Relocated for Safety, Indian Tribe Loses Its Moorings and More
- Dimple Behal
- 3d
- 7 min read
Updated: 16h
The Sauras, used to a forest-dependent life for food and medicine, were relocated after Cyclone Titli damaged their houses severely in 2018. Despite improvement in certain social parameters, the Sauras do not feel at home in the new settlement as it is not conducive to their nature-based way of life.
For the Saura tribes living in Barghar village in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, it was the forests that sustained them.
Listed as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group — identified so by the Indian government by four criteria, including economic backwardness — the Sauras have relied on the forest for food, for colours to adorn their walls, and for herbs to heal their wounds. Barghar is tucked into the Mahendragiri Hills of the Eastern Ghats. The villagers practised shifting and terrace cultivation and hunted — weaving their lives around what nature offered.
But it hasn’t been so for the last seven years — ever since a cyclone hit the village and the government relocated the villagers to safety.
Where Home No Longer Feels Like Home
In October 2018, Cyclone Titli tore through Mahendragiri, the hills that house Barghar, leading to floods and landslides. The storm swallowed the lives of 61 people living in Gangabada Panchayat, where Barghar falls, washed away mud-and-tin houses, and unsettled the fragile world the community had built. The Sauras — also spelt Savaras — of Barghar lost their sal (Shorea robusta), mango, and mahul or mahua (Madhuca losavangifolia) as they are popularly known — to the storm.
In an effort to move the Sauras to safety, the government relocated them in 2020 to a place close to the border of Andhra Pradesh, the neighbouring state. People from two other villages, namely, Guringi and Loba, were also relocated, and this new settlement was named Nua Barghar.
For most of his life, 34-year-old Biren Bhuiyan lived in mud houses — just like the other Sauras.
But in Nua Barghar, he lives in a cement house— part of a tightly packed cluster of mostly half-finished homes. The walls trap heat during the day; by night, when electricity fails, the rooms turn suffocating.
Though the new settlement is just 18 kilometres from Barghar, the terrain is very different and ill-suited to the Sauras’ way of life. It sits on rocky soil, leaving little room for farming or kitchen gardens, and the land offers no wild growth for foraging.
“The soil quality is different from before,” says Pradeep Bhuiyan (28).
Our email queries to the concerned government agencies, regarding the choice of the new settlement, went unanswered.
Liby Johnson, executive director of Gram Vikas, a developmental organisation working in Odisha for decades, offers an explanation. “Titli-rehabilitation work happened just before the elections. The district administration had to identify ‘safe locations’, rehabilitate, and disburse funds before the election code of conduct (which restricts money movements) came into force. And they had no prior experience of relief, rehabilitation, or reconstruction after a disaster of this scale,” he says. “With the elections there were also large-scale transfers, which meant key officials who may have had a better sense of the place were not there to make the right decisions.”
In Barghar, Nimbiri Nad, a tributary of the River Mahendratanaya, was a lifeline. But in the new settlement, there are no streams to cool the air; there are hardly any trees to break the glare of the sun.
It’s not just the environs that have changed, but the way the tribes treat their illnesses too, since they no longer have access to many of the medicinal plants.
Modern Medicine, Modern Problems
Traditional Saura healers, known for their diagnostic methods like pulse reading and dream interpretation, treated everything from minor wounds to snakebites using herbs collected from nearby forests. Villagers recall how a child with severe scabies was healed with a plant-based paste.
Plants such as neem, turmeric, Cassia tora (chakunda), Curculigo orchioides (talamuli), and Schleichera oleosa (kusuma) were central to their practice.
In the relocated settlement, women complain of their children falling sick more than before, developing a high fever and skin infection during peak summer. And they have no access to herbs.
The loss of these medicinal plants has left a visible void in both community health and local resilience. The health officer of Gangabada Panchayat says skin infections and scabies are quite prevalent.
“I never had to use a medical cream in my life,” says Biren Bhuiyan. Pointing to the skin ailments which he now treats with store-bought medicine, he says, “There used to be abundant medicinal plants around us, but we can’t find them here. We are dependent on hospitals now.”
But the hospitals are far off and unaffordable. They have to walk miles to reach a hospital. “The Odisha hospitals are so far that by the time we get there, a person’s life could already be lost,” says Pradeep Bhuiyan. “In Odisha’s government hospitals, we don’t have to pay. But Andhra’s private hospitals don’t recognise our health cards. As for Andhra’s government hospitals — we don’t go there at all.”
