Africa about 300–500 years ago; however, there is little information about their more precise ancestral origins. Here, we perform a genome-wide survey to understand the population history of the Siddis. Using hundreds of thousands of autosomal markers, we show that they have inherited ancestry from Africans, Indians, and possibly Europeans (Portuguese). Additionally, analyses of the uniparental (Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA) markers indicate that the Siddis trace their ancestry to Bantu speakers from
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 12 6 sub-Saharan Africa. We estimate that the admixture between the African ancestors of the Siddis and neighbouring South Asian groups probably occurred in the past eight generations (∼200 years ago), consistent with historical records.
Bridge of Sports’ role
On August 15, 2016, the Bridges of Sports Foundation was founded. It was incubated at IIM Bangalore, as a non-profit start-up set up. This NGO is trying to empower and integrate underprivileged communities using the sports ecosystem. Its Founder Nitish M. Chiniwar explained: “Quite simply we aim to provide children from backward communities the opportunity to learn, play and excel in sports.”
14. Adivasi Women Have Preserved Indigenous Seeds For Many Generations
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This festival gives us hope,” said Balabati Majhi. She and other Adivasi women from the Kutia Khond community were preparing to attend the local indigenous seeds festival. Their village, Burlubaru, surrounded by hills and dense forest, was bustling with the preparations. The women were singing and dancing to the beats of traditional drums, the dhap and tamuk, holding small earthen pots filled with indigenous seeds on their heads. They had gathered at the shrine to Dharani Penu (Earth Goddess) at the centre of their village. After a puja performed by the village priest, they
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 12 8 starting moving in a procession to the festival site – an open field near their village in Tumudibandha block of Odisha’s Kandhamal district, “We perform a puja for a good harvest. Sometimes, we also offer our deity a goat and hen. A good harvest feeds us the whole year. At the festival, we exchange seeds with others, so we also pray for a good harvest for those who take seeds from us,” said 43-year-old Balabati, whose family cultivates millets and maize on two acres.
Balabati and around 700 Adivasi women farmers from the villages of Kotagarh, Phiringia and Tumudibandha blocks attended the annual seeds
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 12 9 festival this year. Organised around the time of the harvest in March, the event is an occasion to exhibit and exchange traditional seeds, revive lost varieties and speak of farming practices. Kuleladu Jani, 48, also from the Kutia Khond community in Burlubaru village (of Belghar panchayat), said that in the past they celebrated the festival in their own villages, and would visit relatives’ houses in other nearby villages to exchange seeds. “We never bought seeds from the market,” she added. Since the revival of the festival, she has collected numerous varieties of millet seeds and cultivated them in her two-acre farmland. The festival grew into a revitalised and larger gathering – the Burlang Yatra – around 2012, when researchers from the Millet Network of India, local organisations, and the local administration came together with local youth and villagers in organising the event.
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 13 0 During the ‘yatra’, the farmers display seeds of finger millet, foxtail millet, little millet, jowar, maize, oilseeds, pulses and vegetables, besides several varieties of paddy, edible wild roots and locally-grown herbs. These are ritualistically exchanged at the end of the day. These are good quality seeds, said 38-year-old Pramiti Majhi of Nandabali village, resistant to pests and diseases, high in nutrition and yield. “Our heirloom seed doesn’t need any fertiliser to grow,” added Kuleladu. “We use cow dung, and our crops grow well, the produce is tastier [than crops grown from seeds bought from the market], and we can save some seeds for the next sowing season.”
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At the festival, the women also spoke of their experience of preservation and techniques of sowing. In many Adivasi and rural communities, women are the primary caretakers of indigenous and heirloom seeds – in addition to their various other roles from sowing to harvesting. “It is knowledge that passes from one generation to another. The women collect, preserve and plan the sowing of seeds,” said Pranati Majhi of Majhiguda, who cultivates millet, sorghum and corn. “After harvesting, we leave some plants in the land to dry in direct sun rays,” said Parbati Majhi of Paramala hamlet of Kotagarh block. “Once they
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 13 2 dry, we pluck and separate these seeds and store them in an earthen pot. We put cow dung paste in the outer layer of the pot to protect it from insects.” In several villages here, the Kutia Khond community focuses on millet-based mixed farming. Advasi communities in Kandhamal have traditionally consumed millets, but over time, these were replaced by the rice given on the public distribution system – though millet-rich foods remain popular in many villages here. “The rice we get [on the PDS] has no taste and no strength,” said Dhainpadi Majhi, 45, of Baripanga village, “but millet gives you strength and fills your stomach for a longer time.” Millets, added Saswanti Badamajhi, 46, of Jharighati village, “give us energy to climb hills and work for loger hours.” Towards the end of the day-long festival, after dances to the beats of drums, horns and cymbals, amid shrilling chants, the women converge at the indigenous seeds kept at the centre of the ground.
www.vishnuias.com (+91-7702170025) 13 3 After a ritualistic exchange, with different varieties folded in sal leaves, small pieces of paper or knotted in their saree pallus, they start walking back home.
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