The Role of Tribal Women, their Occupation in Rural Economy in Kodaikanal

Abstract

In a society a men gets power, respect, happiness, self-complacency and authority by his occupation. Economy is the basic need of all the people. A county’s poverty and its prosperity rest on its production. Adam Smith of the 18th century calls land, investment, labour and organization as the factors of production. If the land and money goes together, the economic status can be heightened. It is a man’s low and high economic conditions that he is compelled to be a subordinate to the other. The tribal economy depends on forest produce. The economy of the nomadic tribe was entirely based on the accumulative method of food gathering and hunting. The tribes who were the original inhabitants, enjoyed total freedom. Later they were pushed into the hills and jungles by the advance of the more vigorous people. The rest of the people who learnt to till the soil and sow seeds were not prepared to abandon their land but were enslaved by the new comers. Thus isolated, some of them came to live in a hostile environment by a simple substance like gathering food, forest produce, hunting, and fishing and by axe cultivations.