Search Results for: athirappilly dam
The Traditions of the Kadar
Ms. Geetha, the leader of the Kadar community at Vazhachal, never seems to be at a loss for words. In an interview with The New Indian Express two weeks ago, she says, “We used to preserve the forests. That was how we lived. Now the government owns the forests.” She goes on to lament that […]
Kadar Gaining Self Confidence
A couple months ago, some Kadar were working to restore one of their worship sites in Kerala’s Vazhachal Forest when forestry department officials going past asked them to stop. They politely refused, citing their rights under India’s Forest Rights Act (FRA). According to a report last week by Sibi Arasu in The News Minute, a […]
Kadar Strive to Save their Forest
Last week, V. K. Geetha, a very active Kadar woman leader, wrote an eloquent appeal for saving their forest from a hydropower dam. Instead of focusing on the potential destruction of two Kadar communities posed by the threatened Athirappilly Dam, as numerous past news reports have done, her letter was a paean of praise for […]
The Kadar of the Western Ghats
The Kadar are now being noticed. Their plight, if not their peacefulness, is receiving some attention lately. A lot of meetings and news stories over the past five years about the proposed Athirappilly Dam on the Chalakudy River in Kerala have focused on elephant corridors and hornbill habitat, with only brief mentions of a Kadar […]
Progress in the Anamalai Hills
A magazine article last week in The Hindu, one of India’s major papers, describes the health of the natural environment in southern India’s Kerala state from the perspective of a canarium tree growing high in the Anamalai Hills. The authors, T. R. Shankar Raman and Divya Mudappa, scientists with the Nature Conservation Foundation in Mysore, […]
Kadar News Increasingly Upbeat
The cause of peace is advanced when the rights and interests of minority peoples such as the Kadar are acknowledged and respected by larger states and nations. These small societies are often at the losing ends of disputes—the dams are built, the forests are clearcut, rights to lands are denied, communities are destroyed. Two of […]
The Kadar Defend Their Rights
A nightmare for the Kadar is returning. Kerala announced last week that the State Electricity Board has been granted permission to resume planning a large power dam on the Chalakudy River. The proposed dam, which has generated extensive news coverage over the years, would harm or destroy a couple Kadar villages and inundate the habitat […]
Kadar Protect Hornbills and the Forests They Share
Despite threats to their communities, the peaceful Kadar and four species of large birds, all hornbills, are beginning to thrive in southern Kerala where they live together in the forests. While numerous news reports over the years have chronicled the Kadar love for their natural environment, the critical development in recent years has been their […]
Kadar Village Threatened by Landslides
The Kadar living in the Anakkayam Colony had to flee for their lives last August 16 when a huge landslide swept everything away right next to their homes. They’ve been homeless ever since, according to a news report published in the New Indian Express last week. A good review of the background was provided by […]
Honey Time in the Kerala Forests
Last week The New Indian Express sent a reporter into a Kadar colony in Kerala to see how the tribal people there were reacting to the prospect of voting. The third phase of the Indian General Election was scheduled to include the state of Kerala on April 23. The Kadar whom the reporter interviewed expressed […]
