TRIBALS – 2007 - Indian Social Institute

drop out of the school,” said J B Tubid, Secretary (HRD). “Most teachers employed in theseschools communicate in Hindi. Our plan is to encourage them to learn any one of the locallanguages so that they can do their job well,” he said. (Indian Express 14/6/07)Abducted tribals axed to death (6)RAIPUR, JUNE 13 : Two tribals, who were abducted by extremists last week, have been killedand their bodies were dumped on the roadside in Chhattisgarh’s insurgency-hit Dantewadadistrict. The two men were among the nine tribal daily workers who were taken hostage byMaoists last week. The victims were abducted from Bande village of Dantewada district by 25armed Maoists when they were returning from a Government-run employment generatingscheme. All nine—including two women—were staying at the Konta relief camp. The Maoistsfreed four men on June 10 and had not put forward any demand to release the remaining five.“We found the bodies of the two tribal hostages early on Wednesday from Konta area. They hadmultiple injury marks, around the neck,” a senior police officer said. “The two men were brutallyaxed to death,” he added. He said three persons were still being held captive and state policeteams were combing the forested hideouts of Maoists to secure their safe release. In a majoraction targeting civilian population in Bastar region of Chhattisgarh last week, Maoist extremistshad kidnapped 12 people, including two women, from Dantewada and Narayanpur districts of thearea. (Indian Express 14/6/07)Tribal women work out a water marvel, harvest spring with wisdom (6)Malkangiri : When the current dictum of a global village is the common refrain, the Statemachinery itself gets inaccessible to the State's inaccessible terrain and remote tribal areas,where the basic minimum needs remain only a farfetched reality and the inhabitants struggleagainst the adversities to earn their livelihood. This is what the story is about a remote tribalvillage Mahupadar in Malkangiri district, which is surrounded by hills and dense forests. Andalmost similar is the story about four other villages Kantamadi, Khilguda, Balichua andBandaguda that lie cradled between two hills and are bereft of any roads, potable water or anyother basic facilities. Government officials neither visit the villages nor are they come under anygovernmental welfare schemes. Handicapped by the non-availability of any groundwater sourceor surface water, an acute water scarcity was haunting the villagers for decades. Summer used tomake their lives miserable, and in rainy season they used to tap water from small shallow placesfor their daily use exposing them to the harmful effects of unclean water. However, for the tribals,nature was not too harsh; only 2 km away a perennial spring flows down the hill, and for the 800people of these five villages, this was the lone water source to quench their thirst. From dawn todusk, people queued up here to collect a pot of water, and being in a dense forest, the attack ofwildly beasts always lurks in their minds. Even men armed with bows, arrows and other sharpedged weapons were a common sight then. Many cases of tiger attacks were even reported then.Given the problem of beastly attacks and scaling up the unfriendly terrains, to collect water wasvirtually impossible daily. Also, the water flow gets reduced in the summers. How to bring thewater down the hill always stirred their minds, especially the female members, who bore the bruntof collecting water daily. Up came some eight women, prominent among them are Choini Khara,Gurubari Khil and Kamala Dantal, and they organised a meeting in Mahupadar to find a solutionto this vexing problem. Despite not having any technical background, the women decided to uselong bamboo logs at the mouth of the spring to divert the water down the hills to avail it.Unsatisfied, as water scarcity still dogged them, the women then devised another noveltechnique, taking the wooden logs from forest, they cut it into boat like shapes and put them atthe mouth of the spring to channel it completely to their village door-step and collected it in areservoir. The interesting fact is, by this, neither the spring water strays out anywhere nor a singledrop got wasted. More so, they converted these wood logs as water pipes and wrapped cloth atits mouth to collect the clean water for daily use. Indeed, a novel water project by illiterate tribalwomen, that not only catered to their drinking water needs but also other water imperatives.These indefatigable women didn't rest on their laurels, rather, they with a fistful of food grains andlittle amount of money goes on to form a SHG (Self Help Group) named Maa Padmabati, only tomodernise their this novel water project. The male folk by constructing another water reservoir put