Housing

Historically, the nomads have never had a permanent   address or a house. Their nature of work never allowed them to stay put at a fixed location for long. And because their life of perpetual wandering helped them earn living, they never felt the need to belong to one place. They belonged to the society, the society took care of its service providers and entertainers, they hosted them at regular intervals, provided them with cash and kind for the work they did.  It was a long sustained symbiotic relationship between the settled and nomadic communities. But with the advent of machines and industrial production, the need and value of the services provided by the nomads gradually diminished and so did the need for them to wander!!

Today the nomadic communities survive in the most pathetic living conditions. They now need land to settle down for good, to raise their families in safe and secure environment. These families have no land to stay or to till. They are neither accepted in the villages nor is the administration pro-active towards providing permanent land for residency. With the land becoming premium the resistance towards allotting land to the nomads is constantly increasing. The applications for the land are either met with delay or maddening silence. We have numerous instances where the applications have been pending for almost 10 years. Amidst all the gloom and despair, there are good days too when the villagers have shown willingness to embrace the nomads and share land with them. A lot of credit also goes to the few good humans in the admiration and local bureaucracy whose compassion has kept our faith alive.