Kerala Adivasi families emancipated by growing yam, tapioca

Kerala Adivasi families emancipated by growing yam, tapioca

When sisters Ammini and Annamma first started growing white yams, elephant foot yams and tapioca, they were trying to lay down roots for themselves as much as for the tubers they were cultivating. They had lost their parents young in the Paniyan community, a marginalised Adivasi (Indigenous) group in the Wayanad district of South India’s Kerala state. The sisters, now in their late fifties, had to navigate the layered indignities of landlessness…