Madia Gond
Encyclopedia
Madia Gonds or Madia or Maria are one of the endogamous Gond tribes living in Chandrapur District
and Gadchiroli District
of Maharashtra
State, and Bastar division
of Chhattisgad
State India
. They have been granted the status of a Primitive Tribe by the Government of Maharashtra
under its affirmative action
or reservation
programme. The Madia Gonds are strongly affected by Naxal activities. The Madia Gond use the self designation Madia, and call the area where they live Madia Desh
. The Ethnologue code for classification, classifies the Madia language as :Dravidian/South-Central/Gondi-Kui/Gondi/Maria.
A study mentions living megalithic practices amongst the Madia Gonds. One of the findings of The Bench Mark Survey done in 1997-1998 91.08 percent of Madia Gond families lived Below Poverty Line
, a Madia girl student has figured in the merit list of candidates at the state level. The following are the descriptions of the Madia Gond as recorded by the British Rulers in the District Gazettes, which has been carried in the Gazettes of independent India.
The Chanda district
gazette description of the Madia is as follows: "The Marias inhabit the wilder tracts, and are in their unsophisticated state a very attractive people. The villages are usually built deep in the jungle near some wide shallow stream, which offers facilities for the gata cultivation, and the surrounding jungles supplement the fruits of their agricultural efforts. Few villages lack the customary grove of toddy - Palm wine
trees, the juice of which, fermented or unfermented, is ever acceptable to the Gond. The Marias are a lithe, active looking, well-built set of men, open, hearty manner, and the cheerful smile of good fellowship. Their dress is scanty, consisting of a compromise between a langoti (a loincloth
) and a dhoti
, a strip of cloth wound tightly round the waist in rope-like folds and passed between the legs with the spare end hanging down in front below the knees. Often this garment diminishes to the scantiest rag. They adorn their necks with handsome strings of beads and their arms occasionally with metal and glass bangles. Their ears are pulled out of shape by the weight of numerous brass rings with which they are usually garnished and occasionally they wear pagri
s. A curved knife with a brass mounted handle is stuck into the waist cloth and, from the shoulder dangles the ever handy axe without which a Gond seldom moves. Maria women wear a lugada
of strong cloth usually white with a coloured strip in the border. They wear no choli (blouse), no Gond woman ever does, and their necks, like their husbands are garnished with beads. They frequently tattoo their faces and limbs in intricate patterns."
The youth dormitory system or Ghotul
is deeply rooted in Madia Gond culture. Traditionally the Madia have a Ghotul in every village where unmarried boys and girls assemble in the evening and play, mix, dance and sing till late night but return to their houses for sleeping, which marks the difference between Bastar Ghotuls and the Ghotuls of Madia Gonds. There is a taboo against married women entering a Ghotul.
for domestic consumption on obtaining toddy licences for a period of one year (i.e. July to June every year). This privilege is given to the people of this community as they are used to toddy drinking as a part of their food for ages. According to the excise arrangements now in force in that area, each individual applicant is granted Toddy licence for tapping trees ranging from 1 to 5 for domestic consumption. The permit fee and tree tax per toddy tree is 75 paise per annum respectively.http://www.maharashtra.gov.in/english/gazetteer/CHANDRAPUR/other_social_prohibition_dept.html
Totem Pole
s of the Americas
.
Cover Story calls the Bhamragad Taluka where the Madia Gond Adivasi
s live, the heart of the naxalite-affected region in Maharashtra
. In the jungles and 120-odd naxalite-affected villages of eastern Gadchiroli, it is the Adivasis who pay the price for extremist violence. "Whether a policeman or a naxalite, it is the Adivasis who is caught in the crossfire. The bosses are never Adivasis. They are safe in their offices or hideouts," a resident of Bhamragad is mentioned saying in the article.The police are quoted as saying that The Communist Part of India (Maoist) has around 250 full-time members and 3,000-odd local supporters. Many tribals accused of being informers are killed by naxalites or harassed by the police. Despite the constant fear, Adivasis do agree that naxalites have forced contractors to give them higher wages for tendu leaves collected and bamboo cut. The possibility of justice and action against their exploiters - the forest Department, the police, the government, the contractors, makes the Madia Gonds sympathise with the naxals.Harassment by the police pushes many naxalite sympathisers underground.
