The Koya community are facing large-scale displacement of more than two lakh, owing to the construction of Polavaram dam which is completely submerging 371 villages in the East and West Godavari districts of Andhra Pradesh. In the post displacement phase, the Koya's are under livelihood transition as they either have to integrate or assimilate in the new habitat where the identity is subjected to positionality in an unknown ecology altogether.
Consequently, there is a greater need to discuss the ground realities operational in the region, where the direction of development seems to be in opposition to the sustenance of the tribe, whose daily life was embedded in the ecological habitat. As a result of displacement, the tribes are neither able to take up their traditional livelihood nor fit into the new habitat completely. This is leading the Koya's to take up unskilled menial jobs. Consequently, the indigenous knowledge held by the tribe since generations together is of no ‘use’ to him. The tribal economy is undergoing a rigourous transition from a resource-based economy to a monetary-economy. The resource economy with abundance of resources has made tribal livelihoods largely sustainable in their habitat. Their livelihood practices involving forest produce collection, agriculture, animal husbandry is now becoming a thing of the past.
This paper with anthropological data collected by the researcher seeks to understand this phenomenon where the loss of resources for the tribal actually takes away their indigenousness and places them among the utterly vulnerable sections of the society. Consequently, inaccessibility to resources, erosion of traditional knowledge and loss of habitat is leading to a severe livelihood transition.
