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By Manipadma Jena The Juang tribal village of Talapada is on the border of Keonjhar and Dhenkanal districts. Consequently, it receives no development assistance from either district. Five large mining companies operate within 20 km of the hamlet, but still the village is barely touched by civilisation. The witch doctor is their only hope. No one has heard of family planning. There is no teacher at the primary school
Halfway up the Daitary hill, in Orissa's Jajpur-Keonjhar chromite and iron mining belt, we cut into a narrow lane and head for the small Juang settlement in a village called Talapada in Harichandan block of Keonjhar district. One of the 62 tribes of Orissa, the Juangs are shifting cultivators and forest-gatherers who live in the districts of Keonjhar and Dhenkanal. Their total population is approximately 30,000. The Juang hamlet we are visiting is stuck in a no-man's land, on the border of the two districts. As a result, it receives no development attention from either district administration or from the state government's mining major which operates within four kilometres of it. There are, in fact, five national mining companies operating within a periphery of 20 kilometres. Inroad, as a boulder scrapes the car's underbelly, we get out and walk. The dirt path is covered with tall dry bramble. It is cut by deep grooves made by dozens of timber-bearing trucks. We come to a primary school but see no students inside the three classrooms. Later, in the village, we learnt that parents had stopped sending their children to school because there was no regular teacher. Then, four months ago, the villagers got a teacher to stay by paying Rs 10 and a kilo of rice per week per child. Now, there are 13 students at the cooperative school. Some 50 metres on, the path runs steeply downhill into a stream gurgling feebly along smooth boulders. This is the village's only source of water. A few women are washing in the stream, others gossiping while waiting for their clothes to dry. Nearby, a truck is being loaded with thick mango tree trunks. "These trees were hit during the cyclone," my guide says. Sal trees, the cheaper alternative to teakwood, stand slim and straight. But not everywhere; whole areas support only stumps. We wade through the ankle-deep water, stepping onto boulders wherever we can to get to the village. It is now almost noon. Most of the inhabitants have been away since daybreak collecting what they can from the surrounding forests. The only people left are around 14-16 women, many of them nursing mothers, and a few pre-adolescent girls who mind the babies while their mothers attend to the household chores. A rope cot is pulled up and we talk under a shady jackfruit tree. At first the women are reticent, though none openly question why we have come to their village -- a courtesy typically tribal. Soon the subject of health comes up. A 40-year-old woman sits covered with a blanket. She looks ill. A young woman who has been bathing an infant goes to her and hands over her baby. The older woman begins nursing the baby. Both females are her daughters -- one nearly 16, about to be married, the other barely six weeks old. When asked if they have heard of family planning, no one seems to know what I am talking about. But they do have pregnancy complications, they say. "You can find very few elderly amidst us; no one lives until old age," they say. "Why don't you treat them?" I ask. "Who has the time? If we do not go out and fetch something from the forest then we have nothing to eat that day. We have to leave the ailing person and go to work. When it gets critical we call the witch doctor, but usually it's of no avail." The nearest primary health centre is almost 20 km away. It is too far away for them to even contemplate visiting. They cannot possibly walk there, and they find it too expensive to take the line bus. They'd much rather call the witch doctor. He doesn't take immediate payment; it's an annual arrangement. The people have an unshakeable faith in black magic. A blacksmith's daughter-in-law shows a festering sore on her left foot. She claims that somebody jealous has cast a spell on her; the sore refuses to heal. Witch doctors, they say, can send evil spirits in the form of flies, over to your house. Soon your cattle will die, your paddy sacks will be stolen and your family left to beg. The villagers conduct annual ceremonies to `bind' the 35 houses in the hamlet in a `magic ring' for their collective protection. Hens and chicken scratch around under the gourd stalks, and the women point proudly to a rooster they use for breeding. They breed goats too. There are five or six hungry kid goats trying to get at the fallen leaves underneath the sagging rope cot. Well past noon a couple of men return from the forests. What have they brought with them? "Oh nothing, only some birds." "Can we see?" The man says something to an eight-year-old boy and a while later, the boy produces a fragile lavender-coloured bird, its legs broken. "But what will you do with this?" "The boys will roast and eat it," is the reply. How do they catch the birds? Simple. With a six-foot pole that has three 10-inch sticks tied at the top in a `Y'. The sticks are coated with thick glue from a banyan tree. Some winged ants are pinned to them with sharp thorns. The fluttering of the ants' wings attracts the birds. When they alight to peck at the ants, their wings, or feet, get stuck to the stick. One man has had a rich haul -- a dozen colourful birds lie in a heap. It's time to take a look inside the `manda-ghar', a dormitory for Juang bachelors. A knotty tree trunk is still smouldering from last night's revelries; in the evening a fire will be lit again. A drum and a short stick hang on the far wall. The manda-ghar is a unique social institution of the Juang tribe, where a boy who has come of age spends his evenings and nights with other unmarried men. They sing and dance late into the night. Village elders assemble here to discuss village matters. This is also where guests are accommodated. At one time, girls too used to stay in the dormitories and get to know and choose their future husbands. That is, until the government issued a ban on girls living in dormitories. The blacksmith's daughter-in-law, the most articulate among the women, invites us to the foundry. A few recently made knives and arrowheads lie near the foundry fire to be taken to the local weekly market in a couple of days. They will each sell for anything up to Rs 5. She walks us back to the stream. On our way we come cross an old man, all skin and bone, lying among the roadside bramble, hopelessly drunk on the local rice liquor... (Manipadma Jena is a Bhubaneswar-based researcher and writer) InfoChange News & Features, July 2003
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