Viroopa Volla – Economics, 2014 Senior Thesis Research on Tribal Areas and Land Development, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa During the winter of 2013, I received funding from the Harvard South Asia Institute to conduct initial senior thesis research. As a junior at the college concentrating in economics with a focus on development in South Asia, this special opportunity significantly enabled me to scope out multiple senior thesis research topics and as a result, evaluate their possibilities of becoming successful thesis topics. In the four weeks that I was there, I traveled to rural areas in both Orissa and Andhra Pradesh to test out two hypothesis – one, the effects of foreign capital investments on land price fluctuations and two, how the tribes in these areas where land prices increased rapidly compared to the average cost of standard of living were affected. In my research prior to the trip, I had constructed a database of land prices using data available from the famous Indian magazine, Economic and Political Weekly. What I found through this data construction was that areas that had been developed for manufacturing jute, cotton, and steel mills because of their geographic proximity to major waterways were also the same places being targeted for foreign investment, making them relatively expensive to the average standard of living costs around that area. My fieldwork consisted of going to these lands and conducting interviews to get qualitative information about the increasing land prices. In Rayagada, a third tier city on the border of Orissa and Andhra, land that was going for $5,000 an acre in 2005 had skyrocketed to $30,000 an acre in the present day. The reason behind these dramatic increases was primarily because of non-resident Indians buying the land. The land was also increasing in price because of its geographic location as two distinct rivers – the Nagavali and the Vamsadhra – run through the length of the district, making the land very fertile for crop production and providing clearing waters for large manufacturing plants. The other part of my research to visit the Sora Tribe in Orissa and Andhra Pradesh allowed me to travel to tribal villages. Through a translator, I interviewed tribal families about their daily lives and their economic livelihood. From my prior research, I thought that most of these tribes primarily sold tribal arts and crafts at the local markets. I had a chance to visit five of these markets that happen every week and look at the things that they sold as well as listen to how they planned their products according to demand. What was most interesting about my fieldwork was that many of the tribes had actually stopped producing their typical tribal arts and started to sell the typical items that could be bought in the city (clothing, fish, produce) but at a cheaper cost. The few tribes that still sold tribal crafts often went straight to vendors who would purchase the items to sell them on foreign markets. The most surprising observations that I came across were the symbiotic relationships between the tribes and the land development. Even though I thought that the increasing prices would have a negative effect on the tribes, it was actually very positive. Since a lot of the land is either not developed or contains manufacturing mills, the tribes form cohorts of ten to twenty people to work on the land. They either run the mill or they farm by paying rents every month. This ensures that the land is used productively while the owners are away and the tribes can sell whatever they produce on the land for profit. In fact, the groups set up small huts on the land itself so they also have a place to live. I found this relationship to be very promising for giving the tribes opportunities to advance. From the interviews, I learned that many of the parents were supporting their sons’ and even daughters’ education with this new source of income. Although, I have visited India many times before, it was really this trip that enabled me to discover the daily happenings of these villages and tribes. Before this trip, my only recollection of these villages and markets were as a passerby, driving through the beautiful, rural landscapes to get to the city. Never, did
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