Exclusive right for commercial production of Singpho community’s traditional rice varieties – Assam

Sushanta Talukdar, Guwahati, June 19, 2011 Cooked Miaotong rice remains fresh for at least three days Two traditional rice varieties produced by the Singphos — Miaotong and Khawlung, used in making topola bhaat, a delicacy of the tribe and popular with tourists — are set to earn the status of being the first registered farmers’ variety … Read more

Schooling of Scheduled Tribes in India: Lessons from the indigenous people of Brazil – Odisha

Amarendra Das and I have visited a set of schools in the tribal villages of the Gajapati district of Odisha state (in India) early this year. Since these tribal communities speak a different language (namely Soura) (and they don’t speak the main language of the state – Oriya), schools here practice bilingual education in 1-4 … Read more

Strengthening the livelihood of tribal households in remote and hilly terrains: The “Wadi” project – Rajasthan

MOHAMMED IQBAL, The Hindu, JAIPUR, February 4, 2012 An ambitious project sponsored by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) in 15 villages of the tribal-dominated Anandpuri block in Banswara district of Rajasthan has strengthened the rural livelihood scenario by successfully connecting missing links of resource management in agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, pasture, medicinal products … Read more

Bharata’s story as told in the Mahabharata – Romila Thapar

Source: Romila Thapar in “The Narrative from the Mahabharata”, Sakuntala: Texts, Readings, Histories (New Delhi 1999), pp. 41-42 “Tribal men and women mix freely, but with respect for each other [but] caste Hindu society in India is so convinced of its own superiority that it never stops to consider the nature of social organisation among tribal people. … Read more