How I was Introduced to the Struggles of Tribal Communities in Kerala

This is the first article in a two-part series talking about the tribes called Paniyas and their place in the social hierarchies of Wayanad in Kerala, India and see what their lives look like today.

I was thrown into Wayanad and its problems- both hidden and open. I decided to explore how if there was any reality to people’s claims that the tribals weren’t as affected by the 2018 floods because “they didn’t have much to lose and that they are used to it”. This led me on an eye-opening journey into the cruel realms of caste oppression and caste-privilege.

Read Part 2 : How to Destroy an Entire Community in 3 steps

Read my reflections on one of the interventions we designed here: Using Storytelling to build Aspiration in a Vulnerable Tribal Community

Disclaimer: I have put links to the referred journals and articles wherever I can. It may not be possible to read all of them at one go so I recommend reading through the article and then choosing the links you want to read.

As part of a project to study the effects of the 2018 floods in Kerala, a group of 25 students left from Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology to Wayanad to see how the socio-political and economic realms of the state had been altered by a ‘natural’ disaster of this sort. On this five-day research journey, we spoke to many of the affected, and the stakeholders in an initiative to make Kerala more resilient in the future.

My friend Divanshu walking through destroyed fields, the flood marks reaching up to 7 feet on the tree trunks

Millions of Dalits, Tribals and others still face discrimination, especially the women and girls. In too many communities, religious minorities also suffer. We must continue Gandhi’s battle for equality.

Ban-ki-Moon, UN Secretary-General, 2015

We were on our way to Kottathara to see one of the places that had been submerged in the floods. I saw the scars of the flood, reaching up to 10 feet in some places, marking it’s horrors in muddy tree trunks, dead plantains and compacted soil.

As I brooded over this destruction, I saw Paniya workers in the fields that we were crossing. I knew that the Paniya are one of the most populous and deprived tribes of India. They also constitute nearly 15% of Wayanad’s population. Before we left, we had been told that the Paniya were a tribal group in Wayanad who were employed as agricultural laborers. They used to be slaves that were bought with the land and had always worked in someone else’s fields toiling away under the harsh sun, doing the same job for centuries. It was then that I decided (very naively) that I would design better systems for them to inhabit . So I set about learning as much as I can about them in the following weeks.

Traditional caste rules mandate forced labour from certain communities.….. This is perfectly reflected in India’s labour market, which is more governed by laws of social origin than by statutory legislation. Moreover, violation of caste rules by Dalits seeking to break caste-related employment barriers is prone to severe punishment from dominant castes, including economic boycotts and even physical violence.

India Exclusion Report, 2014

These were some readings and anecdotes that set the foundation of my knowledge about that tribe. This is an annotated list of these readings and the things I learnt from them

1. The scheduled tribes’ population in Kerala is (4.85 lacs)1.45% of the general population according to the 2011 census.
2. In this reading, I read how the caste system was organized in Wayanad. Pages 1–13 outline each of the tribes, their histories and how they got their names, which is interesting because of the implications it has for the phrase “What’s in a name”; pages 14–19 describe the history of Wayanad and its Adivasi populations and page 20 describes the tribe at the focus of this article- The Paniyans.
3. Kulirani summarizes Paniya history consisting of 4 periods: an early hunter-gatherer period leading to a long period of being agrarian slaves. Then as liberated wage earners, they entered an extremely competitive market, grew dependent on state welfare as a rising sense of desperation and hopelessness set in
4. This paper outlines the facts and figures that inconveniently show the inter-tribal disparity in benefits gained from welfare schemes and how the backward tribes were left behind. Schemes like the NREGS were being used as employment and income-generation majorly by the relatively forward tribes. There are huge differences in the socio-economic and political lives of different tribes.
5. This inter-tribal disparity is demonstrated even more strongly in this paper. It shows why it is a mistake to consider the tribes as a monolithic group of people, because of the vast differences even in those groups. It also shows the stark contrast between the ST communities and the other non-tribal groups
6. They are without political representation, economic growth or physical wellbeing. This paper shows the kind of work that the Adivasis do and their average monthly earnings(2016).
7. While researching how a school can be set up for tribal children, we were alerted by a teacher to the various problems that hinder Paniya children’s education- restlessness in the class, truancy(often encouraged by their parents), living far away from the school, alcoholism being a community addiction etc. In my research, I found that a lot of these were explained by this paper (This is a very interesting read that helps you question the inclusivity of our educational models)
8. Our discussions with the locals brought up the themes of the Paniyans being lazy, unreliable, alcoholic and living off the government’s welfare schemes. This, I found later, goes to show how oppressive systems perpetuate destruction
9. We also saw, firsthand, how the Paniyas had become a spectacle when our guide stopped the rickshaw because he some of them walking by and told us to take photos. We learnt later that this might be because of the amount of social research and government aid that is centered around them
10. A majority of the Paniya workers worked with paddy-cultivation and were losing work because of the expansion of the plantations and because they weren’t as easily absorbed into the plantation labor economy [1][2]
11. The majority of Paniya population was excluded from the financial sector and abstained from any formal financial activity
12. The Paniya Tribe is beset by health problems on every side. [1] explains the gravity of the problem of malnutrition in Paniya children. It also shows how the Paniyas have underutilized the governmental schemes available and how that signifies a terrible deprivation at community levels. [2] outlines the effects of caste on the health of tribal women — how lower castes find caste magnifying their vulnerabilities while upper castes are protected by an invisible caste buffer. [3] outlines the occurrence of various diseases among the Adivasis and also has statistics on morbidity patterns of the Paniyas. To add to this, Sickle Cell Anaemia, which is already prevalent in tribal communities, was even more present in the Paniya Communities.
13. Sumant Badami writes about how the Paniyas use black magic practices as a sort of counseling session that acknowledges their existence and situates them in a temporal setting. He explores how oppressed communities often carry the burden of historical trauma which manifests itself in many forms- sometimes even as physical pain. He also shows how the power dynamics due to caste hierarchies often infiltrate the spaces of modern health-care

When people say it has been 60 years of India’s liberation, I find it difficult to believe, for we are still slaves, working for others, picking up human excreta with our bare hands.

Kala bai Lavre, a manual scavenger

Off-topic: This is an interesting video on how an Education system with the Adivasis in mind would look

By this point in my research, I was starting to see the kind of bubbles that I was living in. I also gained perspective on how the invisibility of caste is its biggest barrier to annihilation. I started to see how these oppressive systems worked and how it reinforced the same behavior because of the systems it had put in place. I wanted to study how things got this bad for this community, so I tried to learn as much as I can about their histories and how the alienation unfolded. In Part 2 of this series, I do exactly that while exploring Kulirani’s categorization of Paniya History:

an early-hunter gatherer period leading to a long period of being agrarian slaves. Then as liberated wage earners they entered a extremely competitive market, grew dependent on state welfare as a rising sense of desperation and hopelessness set in

To read part 2 click here: How to Destroy an Entire Community in Three Steps