: एका नक्षलवाद्याचा जन्म - The birth of a Naxal), a novel written by Vilas Balkrishna Manohar, a volunteer with the Lok Biradari Prakalp, is a fictional account of a Madia Gond Juru's unwilling journey of life his metamorphosis from an exploited nameless tribal to a Naxal, a fugitive from the law.
is rolled to make beedi
s; is for the poor in this impoverished eastern Maharashtra district a crucial source of livelihood. Summer when temperatures touch 45 degrees Celsius, is peak earning time for the Madia. Tens of thousands of tribal women and children are engaged in collecting tendu leaves every summer. Women and children get up at 4.30 in the morning and walk towards the forests near their village. In no time the forests are transformed into a beehive of activity, with small armies of women and children plucking tendu leaves with assembly-line precision. The plucking session ends around 11 am and the women and children walk back balancing the weight of the leaves on their heads. Back in their villages, the women sort out the leaves and tie them up in bundles, squatting for hours inside their huts. They do the bulk of the work; it is they who bear the brunt of the hot sun and the drudgery. The day’s collection of tendu patta is taken to the market or phad at around 4.30 pm and laid out in long, neat rows that stretch for acres in sun-baked fields or dry riverbeds. Men appointed by private contractors count the bundles and record them in their registers for future payments. Interestingly, the names in the register are those of the men. It is the husbands and fathers of the toiling women and children who claim the money. Although the tendu patta season doesn’t last more than two weeks, each healthy family unit can make a significant earning in this time. Tendu patta thus helps the poor earn enough money to survive the two months before the onset of the monsoons.
speaking Madia Gonds of Maharashtra and three other Marathi
speaking Proto - Australoid tribal groups, to understand their genetic structure and to identify the congruence between language and gene pool
. Allele frequency data at 15 Short tandem repeat
(STR) loci
in studied tribes was compared with data of 22 Indo-European- and Dravidian-speaking caste and tribal populations using heterozygosity, allele size variance, analysis of molecular variance
(AMOVA), GST (Glutathione S-transferase
) estimate, PC plot
, and Mantel correlation test
. Results demonstrate that Gondi tribes comprising the Madia-Gond, a hunter-gatherer population, harbor lower diversity than Marathi tribal groups, which are culturally and genetically distinct. The Proto-Australoid
tribal populations were genetically differentiated from castes of similar morphology, suggesting different evolutionary mechanisms operating upon the populations. The populations showed genetic and linguistic similarity, barring a few groups with varied migratory histories. The microsatellite variation clearly demonstrates the interplay of sociocultural factors including linguistic, geographical contiguity, and microevolutionary processes in shaping the genetic diversity of populations in contemporary India.
Population
Literacy
Occupation family wise
Chandrapur District
Chandrapur District is a district in Nagpur Division of the Indian state of Maharashtra.It is located at the boundary of Andhrapradesh. The district was formerly known as Chanda District. In 1964, it was renamed as Chandrapur. It was the largest district in India until it was split into the...
and Gadchiroli District
Gadchiroli District
Gadchiroli district is an administrative district in Maharashtra, India. The town of Gadchiroli is the administrative headquarters of the district....
of Maharashtra
Maharashtra
Maharashtra is a state located in India. It is the second most populous after Uttar Pradesh and third largest state by area in India...
State, and Bastar division
Bastar Division
Bastar division is an administrative division of Chhattisgarh state in central India. It includes the districts of Bastar, Dantewada, Bijapur, Narayanpur and Kanker....
of Chhattisgad
Chhattisgarh
Chhattisgarh is a state in Central India, formed when the 16 Chhattisgarhi-speaking South-Eastern districts of Madhya Pradesh gained separate statehood on 1 November 2000....
State India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. They have been granted the status of a Primitive Tribe by the Government of Maharashtra
Maharashtra
Maharashtra is a state located in India. It is the second most populous after Uttar Pradesh and third largest state by area in India...
under its affirmative action
Affirmative action
Affirmative action refers to policies that take factors including "race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or national origin" into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group, usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination.-Origins:The term...
or reservation
Reservation in India
Reservation in India is a form of affirmative action designed to improve the well being of socially backward and underrepresented communities of citizens in India. There are laws in place, wherein a certain percentage of total available slots in Jobs and Education are set aside for people from...
programme. The Madia Gonds are strongly affected by Naxal activities. The Madia Gond use the self designation Madia, and call the area where they live Madia Desh
Pradesh
Pradesh refers to a province or state in various South Asian languages. It is written प्रदेश in Devanagari script , প্রদেশ in Eastern Nagari script , પ્રદેશ in Gujarati script, ಪ್ರದೇಶ in Kannada script, പ്രദേശം in Malayalam script, ప్రదేశ్ in Telugu script,...
