TRIB'L WOM'N

Mariamma Kalathil in her study 'Withered Valli': Tribal development and the alienation, degradation, and enslavement of the tribesfolk especially of the tribal women in Attappadi, seeks to understand the multiple strands of exploitation that tribal women confront in Attappadi. The study also makes effort to look for responses of the tribal women to both government and international development programmes and to settler interventions that have led to alienate tribal people from land and other productive resources. Attappadi is a predominantly tribal area in Palakkad district, known for the degradation of its once rich forests. The researcher would focus on the three tribal groups in Attappady i.e., Irular, Muduga, and Kurumbar.

A complex of factors has forced tribal groups to leave their earlier settlements for less productive hilltops. Besides, for want of other productive resources, sections of tribal society are being forced to look for work on settler farms, providing the latter with a cheap source of labour. Tribal women of Attappady face very specific problems. They are forced to work 12 to 13 hours and paid as little as Rs 10 to 20 a day. For granting access to credit or other development assistance, sexual favours are sought by officials.

In this context, the researcher seeks to understand the multiple processes at work, which have served to disempower tribal people and especially tribal women, in the face, ironically, of huge development projects. This leads her to a documentation of the historical processes of intervention both by the state and by settlers from outside the area into the livelihood systems of the tribal inhabitants. The role of state policy in the creation of certain degenerative processes is also looked into. The researcher intends to document the processes of social and economic production and reproduction in tribal society with emphasis on the strains experienced on their earlier practices. The study raises several important questions including the role women play in tribal life. What did development intervention mean for them? What changes has 'development' brought? With what consequences?

The researcher sees this as a participatory social action research and has been collecting material with the help of 10 research assistants recruited from among the young tribesfolk (six women and four men). The method required intense interaction with the people through workshops, detailed interviews as well as a survey. A major source of information is the rich oral tradition, including songs and folk stories, of the tribal groups. Besides, the researcher has also been involved in initiating participatory spatial mapping of the hamlets as part of building up a critical awareness among the tribesfolk alongside generating data on their living conditions including housing, sanitation, energy, education, and health facilities