Uncounted lives at tribal heartland in Andhra Pradesh Premium

Children in Muria settlement lack birth certificates and Aadhaar, hindering access to education and government benefits.

Six-year-old Kosayya plays with a group of children amid the mud huts in their settlement at Jaggaram, the dust kicked up by their excited feet melds with the evening sun.

Kosayya and many others like him used to study Class 1 at a Non-Residential Special Training Centre (NRSTC), a temporary facility run by the Department of Education to offer primary education to children of migrants, at Jaggaram. The centre was shut down in February on expiry of its six-month service.

Now, he accompanies his father, Kovvasi Mangayya, to the chilli fields on the banks of the Godavari River around six kilometres away, along the Andhra-Telangana border in the morning and returns with him in the evening. An interaction with his parents, who belong to the Muria tribe, suggests that the hard life of a farmhand awaits him, too.

As far as the government is concerned, Kosayya and many other children in the settlement do not exist, for they have no birth certificate, no Aadhaar or any other identification document.

In the same settlement, Madakam Devi sits in front of her hut. “No family in our habitation felt the need to register births; same with deaths. Our lives revolve around our settlement and the nearby forest,” says the 32-year-old.

She cares for her sister Madakam Bheeme’s three children—six-year-old Mani, four-year-old Mooda and three-year-old Vennela—while their mother works in the chilli fields. None of the children has a birth certificate.

The Murias, now an Internally Displaced People (IDP), fled the Naxal-hit Sukma district of Chhattisgarh two decades ago and formed a settlement at Jaggaram, deep inside the reserve forest on the tri-state border of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Chhattisgarh.