Study reveals tribal widows plight

Study reveals tribal widows plight
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Highlights

The need of the hour is to roll out special welfare programmes for the tribal widows, the head of the Folk and Tribal Lore wing of Telugu University Prof Bhattu Ramesh said, disclosing the details of their research on problems and challenges faced by the tribal widows in some of the selected districts of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh

Warangal: The need of the hour is to roll out special welfare programmes for the tribal widows, the head of the Folk and Tribal Lore wing of Telugu University Prof Bhattu Ramesh said, disclosing the details of their research on problems and challenges faced by the tribal widows in some of the selected districts of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

It may be mentioned here that the ICCSR-funded research covered Anantapur district in Rayalaseema region, Visakhapatnam district in coastal region in Andhra Pradesh, and, Khammam, Nalgonda and Warangal districts of Telangana. The team members conducted integrated survey in 85 mandals of these districts, which have predominantly tribal population.

The project report submitted by Prof Ramesh pointed out that the illicit liquor menace was rampant in tribal hamlets across these districts. Alone in erstwhile Warangal district, a whopping 70,000 widows take Aasara pension provided by the State government. It reflects the impact of illicit liquor.
The report listed out the reasons for the deaths of the widow, their reasons for not remarrying, and their preference of livelihood and with whom they chose to live after the death of their husband.

A majority of women chose to live independently for various societal reasons. He said that the plight of widows in the tribals is very pathetic due to orthodox faiths and superstitions.

As a result, majority of tribal widows are deprived them from social and economic benefits. In spite of modern India’s constitutional provisions, which grant equal rights to women, a large section of the woman continues to suffer due to the heterogeneous and hierarchical nature of social structure based on most glaring forms of socio-economic inequalities, he said.

Suggestions including providing self-employment opportunities, education,women societies especially for tribals, encouragement of remarriages with state government incentives like Kalyana Lakshmi for young and middle-aged tribal women, etc were made in the project report.

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