A report presented to the Panning Commission says time is running out to save the Jarawas, the stone-age tribals in the Andamans, who not only face the danger of losing their habitat but also have to ward off sexual exploitation.

The report, authored among others by Planning Commission member Syeda Hamid, National Advisory Council member Jairam Ramesh and former NAC member Aruna Roy, has come up with solutions on how to “ensure the dignified survival of these First People as time is running out on one of the oldest surviving inhabitants of our country”. The report suggests that a group of young Jarawa girls and orphans are being sexually exploited.

The Jarawas, one of the four primitive Negrito tribal groups inhabiting the Andaman and Nicobar Islands along with Onges, Sentinelese and the Great Andamanese, today number only 306 and are considered the purest genetic stock of the earliest humans known to have been inhabiting these islands for over 60,000 years.

A hunter-gatherer tribe, the Jarawas live off the rainforests and seas, mostly avoiding contact with outsiders. They live within the 1028 sq km Jarawa Reserve, north of Port Blair. Rapid encroachment of their land by settlers and the continued use of the Andaman Trunk Road is pushing the tribe to slow annihilation. Since 1997, Andaman Administration-sponsored contact with Jarawas has been the norm in an effort to “mainstream” the tribe.

But the Report of the Sub-Group of Experts on the Jarawas says “every facet of this contact has proved harmful for the Jarawas”. “A crisis is in the making”, says the report, since “construction of the ATR was the most devastating project” which “squeezed” Jarawa territory.

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