. The Ethnologue code for classification, classifies the Madia language as :Dravidian/South-Central/Gondi-Kui/Gondi/Maria.
A study mentions living megalithic practices amongst the Madia Gonds. One of the findings of The Bench Mark Survey done in 1997-1998 91.08 percent of Madia Gond families lived Below Poverty Line
Below Poverty Line
Below Poverty Line is an economic benchmark and poverty threshold used by the government of India to indicate economic disadvantage and to identify individuals and households in need of government assistance and aid. It is determined using various parameters which vary from state to state and...
Tradition and culture
Madias today are doctors, teachers, government employees and naxalites. Performance of school going Madia children is on par with other children of the stateMaharashtra
Maharashtra is a state located in India. It is the second most populous after Uttar Pradesh and third largest state by area in India...
, a Madia girl student has figured in the merit list of candidates at the state level. The following are the descriptions of the Madia Gond as recorded by the British Rulers in the District Gazettes, which has been carried in the Gazettes of independent India.
Description in the Chanda district gazette
Chandrapur District
Chandrapur District is a district in Nagpur Division of the Indian state of Maharashtra.It is located at the boundary of Andhrapradesh. The district was formerly known as Chanda District. In 1964, it was renamed as Chandrapur. It was the largest district in India until it was split into the...
gazette description of the Madia is as follows: "The Marias inhabit the wilder tracts, and are in their unsophisticated state a very attractive people. The villages are usually built deep in the jungle near some wide shallow stream, which offers facilities for the gata cultivation, and the surrounding jungles supplement the fruits of their agricultural efforts. Few villages lack the customary grove of toddy - Palm wine
Palm wine
Palm wine also called Palm Toddy also called "Kallu" written in Malayalam and கள்ளு in Tamil or simply Toddy is an alcoholic beverage created from the sap of various species of palm tree such as the palmyra, and coconut palms...
trees, the juice of which, fermented or unfermented, is ever acceptable to the Gond. The Marias are a lithe, active looking, well-built set of men, open, hearty manner, and the cheerful smile of good fellowship. Their dress is scanty, consisting of a compromise between a langoti (a loincloth
Loincloth
A loincloth is a one-piece male garment, sometimes kept in place by a belt, which covers the genitals and, at least partially, the buttocks.-History and types:Loincloths are being and have been worn:*in societies where no other clothing is needed or wanted...
) and a dhoti
Dhoti
The dhoti or pancha is the traditional men's garment in the in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. A similar garment is worn in some rural areas of Punjab province in Pakistan, but the use is fast declining...
, a strip of cloth wound tightly round the waist in rope-like folds and passed between the legs with the spare end hanging down in front below the knees. Often this garment diminishes to the scantiest rag. They adorn their necks with handsome strings of beads and their arms occasionally with metal and glass bangles. Their ears are pulled out of shape by the weight of numerous brass rings with which they are usually garnished and occasionally they wear pagri
Pagri
Pagri or Phari is a town in Yadong County in the Tibet Autonomous Region , China, near the border with Bhutan. Population 2121...
s. A curved knife with a brass mounted handle is stuck into the waist cloth and, from the shoulder dangles the ever handy axe without which a Gond seldom moves. Maria women wear a lugada
Sari
A sari or sareeThe name of the garment in various regional languages include: , , , , , , , , , , , , , is a strip of unstitched cloth, worn by females, ranging from four to nine metres in length that is draped over the body in various styles. It is popular in India, Bangladesh, Nepal,...
of strong cloth usually white with a coloured strip in the border. They wear no choli (blouse), no Gond woman ever does, and their necks, like their husbands are garnished with beads. They frequently tattoo their faces and limbs in intricate patterns."
