Monday, October 6, 2008

Irula tribe

Yesterday, I happened to visit the Madras Crocodile Bank, located on the ECR highway, the beautiful highway, with sea on its eastern side, connecting Chennai and Pondicherry. The look from outside did not give me the slightest hint of what was on offer inside. When I went in I was very susceptible whether or not it is worth coming here? Then we started and let me tell you right from the starting point when I went in I was like yes, this is mind kind of place. There were scores of crocodiles in there kept in the eco system close to the natural eco system. Care has been taken to provide these creatures with a surrounding as close to nature as possible. I felt that I almost lost the count of time as I was so much into the surroundings. Really it was an overwhelming experience.

To add to the protection of the eco system, this park also had a co operative for the Irula tribe. The Irula tribes people are believed to be of the same origins as the tribes from the Andaman islands but the basic difference between the two is that the Irula tribe has taken up the local language. The Irula tribe is one of the most backward group of people in our country. They earn their living by catching rats and snakes. They are the friends of the farmers as they catch the rodents that destroy the crops and also they help us save many lives as they extract venom from snakes which are used to prepare anti dotes for snake bites. According to one of the survey the average monthly income of those people is any way between $15-$30 which is much below the accepted norm (I fail to understand what sort of norm is this) of $35. These people are facing acute financial crunches as well as they are falling prey to countless diseases and their population is merely around 25000. it was good to find such co-operatives being set up for them. But ironically when I asked one of the members of the cooperatives that can I get some books on the Irula tribe, he replied me ,”Sir, here you can get books on snakes but not about Irula people”. The tone of his wordings made their position very clear to me. Hope that we can do some thing in this regards and also the government comes up with such eco systems at a larger scale.

The visit to this system once again brought a feeling into me that people seem to understand the importance and beauty of nature when they can relate themselves to it. And to relate themselves they need to come out of their air conditioned offices and apartments and take a feel of this sort of places. Not only this, schools should come up with frequent tours to places of this sort so that children can relate themselves to nature and in future help in making the earth a better place to live.


-kumar

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