Gogulapudi
Gogulapudi is a small Konda Reddi settlement in the hills south of the Godavari River. The village is in Sattupalli Taluk of Khammam District, and is located on the boundary between Khammam and West Godavari districts. The efforts of the government in the last thirty years to develop the tribals have not reached this settlement at all. Gogulapudi was studied by Fürer-Haimendorf in 1941 and is described in his book The Reddis of the Bison Hills , but when I went to Ashwaraopet, the headquarters of the community development block in which Gogulapudi lies, I was surprised to find that none of the staff of the Tribal Development Agency knew of its existence. The revenue officials were also surprised when I enquired about its location and the route to reach it. However, after six days of persistent enquiries, an old and retired patwari ("village officer") of the Samasthan of Paloncha came to my rescue.
Gogulapudi is situated about forty-five kilometers northeast of Ashwaraopet. To reach Gogulapudi from the block headquarters, one has to travel about forty kilometers through West Godavari District. During the dry season it can be reached by jeep from Ashwaraopet and Buttayagudem, the headquarters of the community development block of the same names in West Godavari District. For the last four or
five years, the State Transport Corporation has been running buses from Eluru to Doramamidi, a big, non-tribal village about seventeen kilometers southwest of Gogulapudi. During the rainy season, however, even travel on foot between Gogulapudi and the plains is rendered difficult by the swelling of numerous hill streams.
Gogulapudi village lies on the slope of a hill and is surrounded by lush forest. For all practical purposes there is no flat land in or around the settlement. The villagers subsist by shifting cultivation (podu ), foodgathering, and forest labour. The Reddis are simple folk, and their necessities are few. They dress as they used to forty years ago, and no one in the village is literate.
The story of Gogulapudi during the past four decades is a story full of woe. In 1941, the Reddis lived in two small settlements, Gogulapudi and Dornalpushe, a mile apart from each other. Four families lived in Gogulapudi, and its population was twenty-eight souls. There were five families in Dornalpushe, and its population was twenty-seven. Smallpox broke out in this area in 1943, and a large number of Reddis and Koyas of neighbouring villages died. The smallpox did not spare the secluded Reddis of Gogulapudi and Dornalpushe. All the members of two families in Dornalpushe perished in the epidemic, and someone or other died in the remaining three families. The epidemic reduced the population of Dornalpushe to nineteen souls. Gogulapudi was more fortunate, and there were only four smallpox deaths. The surviving members of the three families of Dornalpushe were so shocked by their losses that they deserted the village. Two families migrated to Gogulapudi, and the third went to Chintakonda.
After the smallpox epidemic, for about seven or eight years the Reddis led a peaceful life cultivating podu fields, gathering wild roots, bamboo shoots, and mushrooms, and drinking caryota wine. This peaceful and secluded life received a jolt when, soon after independence, communist troubles started in the Hyderabad State. To contain and suppress the communist movement, the Government of India began resettling the population living in isolated forest villages in and around big villages, where it had set up special police camps. During this period in the late 1940s, the police raided Gogulapudi, beat all able-bodied males, and reduced the village to ashes on the suspicion that the Reddis were helping the communists. Then the entire population of Gogulapudi was forcibly settled in Vinayakapuram, a big, non-tribal village about twenty miles west of Gogulapudi, where there was a special police camp.
The Reddis were not allowed to go back to their village for about one and a half to two years. For the first month or so, the Reddis were fed by the police at state expense; later they were asked to look after themselves. The Reddis survived either by working as farm hands for
non-tribal landlords or by making baskets and winnowing fans and selling them. The traumatic events had so unnerving an effect on the Reddis that they did not return to Gogulapudi to re-establish the village even when they were permitted to do so. Instead, three families migrated to Motagudem, another Reddi settlement in the hills across the border between the then Hyderabad State and Madras State. The other three families settled down in Kamaram, a Koya village in the plains, also on the other side of the state border.