Villagers have been given Biju Swasthya Kalyan Yojana health cards meant to provide free healthcare to everyone in Odisha, especially vulnerable families. The hospitals in Andhra Pradesh do not honour the Odisha-centric scheme, forcing residents to pay out of their pockets.
Though the Gajapati district, where Barghar lies, should get more resources as per government health index norms, it still lacks access to basic health services, say villagers.
Availability of herbs is what made traditional medicine so deeply rooted in tribal life. Across India, more than 25,000 plant-based formulations are estimated to be in use, passed down through generations and reinforced by community knowledge. At least one person in almost every settlement has expertise in identifying and using local herbs.
Gynaecological and female health difficulties, including menstrual pain, menopause, leucorrhoea, infertility, childbirth, and abortion, are among the health aspects the Saura tribe is knowledgeable about.
The loss of roots and leaves to crush into healing pastes is leading to Sauras’ loss of traditional knowledge.
What’s happening in Nua Barghar is mirrored across the world. Indigenous and tribal communities everywhere are watching the plants and knowledge that once anchored their lives slip away.
Take the prairies of Saskatchewan. Where elders once found waist-high sweetgrass, only knee-high patches linger. Mixed- and short-grass prairies now cover only about 20–30% of their original range, lost largely due to agricultural conversion.
In the Northern Great Plains of the United States, sage, cottonwoods, and cattails, all central to ceremonies like the Sundance, are declining under extreme heat and shifting ecosystems. For communities whose health is tied not just to physical well-being but to the sacredness of land and water, the loss of these plants means more than scarcity. It threatens their ceremonies, diets, and mental health, leading to ripple effects of anxiety, grief, and cultural dislocation.
Even as modern medicine dominates health systems, traditional medicine is seeing a resurgence worldwide. The World Health Organization’s Traditional Medicine Strategy 2014–2023 urges countries to integrate such systems into national health frameworks, recognising their value for universal healthcare. Yet the irony remains: the very ecological base of these medicines is under threat, and the knowledge that sustains them is disappearing faster than it is being recorded.
In Nua Barghar today, fewer healers remain, and traditional remedies are becoming rare.
New and Old
Not everyone left the old settlement. Seventeen families remain in Barghar, holding on because farming land is still available there.
Simanchal Karjee (57), who has stayed back in the old settlement, says, “Everything around us is changing, but how can we abandon our culture and shift to a new settlement where there is nothing to sow or reap?”
Villagers of Andhra Pradesh used to farm in the land where Nua Barghar is. Now that the Sauras live there, there are frequent disputes between the two communities.
In Nua Barghar, while some farm, most families depend on daily wage labour, masonry, or agricultural labour. Over a year, they get about 25 days of work; in some seasons, just about 12. Life in Nua Barghar means cash incomes but also cash expenses: buying food, fuel, and medicines that were once freely sourced from the forest. Financially, life feels more uncertain now — earnings fluctuate, and debt has become common.
Education, however, has improved. In the hills, children often walked nearly 5 kilometres to school, leading many to drop out early. Nua Barghar has a primary school within walking distance and more children — especially girls — attend classes regularly. The flip side is that the pull of education has distanced the younger generation from the traditional way of life and knowledge.
Evidence suggests that the tribal population’s development-induced displacement results in losing their close affinity with nature and, eventually, their knowledge of traditional medicine and its practice.
“The process of displacement and rehabilitation must be seen as one continuous whole, not as separate, short-term events,” says Walter Fernandes, a senior researcher on displacement and tribal rights and Director of North Eastern Social Research Centre (NESRC) — an organisation working towards social change. “…the foundation of any rehabilitation effort must rest on Article 21 of the Constitution — the right to live with dignity… rehabilitation has to be recognised as a right, not a welfare measure.”
Youth Steps Up to Address Challenges
Amid these changes, young men like Pradeep Bhuiyan and Dasrath (27) have taken on new roles as informal protectors of the community. They mediate disputes with neighbouring settlements and even travel the 51 kilometres to the district collector’s office to raise their grievances about life after relocation.
Each visit requires them to collect money from households and hire a vehicle for the journey — an expense that weighs heavily on the community. Pradeep Bhuiyan admits that he wants to study further and work elsewhere, but the safety of the village keeps him back.
“If I leave, who will stand for our people?” he says quietly, aware that their absence could make the community more vulnerable to eviction or conflict.
Now that Nua Barghar is the Sauras’ home, Liby Johnson suggests a scientific review of the relocation sites and corrective actions, including civic services, so that the new habitations that have come up now there will not morph into unplanned settlement growth.
