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17 Soc. Change 3 (1987)

handle is hein.journals/sclcnge17 and id is 1 raw text is: Social Change : March 1987 : Vol. 17 No. I The myth of the healthy tribal* Amar Kumar Singh** S. K. Sinha** S. N. Singh** Meera Jayaswal** M. K. Jabbi*** Health Modernity has been defined as scientifically correct information, attitudes and behaviour in relation to physical and mental health, family planning and childcare, personal hygiene and environmental sanitation and such other issues which are essential pre-requisites for healthy living and, therefore, for human and social development. A Health Modernity Scale, in the form of an interview-schedule, was administered on 991 tribals (male and female) in two rural blocks of Ranchi district in South Bihar. Their health status was also measured through health indicators, such as living conditions and food habits, age at marriage of women, fertility and family size, immunization and malnutrition in under-five children, and death and disabilities. The tribal community studied had very low health status and health modernity. PLEASE close your eyes and think of an average tribal person in the native habitat. The mental image, most likely, will be of a healthy, strong, carefree man with a flute on his lips, and of a woman, with flowers in her hair, dancing happily on the wild beats of the drum. This stereotype of a tribal, held by most Indians, alas, is a hollow romantic myth. This myth has been exposed by the grim facts of a Health Modernity Survey sponsored by the Indian Council of Medical Research in two rural blocks, Kanke and Namkum, of Ranchi district in Chotanagpur region of Bihar. The present paper describes the sad story of this tribal community, which, after four decades of Independence, deceived by the mirage of political promises and bypassed by modernization and development, continue to be over-whelmingly illiterate (81 %), poor (58% having monthly income of Rs. 200 and less and another 31 % between Rs. 201 and 400) and unhealthy (29% families reporting illness). Less than 8 % of the children were immunised. Two-thirds of the children under five were malnourished, 44% having severe malnutrition. A large majority of the sample (71%) took tobacco, mainly in the form of raw leaves called khaini, chewed with lime. Most of them (89%) drank alcohol, mainly haria, a home brewed rice-beer. The daily consumption of meat, fish, egg and milk was by less than 1 %, of pulse by a small 8% and 65% did not eat green vegetables. Two-thirds of them did not take bath daily; the percentage of women being as high as 90. Nor did they * This paper is an abridged version of Singh, A. K. (1987): The Myth of the Healthy Tribal : Health Modernity In Two Rural Blocks of Chotanagpur, Bihar. Report on ICMR Task Force Health Modernity Education Project, Post Graduate Department of Psychology, Ranchi University. *Post-Graduate Department of Psychology, Ranchi University, RANCHI-834001 **Council for Social Development, 53 Lodi Estate, NEW DELHI-110003

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