All those who went to Motagudem lived in usual Reddi style, depending upon podu fields. But those who settled in Kamaram cultivated jointly with the Koyas the lands owned by the latter, getting 50 percent of the yield. While living there, some of the Reddis learned how to handle a plough. However, they could not acquire any flat land of their own, as all the land in the village belonged to Koyas.
Around 1968 or 1969, the officials of the forest department in West Godavari District began to enforce prohibition of podu cultivation. This affected the Reddis living in Motagudem, and for one year they were completely stopped from cultivating podu fields. Consequently, the Reddis of Gogulapudi who had migrated to Motagudem decided to re-establish their old village. They proposed to the families living in Kamaram that they should join them in their venture, and the latter agreed to this plan.
It was during this time that the families of Golla Gangaya, Golla Reddaya, Boli Potaya, and Gurgunta Pedda Pandaya, who lived in Kamaram, and Kopal Potaya, Kopal Lachmaya, and Gurgunta China Pandaya, who had settled in Motagudem, all originally from Gogulapudi, re-established the village on its old site after a period of twenty years. Along with them, the families of Gogula Kannaya, Gogula Lingaya, Gurgunta Viraya, and Gurgunta Somaya came and settled in Gogulapudi from Motagudem. They appointed Golla Gangaya as pujari and Golla Reddaya as pedda kapu , for Golla Lachmaya, the former pujari and pedda kapu , had died without sons.
Later two brothers, Gurgunta Dasaya and Gurgunta Chinnaya, came to Gogulapudi from Thandigudem, and Kechela Potaya and Karapala Potaya came, along with their families, from Motagudem. The latest arrival in the village was Madakam Chinnaya, a Koya originally from a village on the banks of the Godavari River, who had been wandering from one village to another for several years. He had come in contact with the Reddis of Gogulapudi while he was living in Kamaram, and in 1976 he settled in Gogulapudi with the permission of the pedda kapu .
In early 1978, while I was camping in the village, there were seventeen Konda Reddi families and one Koya family in Gogulapudi. Out of seventeen Reddi families, only eight were those of either original in-
habitants or their descendants. The population of the village was eighty-three souls, of whom thirty-five were males and forty-eight were females. Out of the total population of eighty-three, only eight were alive in 1941 when the village was first studied.
The troubles of the Gogulapudi Reddis, however, did not end with the re-establishment of the village. The Naxalite movement emerged in India around the time the village was re-established. The Naxalites of Andhra Pradesh used forest areas in the state as their bases and began organizing people against exploitation by landlords, merchants, and minor officials with the aim of overthrowing the existing social order. To suppress the activities of the Naxalites, the state government established numerous police camps in the forest areas, and began combing the forests for Naxalites.
Although the Gogulapudi Reddis did not get involved in the Naxalite movement, they were caught in the cross-fire as they had been in the late 1940s. A police camp was established in Kavadigundla, a big Koya village across the hills, and the police of this camp began combing the forests around Gogulapudi. The police, whenever going for combing (or rather so-called combing) operations in the forests, visited Gogulapudi and took away the chickens raised by Reddis. During 1970–74, the police took away about seventy to eighty chickens from the Reddis of Gogulapudi without paying them anything. Besides the chickens, two goats worth about Rs 250, one belonging to Kopala Potaya and another belonging to his son-in-law Gogula Gangaya, were carried off by the police. While they paid Rs 20 to Kopal Potaya, nothing was paid to Gogula Gangaya.
On one of their visits, the police snatched away a silver necklace worth Rs 200 (at current prices) from the young son of Gurgunta Somaya. During this perion, the pedda kapu Reddaya and a few others were summoned to the police camp four times and were badly beaten on the suspicion that they were helping the Naxalites by providing food and shelter. The police harassment, however, came to an end with the fall of Mrs. Gandhi's government in March 1977, although the police are still stationed at Kavadigundla.
