Korku

Spandan a grassroots organization began its journey of development with nutritionally vulnerable Korku tribe of Madhya Pradesh being troubled by scores of their children dying of malnutrition. The initial effort to draw government attention to this crude reality wasn’t easy neither savored. The years of observations, studies and community learning revealed that ghastly household hunger gnawed at the doorsteps of most of the poor ready to devour more children.

Langoti is predominantly Korku tribe inhabited village. Korku tribe still has some of its aboriginal customs and traditions intact. There are 185 Korku families (65%) of the total village households numbering 288. Most of these families are small or marginal farmers and have to supplement their livelihood by daily wage earning as well. Spandan has been working among the community since a decade and has been striving to address the major issues facing them: malnutrition, household food insecurity, distress migration, preservation of their endangered language and culture. The women of Langoti have been the key focus.

Most of the Korku families shifted to cash crops since 3-4 decades back and have gradually divorced from growing traditional crops and Millet that once was the mainstay of community food security and nutrition. Over the years their major crop soybean has failed due to erratic rainfall. It has also escalated their debts and further deteriorated their economic conditions.

Most of the poor families face acute food crisis during June –October every year. Most of their farm produce is used to pay off the debts.