Land Alienation and Subversion Strategies on Land Rights: Perspectives from Attappady

While it is unanimously agreed that Kerala’s development achieved major success in human development, such as minimum social security, food security, minimum gender differences in education, as well as easy and affordable access to health care, the question has not been so far addressed from the perspective of the grass root people, the adivasis. We feel this is high time to redefine what is real ‘development’ through the perspective of the adivasis. Emerging from an ethnographic and oral historical field work, this article examines how the absence of individual property ownership adversely affect the adivasis of Attappady in achieving their favoured development. This article additionally discusses how and why authorities have historically maintained the adivasis as a labour force. The most effective solution to put an end to the land question in Attappady is that authorities need to provide them with Individual Property Right within the Collective Right of Land.