Prior to the burning down of Gogulapudi and the shifting of the population to the Vinayakapuram police camp during the communist troubles of the late 1940s, the village was comparatively isolated from the outside world. The economy of Gogulapudi was more or less self-sufficient. The needs of the Reddis were very few, and most of them were met from the resources available locally. Food requirements were met by growing cereals, such as jawari (Sorghum vulgare) , sama (Panicum miliare) , korra (Sataria italica) , and pulses such as red gram ("pigeon pea") and alasanda ("cow pea") on the podu fields. As there
was nothing else to do then, the Reddis began felling the forest from December onwards to prepare the podu fields for the next year's sowing. On an average a Reddi family cleared the forest over 2 to 2 1/2 acres of land and prepared the fields by June, when there are the first showers of the monsoon and the seed is dibbled. As the average yield of jawari per acre of podu field is 250 kilograms, each family harvested about 600 kilograms, besides 150 to 250 kilograms of small millets.
The yield from podu fields, however, was not sufficient to meet a year's food requirements. The Reddis bridged this gap by gathering a variety of edible jungle tubers and roots which are available throughout the year. Besides the tubers, the Reddis depended on the pith of caryota palms and the kernels of mango stones during periods of scarcity. During the summer season, when caryota juice is abundantly available, the Reddis depended more on the fermented caryota juice than on cereals. They grew a few vegetables in podu fields and near their houses, besides gathering bamboo shoots, mushrooms, and a variety of leafy vegetables from the forest.
They built their houses of bamboo, timber, and grass, which were abundantly available in the forest, and they made baskets, winnowing fans, mats, such implements as digging sticks, and bows and arrows.
Their cash requirements were small, though they depended on the outside world for cooking pots and simple iron implements, such as axe, billhooks, and a few knives, used in agriculture and basket making. Cooking pots, salt and clothing, which anyhow was scanty, were obtained from markets, where Reddis bartered their baskets for such commodities. The Gogulapudi Reddis got their iron implements from a Koya Kammara of Kamaram in exchange for grain or some other goods, such as caryota palm wine or bows and arrows.
In those days the Reddis earned a little cash by felling bamboo for non-tribal farmers who came up to Kamaram. Their cash earnings were very small, as the bamboo requirements of the non-tribal farmers were modest and the wage paid was one rupee for one hundred bamboos.
The more or less self-sufficient Reddi economy of Gogulapudi and other hill settlements remained undisturbed and the settlements remained isolated until the beginning of the 1950s. The process of breaking down the isolation of these settlements began in the early 1950s when the state government began auctioning the rights to extract bamboo and timber from the forest in the vicinity of Gogulapudi. The contractors who purchased the rights to extract forest produce and their clerks from the plains were the first outsiders to come to these areas. Initially their presence did not alter the economy of the Reddis, as their activities were confined to forests in the plains. They could not
extract timber and bamboos from the hills due to difficulties of transport and hence did not substantially affect the life-style of the Reddis. However, the Reddis were not left to themselves for much longer.
During the late 1950s, the contractors laid temporary roads in the hills and introduced trucks in the place of bullock carts for transporting forest produce. With the help of mechanized transport, the merchants began extracting bamboo and timber from much larger areas of the forest. With this the demand for labour increased, and for the first time the Reddis got an alternative source of employment.
In 1961, the state government leased the rights to extract bamboo from the coups of Khammam District on a long-term basis to the Sirpur Paper Mills. Similar rights over the coups of West Godavari District were given to the Andhra Paper Mills. The paper mills, with their larger capital resources, laid an extensive network of forest roads designed for the extraction of bamboo from the hills and thereby created a large market for forest labour. In 1974, the government abolished auctions of forest coups in order to eliminate the private merchants, who under duress had been making substantial contributions to the armed squads of the Naxalites. Since then the government has been extracting bamboo and timber through its logging division. This work begins in October or November and continues until the end of May or early June. Felling operations are prohibited during the rainy season in order to allow the forest to regenerate. The transportation comes to a standstill immediately after the first monsoon showers, because then the roads become impassable.
As the labour the Reddis can supply is insufficient, the paper mills import labour from outside to work in the forest. The labourers live in make-shift camps at the bamboo-extraction sites in the forest. During this period the paper mills build huts either in or near a village or sometimes in the forest itself to house their clerks and to store rice and other daily necessities. From these depots the clerks of the paper mills make "rice advances" to the labourers, whether they are Reddis or outsiders. It was the merchants and the paper mills who introduced the regular consumption of rice among the Reddis, besides breaking their isolation from the rest of the world.