Dance
All Gonds and especially Madias, are very fond of dancing. It is the great amusement of the people. Night after night in the eastern tracts in the cool, moon-lit nights of the hot weather ,the rhythmic lilt of a Gondi chorus fills the air, as the villagers dance round a fire in some open space near the hamlet. The favourite dance is a peculiar rippling step forward with the foot dragged, not very graceful when done by a single individual, but looking quite different when done in unison by a great circle of dancers singing a 're-la', 're-la', chorus to which the step keeps time. In some villages, where the headman is an enthusiast for the pastime, a trained band performs weird and wonderful step dances to the sound of the drum. At a big dance, the trained band occupies the inner ring round the fire, while the common folk, men and maids, in separate rings move round in great circles in opposite ways. All are dressed for the occasion in their best, bearing in their hands weird ornaments of wicker work, with garlands of flowers on their necks and in their hair, feather ornaments humorously or coquettishly placed. Seen in the glow of a huge log fire, glinting on the shining beads and barbaric ornaments of the dancers, with the throb of the drums and the beat of many feet moving in unison to the wild music of the voices in chorus, a Madia dance is a spectacle not easily forgotten, but lingers as a characteristic scene when other details have faded out of the memory. Men and women ordinarily dance in separate circles but in the dances where the young men choose their brides, they dance in couples.Ghotul
Ghotul
A Ghotul is a spacious tribal hut surrounded by earthen or wooden walls. It is an integral part of Gond tribal life in Bastar region of Chhattisgarh and the neighboring areas in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh in India. It’s a place by youths and for youths, an independent and autonomous children’s...
is deeply rooted in Madia Gond culture. Traditionally the Madia have a Ghotul in every village where unmarried boys and girls assemble in the evening and play, mix, dance and sing till late night but return to their houses for sleeping, which marks the difference between Bastar Ghotuls and the Ghotuls of Madia Gonds. There is a taboo against married women entering a Ghotul.
Government's liquor policy
The Government has granted concession to Adivasis to manufacture and possess toddyPalm wine
Palm wine also called Palm Toddy also called "Kallu" written in Malayalam and கள்ளு in Tamil or simply Toddy is an alcoholic beverage created from the sap of various species of palm tree such as the palmyra, and coconut palms...
for domestic consumption on obtaining toddy licences for a period of one year (i.e. July to June every year). This privilege is given to the people of this community as they are used to toddy drinking as a part of their food for ages. According to the excise arrangements now in force in that area, each individual applicant is granted Toddy licence for tapping trees ranging from 1 to 5 for domestic consumption. The permit fee and tree tax per toddy tree is 75 paise per annum respectively.http://www.maharashtra.gov.in/english/gazetteer/CHANDRAPUR/other_social_prohibition_dept.html
Mundha
Mundha is one-piece decorative wooden pillar carved by a bridegroom after he is engaged. It is kept in front of Ghotul during his marriage ceremony perhaps the best example of skill in wood carving. These are reminiscent of the Native AmericanIndigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
Totem Pole
Totem pole
Totem poles are monumental sculptures carved from large trees, mostly Western Red Cedar, by cultures of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America...
s of the Americas
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
.
Myths
About menstruation, the Maria Gond believe that the vagina once contained teeth and that when these teeth were removed, the wound never healed completelyNaxal Activities
A FrontlineFrontline (magazine)
Frontline is a fortnightly English language magazine published by The Hindu Group of publications from Chennai, India. Narasimhan Ram is the editor-in-chief of the magazine. As a current affairs magazine, it covers domestic and International news. Frontline gives a prominent place to various...
Cover Story calls the Bhamragad Taluka where the Madia Gond Adivasi
Adivasi
Adivasi is an umbrella term for a heterogeneous set of ethnic and tribal groups claimed to be the aboriginal population of India. They comprise a substantial indigenous minority of the population of India...
s live, the heart of the naxalite-affected region in Maharashtra
Maharashtra
Maharashtra is a state located in India. It is the second most populous after Uttar Pradesh and third largest state by area in India...
. In the jungles and 120-odd naxalite-affected villages of eastern Gadchiroli, it is the Adivasis who pay the price for extremist violence. "Whether a policeman or a naxalite, it is the Adivasis who is caught in the crossfire. The bosses are never Adivasis. They are safe in their offices or hideouts," a resident of Bhamragad is mentioned saying in the article.The police are quoted as saying that The Communist Part of India (Maoist) has around 250 full-time members and 3,000-odd local supporters. Many tribals accused of being informers are killed by naxalites or harassed by the police. Despite the constant fear, Adivasis do agree that naxalites have forced contractors to give them higher wages for tendu leaves collected and bamboo cut. The possibility of justice and action against their exploiters - the forest Department, the police, the government, the contractors, makes the Madia Gonds sympathise with the naxals.Harassment by the police pushes many naxalite sympathisers underground.
Eka Nakshalwadya Cha Janma
Eka Nakshalwadya Cha Janma, (MarathiMarathi language
Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...
