Fourteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

Pampanur is a village in Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh that is inhabited by all castes like a majority of villages in India. The village which once had more than 100 houses came down to a single house in the year 1989 due to severe drought for a long stretch of time. Lack of water resources and failure of rains destabilised the village and compelled people to leave the village in search of livelihood. As is the practice of the caste hierarchy in India, the privileged castes snatched the limited resources from the lower castes. The Dalit communities who are relegated to the lowest strata of the hierarchy and considered “untouchables” are not allowed to use the water from the village well. Pampanur has a settlement of a nomadic tribe called Lambadas/Sugalis in the outskirts. This nomadic tribe in the time process has settled down in the outskirts of every village. This paper considers the Lambada/Sugali community in Pampanur village in Andhra Pradesh of India in the context of settlement, migration, and return. It examines the graded reasons and effects of migration in Pampanur and focuses specifically on the Lambada community. It discusses the dynamics of a community that is shifting between nomadism, settlement, and migration. Attempts were made to collect women’s responses as the migration affects them not only in terms of their class and community but also in terms of their gender and family.