Because of the extraction of bamboo from October to May and the demand for labour, the Reddis can get uninterrupted employment for two-thirds of the year. However, the Reddis of Gogulapudi and most other hill settlements work continuously only from the last week of January or the beginning of February until the end of May. Up to December they do not work every day, as they are still busy guarding their standing crops against birds and other wild animals.
When the sorghum crop is harvested, all men and women, with the exception of nursing mothers, old persons, and young children, hire
out their labour to the agents of the paper mills until the forest work comes to an end. During this period, the women get up around 5:00 A.M. and prepare gruel, and by 7:00 A.M. the Reddis eat the left-over food of last night and set out of their houses with their billhooks, bows and arrows, and gourd bottles filled either with drinking water or with gruel. In the forest, men cut the bamboos from the clumps while women and adolescent children help the men by shaving off the side branches of the felled bamboos. Then all the workers drag the bamboos to the lorry tracks, where they are loaded into trucks. The Reddis return back from their work by 2:00 P.M. and rest for a few hours. As felling bamboo and dragging it to the transport point through the bush is very strenuous, none works for more than four or five days in a week.
All the three organizations make payment by piece-work, and each has its own method of calculation. The Sirpur Paper Mills pays Rs 30 to 40 for one hundred bundles of bamboo, depending upon the distance from which they are carried. Each bundle contains twenty bamboos six feet long. On the other hand, the Andhra Paper Mills pays by weight. The average rate is Rs 45 per ton of dry bamboo and Rs 40 per ton of green bamboo. The rate again varies according to the distance and the steepness of the hill from which the bamboo has to be carried. The felling rates in the case of the logging division are fixed by the state government. During my stay in Gogulapudi they were Rs 30 and Rs 20 per one hundred long bamboos of Medara and Kadembaru varieties, respectively. Labourers employed by paper mills have to fell the bamboos, cut them into pieces of suitable size, and make them into bundles. Then they carry these bundles on their shoulders and dump them by the side of the lorry track. One man makes on an average seven to eight trips to transfer the bamboo bundles from the work site to the lorry track. In the case of long bamboos, first the side branches are cut off, and then they are dragged to the road. If the slope of the hill is steep they are pushed down, gathered together, and dumped by the side of the road.
During 1977–78, the Gogulapudi Reddis worked initially in the coups of the paper mills. Later on, in February when the logging division of the Forest Department began extracting long bamboo, they began hiring their labour to the logging division. Though the logging division does not make advance payments of either cash or rice, the Reddis preferred to cut long bamboos because it was easier than felling bamboo for the paper mills. The cash earnings of each family depended upon the number of family members working, the number of days they worked, and the amount of bamboo felled by each family. Table 4 gives the cash earnings of the Reddis of Gogulapudi during the year 1977–78.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Gogula Kanaya's family earned Rs 1,266.90, which is the highest income in Gogulapudi, because his wife and his two sons helped him in cutting bamboos. The earnings of Gogula Chinnaya were only Rs 172.60. He was a boy fourteen years old, and he did not get help from the other members of his family because his parents were too old for forest work.
The clerks of all the three organizations cheated the Reddis by taking advantage of their illiteracy and lack of knowledge of accounts. The supervisor of the Andhra Paper Mills weighed the bamboos cut by the Reddis and the labour imported from outside by using a spring balance whose needle did not rest at zero but was adjusted to rest at 200, thereby underweighing each bundle of bamboo by two to three kilos. Further, the accounts of rice advances made were falsified to the Reddis' disadvantage.
The forest ranger of the logging division deducted 5 percent of the bamboos felled by the Reddis and paid them accordingly. But when
submitting the bills to the government, he gave the actual number of bamboos felled and pocketed the difference. If the Reddis had been paid for the actual number of bamboos felled by them, they would have received a total of Rs 12,913 instead of Rs 12,298. Although the Reddis resented the deduction of 5 percent of bamboos they had felled, they were helpless because they did not know the higher officials to whom their complaints would have had to be sent, and even if they had done so it is unlikely that they would have obtained any redress.
