Quality of Life and Well-Being in an Indian Ethnic Community by Gareth Davey

Author:Gareth Davey
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Poverty and Social Inequality in the Nilgiri Hills

Poverty and social inequality also characterised the forum. Commentary about poverty centred on the demise of the local tea industry since the 1990s, and its negative implications for quality of life. The incomes and living standards of farmers had declined. For example, one post cited a newspaper article published in 2005 that reported the average price of tea was the lowest since the 1990s; and another post quoted an unpublished study by students in SRM University which found 32% of households reported a monthly income of less than Rs. 2000, and only 16% earned over Rs. 10,000. To escape hardship, Badagas had migrated to towns and cities, labelled by forum members as the ‘second wave of migration’ in recognition of both its magnitude (one estimate put the number of migrants at 8000 families) and the widely-held belief that the Badaga community in the Nilgiri Hills was founded by migrants. They discussed the consequences of rural-to-urban migration. A major concern was the sale of houses, land, and tea estates by Badagas, regarded as a violation of inheritance customs which typically involved passing on property to children. It was claimed some out-migrants had sold their land at absurdly low prices because they did not understand land value, or were desperate for money. Demographic change was described as severe in some villages, as their populations had dwindled—empty houses and a conspicuous absence of people marked the landscape. Also, some people had sold their property and land to non-Badagas who had then settled in the community and brought a different way of life, a stark contrast to several decades ago when apparently only Badagas resided there. Forum members were worried these events might destroy their community in the Nilgiri Hills, and they questioned whether Badagas would continue to exist, a pessimistic outlook for the future. Another concern they discussed was whether the Badaga diaspora would uphold their culture and way of life outside the Nilgiris, and they cited examples of children living in cities (second-generation migrants) with limited knowledge of Badaga customs and Badagu. Some argued for the conditional sale of land and tea gardens whereby buyers and sellers give assurances of future ownership by and employment of Badagas, although others counter argued that doing so was illegal and also unfair as they had bought land and property in many places in India and overseas. Another suggestion was provision of cultural and learning activities—Badagu lessons, trips to the Nilgiri Hills, and get-togethers in the city—to impart knowledge to children and young people. These arguments tended to be against rural-to-urban migration, one-sided and protectionist, even though the majority of contributors to the forum were city residents. The construction of Badagas vis-à-vis the ‘other’ also had a ‘sedentary’ bias in terms of Badagas described as tied to the Nilgiri Hills; they made the false assumption of sedentary patterns as the norm. The drawbacks of the migration were not weighed-up with its potential benefits, the most important in this case

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