The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : ‘Tribal identity at crossroads’

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Thursday, Mar 06, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

‘Tribal identity at crossroads’

Staff Reporter

TIRUPATI: “Tribal culture, identity and health are at crossroads in India. The decisions, approaches and analyses that are taken in regard to tribal people and by anthropologists themselves will determine whether these precious resources will continue to exist in future,” notes Robert Oakley, a professor of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Dalhousie University, Canada. The dominance of industrial capitalist economy and the mass exodus to urban cities could lead to the vanishing of the “diversity,” she feared.

At the national seminar on ‘Ethno-medicine and healthcare practices among the tribal people of India’ organised by the SVU Department of Anthropology here on Wednesday, Prof. Oakley spoke on ‘Tribal health in the context of capitalist market penetration’. She felt that the capitalistic traits such as self-interest, over-consumption, individualism, greed, profit-seeking at all costs and a tendency to regard future as “the next few days” tend to constrict the perspective of traders and industry leaders.

SVU Vice-Chancellor C. Rathnam wanted preservation of the tribal herbal information for posterity. Jakka Parthasarathy, director of the Ooty-based Tribal Research Centre, narrated the healthcare practices adopted by the Toda tribals of the Nilgiris. K.E. Rajpramukh, a professor of Anthropology at Andhra University, spoke on medical anthropology.

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