| Landscape Jagruthi and Birds Heal are based in rural areas of Gulbarga district, working amongst isolated communities where frequent drought, physical isolation and lack of economic opportunities leave many people struggling to survive. Like a child growing too big for his clothes the effects of population growth are seen everywhere, schools are too small for the number of children that should be in them, the village water supply put in twenty or only ten years ago is nowhere near sufficient for twice the number of people, land for cultivation is in short supply and so people encroach on the forest areas and people without land or work are forced to migrate from these rural areas to swell the slums of Bombay and other cities. |
 |
Most of the good cultivated land in this area is owned by absentee landlords and is worked by the people of the area who may also hold a little land of their own. Many people are employed in field work, the preparation of the soil, planting, weeding and harvesting of the crops. Because this is an area of low rainfall this work is only available during the growing season following the rains, there is little field work during the dry summer season and in drought years people often migrate to find work. |
Due to the growth of population some villages have grown on Government Forest lands, these lands are on the less good ground and the people work for themselves, however they have no security of tenure. There are areas of mainly rock and scrub which are used for grazing goats and gathering firewood. |  |
 |
The poor condition of most roads means that travel for most people is very slow. |
Water can be and often is, polluted, resulting in the spread of many diseases: parasites, amoebic dysentry, Weil’s disease or leptospirosis (know locally as Rat Fever), cholera and typhoid are common. Even water from bore wells which is usually unpolluted can easily become so during transit to and storage in the house. Lack of water or the difficulty of accessing water can often result in lack of hygiene especially by younger children. It is hard to wash your hands if you don’t have reasonably easy access to water. Clean water is needed for drinking and cooking, for the washing of bodies and of utensils. Water is needed to wash clothes, wash houses, and to make crops grow. A lack in any of these areas will result in ill health. Boiling water to make it safe to drink, requires the use of fuel, which is needed for cooking. The gathering of fuel, usually scrap wood, also takes time. |  |
 |
Most of the permanent structures in this area are built of the local stone, with wooden beams and struts, roofed with large flat stones. The Lamani tribal peoples living in the forest areas build their houses from red laterite cut from the surrounding area and cow dung floors. Less permanent structures are built of small sticks or brushwood woven between poles, daubed with mud and thatched with reeds. Cooking is usually done over fire-wood in a small built up clay hearth in the kitchen area or outside. Water will be carried from a village well, bore well pump or a stream. There will be no toilets. Whatever the building, when the family lies down to sleep, there will be little spare floor space. |
|
