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Monday 12 March 2012

ETHNOGRAPHY VISIT TO KALVARAYAN HILLS

                                                                                                                            

SUBMITTED BY- STEPHEN
M.J ONLINE MEDIA
DEPARTMENT OF JOURNALISM AND COMMUNICATION
UNIVERSITY OF MADRAS.


We the department of journalism and communication students from university of madras travelled towards kalvarayan hills near Salem district of Tamilnadu with a purpose to stay and study in and around the tribes culture and their life style. Putting a statement before them how far the media has played a vital role in their speech, culture, technology and even more of their life experience with an aim to connect towards contemporary modern lifestyle. This tribes are particularly taken for study and provided a chance to open up thoughts in a every possible way by applaying the epic and emic approach within their life. I had taken a special concentration on tribal employement especially on youngsters, where i had  to go on filds to analyse their types of work,  wage and  time of work.

   Kalvarayan hills connects 4 districts of tamilnadu such as salem, villupuram, thiruvannamalai and dharamapuri and have more than 170 tribal villages around the hill station. My part of study was taken through salem zone, where the hill station like keelnadu and maelnadu, both of them have 18 villages each under them in record and there are also too many small hamlets not recognized till now. keelnadu receives better governmental plans and free facilities but where as  maelnadu suffers to receive every governmental plans due to adventoures hill forms says the government. but people here confirm that authorities are  least bother and lethargic about the people in concern.

1.       They lack basics to know about their constitutional rights and governmental  benifits.
2.       They are unaware of governmental authorities and have no idea about present ministers in charge for state or general. It is interesting that, they are able to remember local leadrs such as chairman and collector in mind, though most of them have no idea about the party system and their leader in mind. (Still they have a mixed kind of confusion between karunanithi and jayalalitha.)

3.       Media has just began in those areas through the distribution of colour television by the government and people have began to understand the new medium to entertain themselves and we can surly hope that they will also start to show their viewership for news as well .So we can’t conclude media doesn’t play its role nor has a huge impact among people of kalvarayan hills but getting its root effectivly.

4.       People who have T.V sets watch mostly a serial called “URAVUKU KAI KODUPOMM”(றவுக்கு கை கொடுப்போம்) which is an episodic drama played in kalainyar channel. This particular serial has a good number of viewership.

5.       I found an interesting thing that most of them are not aware of politicians name and even the actors name especially like Rajinikanth, Vaiko and Sivaji.


Students and youngsters in the village are powerful fans of Vijay, rather than Rajini, and Kamal. The reason could be, they had received power only 10years back and in some villages 20years back. when i followed them by group discussion, they had varieties of answers to of their media understaing. At the end o f the discussion we have found that 90percentage of people enjoy and entertain themselves through free color television sets.  45percentage of people have satellite dish to watch newly upgraded programmes but they are least bothered to know about current news update and the other  45 percentage of people have television sets along with DVD players, where they only listen songs and movies. The rest of 10 percentage don’t use televisions sets and there  might be at risk for television connection due to higher hill station

As far as Radio and newspapers concerned the amount of listeners and readers are lacking due to geographical reach, since those villages are located in a relatively mountain hill areas. Newspapers are available only when you come down to Kallakurichi town, where it has number of shops and commercial space to sale out vegetables in markets.

We visited three villages namely, (Perandur, Morasapatti, and kanakanpatti) these three villagers commonly face similar problems and Karakanpatti is somewhat ok in term of conservative development, because it has got a primary school, which was built during 2000 and funded by the salem diocese. There is a house for st.Ann’s sisters who even take up the management of school, therefore students receive a quality education. There is a bus facility twice in a day morning 5am and evening 3pm so comparing to other village’s kanakanpatti has reached some extent of cleanliness and betterment. But perandur and mannur have no such facilities but they have to walk so much daily to meet their needs.

Their complains follows such as,

1.       No proper road facilities to walk safe.

2.       No proper conservative (RO) water facilities, as a fact they walk few miles to fetch water for their every needs.

3.       No proper “ration” facilities.

People in these villages have made an appeal that during election campaigning instead of representatives, in the name of name representatives someone could come and ask us to vote, but we are not aware the parties name and all their history, since they promise a lot on our needs, so we poll our vote in a symbol, which they had shown us. It is to note that no collectors, chairman and media persons have made a visit to our village. This is the fact that they say stand on, One of the other observation is that since they are illiterate, there are mediators who often culprits in their place cheat their actual amount of money that is to be paid even the government fund too will be swollen by the governmental mediators, which is being sanctioned to meet their needs in their village.


CULTURAL, ECONOMICAL, EMPLOYMENT AND CAST DIFFERENCE:

1.       Every culture in India means and differs a lot to fit the meaning of its richness. Culturally, they enjoy, “MARRIYAMMAN” festival, which happens during “Pongal”. Here they spend lot amount of money to buy new clothes, inviting relatives and friends from neighboring villages to gathered together to celebrate their joy of hard work.

2.       Economically, they are poor, because they put forth, the fullest effort of hard work in agriculture especially in forming and cultivating, since they are illiterate, many contractors who buy their crops or give daily wages for their work would cheat them easily.

3.       Major vegetations on their fields are paddy, tamarind, wheat, cotton and ragi. Villagers are aware that agriculture has good scope in coming years since government depends on various agricultural forming.

4.       When I asked a guy in a village, he said that they never had such issues, it shows that they belong to same community categorized (ST)

·   .     They find job opportunities in their neighboring villages just working for daily wages as coolly workers, if not then they go to Kerala for road cleaning works or to work in their fields. As far now there are three people who had received government jobs as a postman in perandur village, but unfortunately other villages haven't  so, especially to figure out mannur and kalakaampatti.


NATURE OF EXPRESSION WHILE TALKING:


They are casual in expressing their problems stating a tone like, “This is part of our life”, “no one is noticing us”, and these are the words that we could find while talking with them. One of the interesting observations which made me to salute is that the hospitality nature which we lack often in our modern culture, since hospitality is one of the humanly nature of all time history in the era, but that had been made true for my knowledge instead there I had seen their heartwarming smile and nature of hospitality without knowing who are we?. It is to believe that they started talking to us more relevantly and friendly.
·         Mostly girls who reach 13 gets married as the fact, they suffer a lot in managing their daily life bearing child and doing house hold works.

·         Boys in perandur and mannur have never crossed +2 std. most of the young boys and girls stop continuing their studies due to work load given by parents to work on their fields rather sending them into school. This particular problem extends and continues due to the rare facilities of travelling, funding the child to study, hostile and cultural indifference.

·         Most of their expression seems to be real in nature rather than an act of drama. These groups of people find to be related to the historical witness rather than a script approach.

·         Differences between speech and people in comparing their relationships are casual, real and especially to witness “animal gods” which represents their cultural respect, which states that scheduled trips is not so much affected of media and its approach in concerned research of mine because of their lifestyle and nature, which is different in atmosphere and ethnic geographical location, So it may take few more years to get reached the current affairs as an important one, if parents promote education as essential one.

CONCLUSION

 Learning never stops unless you die, the reasons are the same. You may get lose yourself, knowing what an encounter, but as the later you realize the reason and get better yourself to face it. This could be the applicable one for kalvarayan trips too. If not today, the days are near for them when media could turn up their life in accommodating new life style sooner in influencing innovative advantages where in the modern society.











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