: एका नक्षलवाद्याचा जन्म - The birth of a Naxal), a novel written by Vilas Balkrishna Manohar, a volunteer with the Lok Biradari Prakalp, is a fictional account of a Madia Gond Juru's unwilling journey of life his metamorphosis from an exploited nameless tribal to a Naxal, a fugitive from the law.
Collection of tendu leaves
Tendu patta, or the leaves of the Dyospyros melanoxylon (an ebony tree with date-like fruit) in which tobaccoTobacco
Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...
is rolled to make beedi
Beedi
A beedi is a thin, South Asian cigarette filled with tobacco flake and wrapped in a tendu leaf tied with a string at one end.The word comes from beeda, Marwari for a leaf wrapped in betel nuts, herbs, and condiments....
s; is for the poor in this impoverished eastern Maharashtra district a crucial source of livelihood. Summer when temperatures touch 45 degrees Celsius, is peak earning time for the Madia. Tens of thousands of tribal women and children are engaged in collecting tendu leaves every summer. Women and children get up at 4.30 in the morning and walk towards the forests near their village. In no time the forests are transformed into a beehive of activity, with small armies of women and children plucking tendu leaves with assembly-line precision. The plucking session ends around 11 am and the women and children walk back balancing the weight of the leaves on their heads. Back in their villages, the women sort out the leaves and tie them up in bundles, squatting for hours inside their huts. They do the bulk of the work; it is they who bear the brunt of the hot sun and the drudgery. The day’s collection of tendu patta is taken to the market or phad at around 4.30 pm and laid out in long, neat rows that stretch for acres in sun-baked fields or dry riverbeds. Men appointed by private contractors count the bundles and record them in their registers for future payments. Interestingly, the names in the register are those of the men. It is the husbands and fathers of the toiling women and children who claim the money. Although the tendu patta season doesn’t last more than two weeks, each healthy family unit can make a significant earning in this time. Tendu patta thus helps the poor earn enough money to survive the two months before the onset of the monsoons.
Status of women
A Madia Gond girl has the freedom to have premarital sex and choose husband of her own choice. As a married women she has a freedom to take divorce if the husband gives ill treatment to her or if she cannot beget a child from him. She has a right to spend her earnings. A husband does not interfere in her affairs. However, even these women are taboo during menstruation and are not allowed attending the festivals.Organisations associated
- Lok Biradari PrakalpLok Biradari PrakalpLok Biradari Prakalp is a social project of the Maharogi Sewa Samiti, Warora involving a hospital, a school and an animal orphanage. It was started on 23 December 1973,by the social worker Baba Amte in 1973 for integrated development of Madia Gond...
is an NGO working in the fields of health and education in the Bhamragad taluka of Gadchiroli, where many Madia Gond live. It was established in 1973 Dr. Prakash Amte and Dr. Mandakini AmtePrakash AmtePrakash Amte is a medical doctor and social worker from Maharashtra, India. Son of Magsaysay awardee and legend Baba Amte, he and his wife, Dr...
working for the Lok Biradari Prakalp received the 2008 Ramon Magsaysay AwardRamon Magsaysay AwardThe Ramon Magsaysay Award is an annual award established to perpetuate former Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay's example of integrity in government, courageous service to the people, and pragmatic idealism within a democratic society. The Ramon Magsaysay Award is often considered Asia's Nobel...
for Community Leadership. In the citation the board of trustees stated:
the board of trustees recognizes their enhancing the capacity of the Madia Gonds to adapt positively in today's India, through healing and teaching and other compassionate interventions.
- The Tribal Cultural Heritage of India Foundation: Established in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 2008.
- SEARCH Society For Education, Action and Research In Community HealthSociety For Education, Action and Research In Community HealthAbhay Bang , and Rani Bang are Indian social activists working on community health in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra. They have founded SEARCH - a non-profit organization in Gadchiroli.- Personal life and Background :Dr...
.
Health issues
Historically the Madia Gond were victims the of ravages of small-pox and skin-diseases and a mild form of leprosy called Gondi rog. Prevalence of sickle cell anemia is very high amongst the Madia Gond.Research studies
The primitive tribe status of the Madia Gond make them the subject of various studies, such as the following:Genetic diversity
A Microsatellite diversity was analysed in Gondi languageGondi language
Gondi is spoken by the Gondi people. It is a Central-Dravidian language, spoken by about two million people chiefly in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattishgarh and in various adjoining areas of neighbouring states...
speaking Madia Gonds of Maharashtra and three other Marathi
Marathi language
Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...
speaking Proto - Australoid tribal groups, to understand their genetic structure and to identify the congruence between language and gene pool
Gene pool
In population genetics, a gene pool is the complete set of unique alleles in a species or population.- Description :A large gene pool indicates extensive genetic diversity, which is associated with robust populations that can survive bouts of intense selection...
