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Sexual and reproductive health aspects of tribal communities have been a matter of concern for various scholars. The present study, conducted among the tribals in one of the Integrated Tribal Development Agency areas (Mannanoor ITDA) in the state of Telangana, is primarily set to enrich the existing knowledge concerning reproductive health. The article particularly focuses on the antenatal/prenatal care, intranatal care, and reproductive outcomes among the tribal communities. The article attempts to look into the age of these women at marriage and various conceptions, the spacing between conceptions, and the outcome of the conceptions. Besides this, efforts have been made to gather data on the place of delivery, antenatal care, and birth weights of infants. The study could identify that about a quarter were low-birth-weight babies. The study also showed that overall reproductive wastage is quite significant in the tribal communities in the study area, even though the women in the area were found to be avoiding marriages at a very young age. By and large, the study reveals that maternal and child health practices are relatively satisfactory in the tribal communities in the study area.

Assessment of inter gender sharing of drudgery in performing various agriculture activities by male and female farmers specially in paddy cultivation was carried out among plain tribes of Lakhimpur district of Assam. Multi-stage purposive cum random sampling method was adopted for selecting the representative sample in order to fulfil the objective of the investigation. A total of 120 tribal households from five villages (purposive cum randomly) were selected for the study. As the study focused on inter gender sharing of drudgery in agricultural activities, both male and female farmer were selected for the study. Thus total sample size of the study was 240 numbers comprising 120 male and 120 female farmers. Findings revealed that male farmers spent highest time in transplanting of grain to the home (128.56 mean hr/year) as well as felt very difficult among different activities during paddy cultivation, whereas women spent highest time in cutting crops (179.37 mean hr/year) and majority of women felt very difficult to perform activities like hoeing and uprooting of seedling. Drudgery index in case of male farmers was highest in transportation of grain from the field to home (55.33), followed by hoeing (53.33) and weeding (52.66). In case of female farmers the activity which had high drudgery index was transplanting (56.13) followed by cutting of crops (55.00) and hoeing (53.31).

The perception that communities are passive recipients of innovations has long been rejected. The way communities respond to any innovation is the result of unique and complex negotiations and renegotiations between their culture and the innovations. These responses can cause changes in the existing elements of the culture and lead to the emergence of new elements that act as feedback into the initial process. It is from this perspective that this article aims to understand the introduction and expansion of horticulture among the Savara of Seethampeta Mandal, Andhra Pradesh. The interplay of the Savara culture and horticulture is grounded on certain Savara institutions and their responses to the innovation of horticulture, creating a loop where positive responses from the earlier culture feed into new elements of culture that are positively oriented towards horticulture. Using ethnographic data based on fieldwork, this article seeks to understand how the earlier and emergent Savara cultures have facilitated the widespread adoption of horticulture in the area under study.

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