The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Migrant tribal families live in distress

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 25, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Migrant tribal families live in distress

D. Chandra Bhaskar Rao

They hide in reserve forests by constructing habitations

Photo: G.N. Rao

LONELY SOUL: A child of the Gothikoya tribe left alone as the parents are away at work in Chintur mandal of Khammam district.

BHADRACHALAM: Two girls -- Kavuluri Bhadramma and Bojjamma -- belonging to a migrant Gothikoya family died recently in Kukunoor mandal. Both the deaths were initially suspected to be cases of malaria. But the Health Department personnel had a thorough investigation into the cases. District Medical and Health officer Babji and Community Health Officer Satyavathi finally attributed the deaths to their eating of some raw fruit collected from the wild growth around the new settlement they put up on a hillock at Damaracharla. The siblings died before the doctors could attend on them. Both the children were suffering from chronic anaemia.

There are many other children taken ill in the habitation, but survived thanks to the quick response from the local health personnel as well as a non-governmental organisation. This cannot be viewed as an isolated case in Khammam district. Hundreds of children of the Gothikoya tribe migrating from Chhattisgarh to reserve forests all along the river course of the Godavari are living through frightening conditions.

Out of mainstream

A majority of them are asylum seekers and they are hiding in reserve forests by constructing new habitations. These tribes have been paying a heavy price for being identified with the Maoist-sponsored violence on the inter-State border. Reduced to the status of offenders for encroaching land in the reserve forest, they failed to find a place in the mainstream.

The children of the asylum seekers are in for complex physical and emotional complications. They are deprived of access to basic human needs, including nutrition and shelter -- not to speak of other facilities like education. The number of such children has been on the rise since March last as the Salva judum campaign against the Maoists is stepped up triggering heavy influx of tribal communities into Khammam.

Peddamidde, another Gothikoya settlement in Nandipadu gram panchayat, has some 16 children all under 12 years. They deserted the forest villages in South Bastar in January last. Some of the children are working along with their parents in the farms of the local farmers for Rs. 25 a day while others are collecting firewood.

Silent sufferers

The Gothikoya community, which is just bent upon staying in the State as long as possible, raise no voice as it would attract the eyes of the Forest Department. A non-government organisation has obtained stay from the court preventing further displacement of the tribal families. But they are so scared of the local people that they would not even reveal their names.

A sense of mistrust keeps them away from the mainstream.

Some 400 school-age children of the migrant tribes are living in no better conditions in a cluster of villages around Chintoor in Bhadrachalam division.

No Gothikoya child name could figure in any of the government schools in the area. The non-governmental organisations which are making efforts for reaching out the displaced tribes, have to face hurdles from the Maoists too. A team of health workers in the fold of one such organisation had incurred the ire of the Moists for entering their strongholds recently.

A senior official says that there is no restriction on the admission of the Gothikoya children into the local schools. But a majority of them had Hindi as their instructional medium in Bastar. Khammam district faces the shortage of Hindi teachers. Alternative arrangements will be made, he says.

Shanta Sinha, Chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, has visited some of the mandals and taken stock of the conditions.

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