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Flex Mentallo

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  1. Flex Mentallo
    After the British left, trafficking picked up as the Telugu film industry grew, based in what was then known as Madras. The picturesque landscape and cool climate provided an ideal setting for outdoor shoots, and in the early 1980s filmmakers flocked to the Araku Valley. This ended up bringing the industry in contact with the tribes.
  2. Flex Mentallo
    The trafficking of young girls from the region goes back all the way to the British era, when there was widespread sex slavery.
  3. Flex Mentallo
    But the scenic beauty conceals an ugly reality that the authorities are still struggling to address: the trafficking of tribal women and girls.
  4. Flex Mentallo
    Not far from Araku, Anantagiri is home to the Valmiki tribe. This time of the year, the landscape is awash in green with Deodar trees towering over coffee and pepper plantations.
  5. Flex Mentallo
    For example, Asara, is a maternity programme run entirely by tribal men and women who traverse the valley and reach up into the more isolated tribal communities in the hills with the aim of achieving zero infant mortality.
  6. Flex Mentallo
    As with the northern tribal people of Dooars scraping a subsistence living in the tea gardens, there are NGOs fighting for their rights - 50 of them in the Araku valley alone.
  7. Flex Mentallo
    Like other tribal peoples in India, though supposedly protected in law, they are often forced to migrate from the countryside in search of work. They are often seen begging in city streets and railway stations.
  8. Flex Mentallo
    As another young tribal woman put it, “We’ll fight them with arrows and sticks if we have to. We’re going to lose, but not without a fight. We’re all ready to die.”
  9. Flex Mentallo
    “The police SP of Rayagada threatened me and was forcefully asking me to surrender; otherwise he said he would put me in jail for 12 to 15 years. The SP further said 'if you accept being a Maoist, we will leave you'."
  10. Flex Mentallo
    A young tribal woman named Kuni Sikaka recently became a cause celebre when she was dragged out of her house at midnight, despite the fact that police had no warrant. She was then paraded in front of officials and local media as a “surrendered Maoist ” despite there being no evidence to support this.
  11. Flex Mentallo
    The result has been conflict. There are tales of mining company helicopters being shot by arrows.
  12. Flex Mentallo
    City dwellers had come posing as NGO workers, and try to persuade tribal people to sign English-language “petitions” that turned out to be statements consenting to land acquisition.
  13. Flex Mentallo
    Illegal bauxite mining poisons the water, and the land.
  14. Flex Mentallo
    Ailments that affect the tribals mostly comprise malaria, anthrax, viral fevers, skin ailments, dental diseases and tuberculosis.
  15. Flex Mentallo
    Hardly 40% of the households have access to proper drinking water.
  16. Flex Mentallo
    Due to lack of potable drinking water, various water-borne diseases are rampant.
  17. Flex Mentallo
    It was severely deforested during the English settlements, generating erosion, soil degradation & poverty. Forests communities lived off have disappeared.
  18. Flex Mentallo
    These marginalized communities live in a region characterized by low women’s literacy rates, high infant & maternal mortality & low agricultural productivity.
  19. Flex Mentallo
    The tribes living in the Araku Valley are considered among the most disadvantaged in the country.
  20. Flex Mentallo
    While the valley is promoted as an idyllic tourist destination, remote from the stresses of modern urban living, the scheduled tribes see none of the benefits.
  21. Flex Mentallo
  22. Flex Mentallo
    They include the Valmiki, Bagata, Khond and Kotia tribes, who are renowned for performing the Dhimsa dance at local festivals. (The dance photos arent mine.)
  23. Flex Mentallo
    Of 33 tribal communities in the south eastern state of Andhra Pradesh, around 20 groups are found in the Araku valley.
  24. Flex Mentallo
    “You cannot teach democracy to the tribal people, you have to learn democratic ways from them. They are the most democratic people on earth”. Jaipal Singh Munda
  25. Flex Mentallo
    Come as if suddenly to life, with an independent will.