E-Paper
Konda Reddis: Living on the Edge
With the jungles depleting and forest laws coming into force, the Konda Reddies, a primitive tribal group of Andhra Pradesh, are facing their lives' biggest challenge.
With the jungles depleting and forest laws coming into force, the Konda Reddies, a primitive tribal group of Andhra Pradesh, are facing their lives' biggest challenge.
Poverty is rampant among them. They have no clothes to wear; even the moderate winters get to them now. Illiteracy and ignorance have also made them vulnerable to exploitation by the outside world.
The Konda Reddies, who are settled on the hills, riverside, and on lower plains of East Godavari, West Godavari, and Khammam, were once a self-sufficient group. Their lives revolved around their ecosystem (their villages are surrounded by undulating terrain, thick forests (deciduous), rivers, streams and hillocks), and they had adapted themselves to the environment by sharing, protecting and conserving whatever limited resources they could find.
In fact, they showed exceptional ecological sensibilities. For centuries, with their shared beliefs and practices, however irrelevant they are to the modern world, they protected and conserved their immediate environment. Their worship and reverence for forests, streams, rivers were really creditable.
Life has, however, changed for them. The state and forest reserved policies have forced them to do shifting cultivation on limited land, robbing the richness and fertility of the land on one hand, and on the other, producing low yields and crops with low nutrition.