The creation of a market for labour in the forest by government and paper mills has drawn the Reddis of these hill settlements into the nexus of a market economy. Cash transactions have replaced barter, and the cash requirements of the Reddis have increased although the use of money within the village has not yet developed. Due to the flow of cash and the easy availability of credit from the merchants of Kamaram during the bamboo-cutting season, rice, which in the past was for Reddis a rare delicacy, has become the staple food of Gogulapudi at least for six months in the year. During my stay in Gogulapudi, in hardly any of the houses was millet regularly cooked. The only exception was the house of Kechel Potaya, because he could not earn cash due to a broken shoulder. Thus the Reddis today depend for their food on outside markets for at least five to six months in a year, for rice is not grown in Gogulapudi. Besides the consumption of rice, the consumption of dried fish and tobacco, which also must be procured in the market, have increased substantially. Today each family, at least during the bamboo-felling-season, eats dried fish once a week.
In the 1940s, the quantity of tobacco consumed by Reddis was small, and they got it by exchanging their baskets and winnowing fans and by growing a few plants near their houses. Today on an average each adult Reddi male spends weekly about Rs 1.50 on tobacco.
Nowadays Reddis frequently visit markets at Doramamidi and Buttayagudem, and are gradually replacing their earthen cooking pots by aluminium and other metal vessels. The lorries which regularly ply between the bamboo coups and bamboo depots in nearby towns have enabled the Reddis to visit these towns both for enjoyment, such as seeing movies, and for making occasional purchases. These visits have widened the Reddis' horizon and have changed their social outlook.
Although the total consumption of cereals by the Reddis has increased, the yield from podu fields has gone down. The area in which the Reddis clear forest growth to prepare podu fields has been reduced to 1 to 1 1/2 acres, partly because of the official restrictions on shifting cultivation and partly because of the diversion of labour to work for government and paper mills. With the decrease in the area of podu
fields, the yield from them has also declined. This phenomenon increases the dependence of Reddis on the market for their food, and exposes them to fluctuations in food prices.
Although the cash income of the Reddis of Gogulapudi has increased enormously when compared with the past, they have little cash to spare because of the high cost of food. This will be seen from the following example. During my stay in Gogulapudi, the wife of Gogula Kanaya cooked daily 3 kilograms of rice, half the quantity in the morning and the remaining half in the evening, to feed her husband and four children. Thus the family consumed each month 90 kilograms of rice. If we assume that the family consumed rice during six months, then 540 kilograms of rice were required. The price of 1 kilogram of rice was then Rs 2, so the family had to spend Rs 1,080 on rice alone, out of its total cash income of Rs 1,266.90. Besides rice, the family spent money on tobacco, dried fish, and occasionally liquor and other small luxuries. In fact, with the exception of the families of Kopal Potaya, Kopal Gangaya, Boli Potaya, and Gogula Pandaya, none of the families had any savings. On the other hand, six families owed between Rs 10 and Rs 30 to the petty merchants who visit Gogulapudi during winter and summer.
The Reddis do not have much spare cash to spend on clothes, and the dress and appearance of the men and women of Gogulapudi has not changed very much since the 1940s. Three or four Reddis have acquired trousers, but even these men reserve such clothes for festivals and do not wear them otherwise. Men usually wear nothing but a small loin-cloth (budda gochi ) to cover their private parts, and a few occasionally wear shirts. While they are in the village or working in the fields, most women wear only a sari, but when they go to other villages or to a market they usually put on a bodice. The dress of the children is scanty.
Gogulapudi is no longer isolated, and its economy has ceased to be self-sufficient. Owing to the availability of wage labour, the consumption of cereals has increased, but the Reddis of today are exposed to the inflation of food prices. In the absence of any government-sponsored development activities, their future is bound up with that of the organizations exploiting forest resources, and in the event of the cessation of their activities in the region the Reddis would be faced with a serious economic crisis.