Sooner or later, it had to happen. Forty-two children from the isolated Jarawa tribe of the Andaman Islands have been hit by measles in the last three weeks in an epidemic which could wipe them out if not nipped now. The figure represents 16 per cent of the tribe's total population of 270. Liberal estimates put the population count at 300.
The Jarawa people of the Andaman Islands lived until very recently in almost complete isolation. Both British and Indian settlers have moved onto their islands over the last 150 years, but until 1998 the Jarawa chose to resist all contact with them.
How do they live? The Jarawa are very different in appearance to their Indian neighbours, and DNA tests suggest that their closest relatives are African. Because of the Jarawa's voluntary isolation, and the fact that no one outside the tribe really spoke their language, little was known about them until recently. We do know that they live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, hunting pig and monitor lizard, fishing with bows and arrows, and gathering seeds, berries and honey. They are nomadic, living in bands of 40-50 people. In 1998, some Jarawa started coming out of their forest to visit nearby towns and settlements. From what can now be understood of their language, it seems that pressure from poachers on the coast drove them inland. Although a few Jarawa still come out onto the road or into settlements to visit, they continue to live a self-sufficient life in the forest.
What problems do they face? The principal threat to the Jarawa's existence comes from encroachment onto their land, which was sparked by the building of a highway through their forest in the 1970s. The road has increasingly brought settlers, poachers and loggers into Jarawa land, who steal the tribe's game and expose them to disease. There are also reports of sexual exploitation of Jarawa women. In 1990 the local authorities announced that they intended to forcibly settle the Jarawa, but nothing happened. A local lawyer brought a court case in 1999 in an attempt to force the government to carry out its promise. Forced settlement was fatal for other tribes in the Andaman Islands, and has always been so for newly contacted tribal peoples worldwide: it introduces diseases; destroys all sense of identity and society; robs tribes of their self-sufficiency; and leaves them vulnerable to alcoholism and despair. In the wake of a vigorous Survival campaign, it appears that the authorities no longer intend to settle the Jarawa, but some of their interventions in the name of 'welfare' still pose a threat.
Source: Survival International
Local authorities, as they usually do in our country whenever an outside agency reports such ocurrences (in this case, Survival International), promptly denied any outbreak, and contended that the Jarawas were suffering from "heat rash". The refrain had been the same in 1999 when 108 Jarawas had contracted measles.
"Like the rest of India, we too suffered a heatwave and sudden downpours and these 12 Jarawas (those officially hospitalised) have only heat rashes and not measles as has been reported by various NGOs," health chief N Sadasivan told Agence France-Presse (AFP). But as a doctor scoffed at Sadasivan's claim, "Even an idiot would know from the medications that they are not for, of all things, heat rashes."
Seven years back, the Jarawas were lucky. But as at that time, it is indeed a cause for worry now. According to Survival International, measles had wiped out at least half of the Great Andamanese on one island and all those on another island sometime in the 19th century. That tribe, once 5,000 strong, now numbers only 41 individuals.
Where did this threat spring up from? The answer lies in the Andaman Trunk Road (ATR), the mindlessly ambitious project of the island's administration. Conservationists have been voicing concern from the very beginning at the fact that the ATR threatened the physical and cultural survival of the Jarawas. The road cuts illegally through the Jarawa forests.
RK Bhattacharyya, former director of the Anthropological Survey of India, had said in a note a few years back, "The ATR passes through an area that contains an important aspect of cultural heritage of mankind and this highway disturbs this heritage in probably irreversible ways... The ATR is like a public thoroughfare through one's private courtyard." The note remained just a note; it was read and forgotten.
In 2002, the Supreme Court ordered the closure of the road. But passing such strictures for a land thousands of miles away from the country's capital is not the same as asking the Delhi government to raze down illegal constrictions. The Andaman administration has been flouting the order with impunity. What's more, the road is even being widened. All in the name of development and civilisation.
For years, environmentalists and anthropologists have been warning against the pitfalls of this road that leads only to hell for the Jarawas who are put at risk of potentially fatal diseases. The administration, egged on by the tourism lobby and the timber mafia, threw the words of caution to the winds. The rule of Indian law, and the writ of the Supreme Court does not run large here. What the f*** is that, they will ask you.
Kalpavriksh's Pankaj Sekhsaria wrote in December 2003, "There has also been the rise of what is popularly called 'Jarawa tourism' – tourists visiting the islands hire private vehicles and drive down the ATR to look at the Jarawas, as if they are items of display. It is the road that facilitates this extremely despicable form of tourism, just as it facilitates the influx of a number of food items such as biscuits, rice, bread and tea, which are unsuited to the Jarawas, and a growing number of intoxicants such as alcohol, gutka and tobacco. Now, reportedly, even sexual exploitation is happening."
The problem also lies with half-baked experts. In 2004, the Directorate of Medical Services of the Andamans said they wanted to vaccinate the Jarawas against lethal infections against which they have no immunity. Or so, they claimed. The current epidemic is being seen as a result of the directorate's "measured intervention".
An urgent call for action by conservationists says, "Ever since the Jarawas laid down their arms in 1998, their forest has become overrun with poachers, some of whom provide food or alcohol to the Jarawa in lieu of permission to poach. Instead of protecting the reserve and its resources against such poachers, or the Jarawas against such harmful contact, the administration punishes the Jarawa when they retaliate. For instance, shortly after the December 2004 tsunami, unknown miscreants stole a Jarawa band's entire, invaluable, store of honey, in response to which the group attacked an illegal settler village. The authorities forcibly removed the Jarawa from the location.
"Significantly, those bands of Jarawa who have been affected by the measles epidemic live close to or alongside the Andaman Trunk Road, which, even as we speak, is being widened-in flagrant violation of the 2002 Supreme Court Order to close the road. For those of us who have been following events in the islands closely, it seems no mere coincidence that the happenings there so closely parallel the vision outlined by longstanding politician Manoranjan Bhakta. He has called for the ATR to be widened instead of closed, and has also repeatedly stated his wish to see the Jarawa settled and placed on dole.
"All these years we have tried to address the problem through the regular channels. We have been exhilarated by court orders, and astounded when they weren't implemented. We have gate-crashed seminars and written petitions to make ourselves heard. All along we have received seemingly earnest assurances that the needful would be done. We don't believe them any more. This is, for us, a last scream. We want to register our anguish that this genocide is happening before our very eyes, and in full view of the world.
This frantic call for action by Dr Madhusree Mukerjee and Dr Sita Venkateswar would mean nothing if you, reader, were to just read this piece and twiddle your thumbs.
Write to the Prime Minister at manmohan@sansad.nic.in, the Chief Justice at supremecourt@nic.in. Before, of course, the Andaman administration decimates the Jarawas. The Jarawas, you will gather, are not glib speakers of English as you and I are. Come on, let us show how civilised we are by speaking for those who can't. For if we don't, tomorrow there won't be any (Jarawa) left to speak out on behalf of.
