The Wall Street Journal’s “India Real Time” blog is publishing a series of six investigative reports on starvation in India, one of which, last week, described the terrible mass deaths of October 2008 in a Birhor village. That tragic episode prompted a flood of attention for the formerly obscure tribal… Continue reading…
A Birhor stall at a big trade fair in Jamshedpur, the largest city in northeastern India’s Jharkhand state, was a hit with visitors to the show in recent weeks. In an industrial center famed for Tata Steel works and other major businesses, a local NGO persuaded five Birhor people from… Continue reading…
Birhor women have traditionally collected the leaves from saal trees in northeastern India to use as dinner plates for their families, but they have recently been trained to also fabricate them into commercial products. Ratan Kumar, the Deputy Commissioner for the Lohardaga District of Jharkhand state, is taking credit for… Continue reading…
Birhor women are experts in the use of native plants for contraceptive purposes, according to a news story last week in The Pioneer, an English language daily paper from India. In one of three stories about the Birhor carried by the paper during the course of the week, Ashis Sinha… Continue reading…
The socio-economic conditions of the Birhor have been back in the news in India last week, with three different articles published relating to their food security, demographic conditions, and lack of forest environment, all of which may affect their survival. The first report, published at the beginning of the week,… Continue reading…
Sitaram Shikari, an 18-year old from a village in West Bengal State of India, may be the first young Birhor person to be accepted into college as an undergraduate student. Raised in the village of Bhupatinagar, in Bagmundi town, the Purulia District of West Bengal, the young man has completed… Continue reading…
Sitaram Shikari, an 18-year old from a village in West Bengal State of India, may be the first young Birhor person to be accepted into college as an undergraduate student. Raised in the village of Bhupatinagar, in Bagmundi town, the Purulia District of West Bengal, the young man has completed… Continue reading…
News about the Birhor last week in India’s Jharkhand state included a tragedy in one district one day and a triumph in another the day after. In Hazaribagh district, Kishun Birhor, a laborer working at an illegal stone quarry, stopped to take a break next to the edge of the… Continue reading…
Last Friday, 10 Birhor people joined an audience of Indian academics at a two-day conference in the city of Ranchi, in northeastern India, titled “Development and Change in Primitive Tribal Groups of Jharkhand.” The purpose of the conference was to explore ways that the tribal peoples of Jharkhand State might… Continue reading…
Birhor girls living in the Indian village of Chalkari are learning, as the Deccan Herald delicately put it on Saturday, how to fight “for a better life.” The paper reported that numerous girls living in the village, located in the Dhanbad District, Jharkhand State, have taken up the sport of… Continue reading…
