Nomads of India

Nomads are known as a group of communities who travel from place to place for their livelihood. Some are salt traders, fortune-tellers, conjurers, ayurvedic healers, jugglers, acrobats, actors, storytellers, snake charmers, animal doctors, tattooists, grindstone makers, or basketmakers. Some anthropologists have identified about 8 nomadic groups in India, numbering perhaps 1 million people—around 0.12 percent of the country's billion-plus population. Aparna Rao and Michael Casimir estimated that nomads make up around 7% of the population of India.

The nomadic communities in India can be divided into three groups: hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, and the peripatetic or non-food-producing groups. Among these, peripatetic nomads are a neglected and discriminated-against social group in India. They have lost their livelihood because of drastic changes in transport, industries, production, entertainment, and distribution systems. They find pastures for their herders.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.