. Allele frequency data at 15 Short tandem repeat
Short tandem repeat
A short tandem repeat in DNA occurs when a pattern of two or more nucleotides are repeated and the repeated sequences are directly adjacent to each other. The pattern can range in length from 2 to 5 base pairs and is typically in the non-coding intron region...
(STR) loci
Locus (mathematics)
In geometry, a locus is a collection of points which share a property. For example a circle may be defined as the locus of points in a plane at a fixed distance from a given point....
in studied tribes was compared with data of 22 Indo-European- and Dravidian-speaking caste and tribal populations using heterozygosity, allele size variance, analysis of molecular variance
Analysis of molecular variance
Analysis of molecular variance , is a statistical model for the molecular variation in a single species, typically biological. The name and model are inspired by ANOVA. The method was developed by Laurent Excoffier, Peter Smouse and Joseph Quattro at Rutgers University in 1992.Since developing...
(AMOVA), GST (Glutathione S-transferase
Glutathione S-transferase
Enzymes of the glutathione S-transferase family are composed of many cytosolic, mitochondrial, and microsomal proteins. GSTs are present in eukaryotes and in prokaryotes, where they catalyze a variety of reactions and accept endogenous and xenobiotic substrates.GSTs can constitute up to 10% of...
) estimate, PC plot
Parallel coordinates
Parallel coordinates is a common way of visualizing high-dimensional geometry and analyzing multivariate data.To show a set of points in an n-dimensional space, a backdrop is drawn consisting of n parallel lines, typically vertical and equally spaced...
, and Mantel correlation test
Mantel test
The Mantel test, named after Nathan Mantel, is a statistical test of the correlation between two matrices. The matrices must be of the same rank, in most applications they are matrices of interrelations between the same vectors of objects....
. Results demonstrate that Gondi tribes comprising the Madia-Gond, a hunter-gatherer population, harbor lower diversity than Marathi tribal groups, which are culturally and genetically distinct. The Proto-Australoid
Proto-Australoid
The Proto-Australoids are a hypothesized group of ancient hunter-gather people descended from the first major wave of modern humans to leave sub-Saharan Africa ~100,000 years ago...
tribal populations were genetically differentiated from castes of similar morphology, suggesting different evolutionary mechanisms operating upon the populations. The populations showed genetic and linguistic similarity, barring a few groups with varied migratory histories. The microsatellite variation clearly demonstrates the interplay of sociocultural factors including linguistic, geographical contiguity, and microevolutionary processes in shaping the genetic diversity of populations in contemporary India.
Emancipation of women through the formation of Self Help Groups
The study is a record and analysis of the following events. The coming together of Madia women to form a Self Help Group, in Bagul village of Gadchiroli District, to assert their independence, the breaking of Madia customs which triggered a group member to be brutalized and paraded naked by her husband, her committing suicide, the subsequent coming together of the other members in protest, further breaking of tribal taboos, the decision taken to wear blouses and to the breaking of isolation and pollution norms during menstruation, the initiative taken in execution of government development schemes. The Naxal fear of loss of influence in the face of development and inclusion in the mainstream of the Madia. Their opposition to the activities of the Self Help Group. The murder of an engineer by the Naxals. The ongoing struggle engaged by the Madia women against poverty, prejudice, male domination and vested interests in the form of the Naxals, the politicians and the bureaucracy.Bench Mark Survey 1997-98
The results of the Bench Mark Survey was organised in the Tribal Area of the Maharashtra State pertinent to the Madia Gond are tabulated hereunder.Population
| female | male | total |
|---|---|---|
| 38749 | 38156 | 76905 |
Literacy
| female | male | total |
|---|---|---|
| 30.19 | 16.09 | 23.19 |
Occupation family wise
| Agriculture | Agriculture labour | Forest labour | Other | Total | Migration % | BPL Below Poverty Line Below Poverty Line is an economic benchmark and poverty threshold used by the government of India to indicate economic disadvantage and to identify individuals and households in need of government assistance and aid. It is determined using various parameters which vary from state to state and... % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10444 | 2260 | 365 | 282 | 13351 | 34 | 91.08 |