13-2 India: Cultures in Crisis

The Narmada Issue: An Overview

The Narmada Valley Project (NVP) is made up of plans for 30 major, 136 medium and 3,000 minor dams in India. In Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) in the state of Gujarat and the Narmada Sagar Project (NSP) in the state of Madhya Pradesh are, at present, the NVP's major constituents. Estimates show that the cost of the whole project would be around US $19 billion over the next 25 years. The present…

The Appiko Movement: Forest Conservation in Southern India

The famous Chipko Andolan (Hug the Trees Movement) of Uttarakhand in the Himalayas inspired the villagers of the Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka Province in southern India to launch a similar movement to save their forests. In September 1983, men, women and children of Salkani "hugged the trees" in Kalase forest. (The local term for "hugging" in Kannada is appiko.) Appiko Andolan gave birth…

National Identity and Development: India's Continuing Conflict

Religious massacres in the Punjab and in the streets of the national capital of Delhi, Military occupation of tribal regions on the Indo-Burmese frontier. Bitter mobilization and counter-mobilization to glorify or resist the revival of sati, the immolation of a woman on her husband's funeral pyre. Fisherfolk, forest dwellers and agricultural laborers protesting "development" policies that leave…

Iraq Crushes the Kurds

On March 29, the Iraqi government announced that more than 100,000 Kurds would be removed from the town of Qaladiza. A week later it notified 50,000 people from villages in the surrounding countryside that they, too, would be resettled. Within a week of the first announcement, the army had surrounded the town of Qaladiza in an effort to ensure "cooperation" with the resettlement program. Qaladiza…

Indigenous Peoples, Cultural Survival and Minority Policy in Northeast India

In June 1986 an accord between the government of India and the Mizo National Front ended a 20-year-old insurgency by the Mizos, an indigenous minority group in northeast India that wanted to secede from India. In the following weeks Mizo guerrillas trekked down the hills of neighboring Bangladesh and Burma and surrendered their weapons to the Indian authorities. As part of the accord, Laldenga,…

France's Development Plans for New Caledonia

New Caledonia, which has been a colony of France since 1853, is, along with French Polynesia, a strategic part of France's South Pacific empire. Since the 1970s its native peoples, the Kanaks, who constitute approximately 42 percent of the islands' population of 160,000, have been engaged in a struggle for independence from French rule. In the 1980s this fight became an armed struggle, bringing…

Forest Policy and Tribal Development

In 1974-1975, about 22 percent of India's total geographical area was covered by forests. This forest region, interspersed all over the country, consists of evergreen forests, deciduous forests, dry forests, alpine forests, riparian forests and tidal forests. Some of these forests are conspicuous for their dense growth. Besides the commercially valuable sal, teak, ironwood, sandalwood and shisam…

Fishing for Resources: Indian Fisheries in Danger

Ecological and environmental parameters play a primary role in the formation of fish biomass. Periodic changes in such natural phenomena as ocean currents, water temperature and oxygen layers affect the ecological and environmental balance. But when humans intervene with super-efficient technology, the push the aquatic population beyond its sustainable limits. In addition, marine ecological…

Female Life Changes in Rural India

On a Small Death Who is there to weep for your little girl who died too soon? Yet we all wept with reasons each our own: Grandma wept conventional tears Through glad at heart burdened house was rid of a girl; Mother - poor Mother - secretly shed her sorrow, thought you never knew; And the good neighbors who always joint to help the dead to final rest, Why should they weep for what is second-hand…

El Camino Cruel: The Plight of Central American Refugees

In a futile attempt to staunch the flow of massive new waves of Central American refugees, the Rio Grande corridor of southern Texas and the Mexican-Guatemalan border zone of Chiapas have been placed under de facto martial law. As part of a generalized crackdown on Central American refugees, Mexican and US security forces have been augmented, while immigration authorities intermittently have…

A Weaving Project for Afghan Turkmen

The people of Afghanistan face numerous obstacles in their quest to return to and resettle in their homeland, not the least of which is a means of self-support in a country that has been greatly devastated. Some 30 million land mines, most of them plastic and difficult to detect, cover the countryside - a serious problem for a people who earn their livings primarily off the land. Carpet weaving…