Dongria Kondh of Niyamgiri: Where forests, food and faith shape daily life

A recent account has offered an intimate portrait of the Dongria Kondh, one of India's 75 Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs), whose lives across a...

What Happened

A recent account has offered an intimate portrait of the Dongria Kondh, one of India's 75 Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs), whose lives across approximately 120 settlements in the Niyamgiri hills of Odisha's Kalahandi and Rayagada districts are organised around the forest as a living, sacred system.
The Dongria Kondh's food system is built on the forest: wild mango, pineapple, jackfruit, honey, and a diverse range of Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) are gathered through the year alongside traditional podu (shifting) cultivation of millets, tubers, and other crops on forest clearings.
Faith and ecology are inseparable in Dongria Kondh cosmology: the hills themselves are sacred, and the ancestral deity Niyam Raja is understood as the divine protector of the Niyamgiri landscape — making land alienation not merely an economic displacement but a spiritual rupture.
Medicinal knowledge is embedded in forest practice: the community uses rare plants found in the hills to treat arthritis, malaria, snake bites, bone fractures, and dysentery, constituting a living repository of traditional ecological knowledge.
The Dongria Kondh speak Kuvi, a Dravidian language without a script, with female literacy at approximately 3% — highlighting the deep education and development gap.
The community's ongoing battle against external extractive pressures in the Niyamgiri hills has given rise to one of India's most significant legal precedents on tribal rights and community consent.

Static Topic Bridges

Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs): Definition and Policy

Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) are a sub-category within Scheduled Tribes that the Government of India has identified as facing greater vulnerability — characterised by a declining or stagnant population, pre-agricultural technology, extremely low literacy, and a subsistence economy. The designation was originally introduced by the Dhebar Commission (1960), and the category was renamed from "Primitive Tribal Groups" (PTGs) to PVTGs in 2006.

Currently, 75 PVTGs are recognised across 18 states and one Union Territory in India.
Odisha has the largest number of PVTGs among all states — 13 groups, including the Dongria Kondh.
The Dongria Kondh have a population of approximately 10,000 distributed across ~120 settlements in the Niyamgiri Hills at altitudes up to 5,000 feet.
The PVTG category triggers access to the Development of Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups scheme — a centrally sponsored scheme providing housing, livelihood, education, health, and infrastructure support.

Connection to this news: Understanding the PVTG classification explains why the Dongria Kondh's concerns carry special constitutional and policy weight: these are communities identified by the state itself as the most at-risk tribal populations, whose loss of forest access has existential — not merely economic — consequences.

Forest Rights Act, 2006 (FRA): Community and Individual Rights

The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, known as the Forest Rights Act (FRA), recognises and vests two broad categories of rights in forest-dwelling communities: individual forest rights (right to cultivate land occupied before 2005) and community forest rights (right to protect, manage, and use community forest resources, including NTFPs). The FRA also creates a mechanism — the Gram Sabha — through which forest communities can collectively govern their forest territories.

Community Forest Resource (CFR) rights under Section 3(1)(i) of the FRA allow a Gram Sabha to manage and protect forests within their traditional boundaries.
The FRA requires that prior informed consent of the Gram Sabha be obtained for any diversion of forest land within areas where community rights have been established.
NTFPs (Non-Timber Forest Products): Under the FRA, community members have the right to collect, use, and sell NTFPs (except bamboo, tendu patta, and other items separately regulated by some states).
The FRA has been described as India's attempt to "undo a historical injustice" — rectifying colonial-era forest laws that stripped tribal communities of rights they had practised for centuries.

Connection to this news: The Dongria Kondh's entire subsistence — food gathering, podu cultivation, medicinal plant use, spiritual practice — falls squarely within the rights recognised and protected under the FRA, 2006. The article's portrait is simultaneously a documentation of what these rights look like in practice.

The Supreme Court's 2013 judgment in the Vedanta/Niyamgiri mining case is one of India's most consequential decisions on tribal rights and environmental governance. Vedanta Resources sought to mine bauxite from the Niyamgiri plateau — a proposal that would have directly affected the Dongria Kondh's sacred hills and subsistence system. The Supreme Court, invoking the Forest Rights Act, 2006, directed the Odisha government to place the question before the Gram Sabhas of affected villages, giving the communities the power to decide.

Supreme Court order: April 18, 2013 — the Gram Sabha process was directed to be completed within three months.
All 12 Gram Sabhas voted against the mining project (final vote: August 19, 2013).
The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) formally rejected Vedanta's environmental clearance in January 2014 on the basis of the Gram Sabha decisions.
The case established that religious and cultural rights of tribal communities — including their relationship with sacred natural sites — are protected under both the FRA, 2006 and the Constitution's right to life (Article 21).

Connection to this news: The Niyamgiri hills that appear in this article as a landscape of food and faith are the same hills at the centre of the landmark 2013 judgment — the community's cultural ecology is not incidental background but the very subject of constitutional protection in Indian law.

Fifth Schedule of the Constitution: Tribal Area Governance

The Fifth Schedule of the Indian Constitution (under Article 244) provides for the administration of "Scheduled Areas" — regions with significant tribal populations across ten states, including Odisha. It vests special powers in the Governor of each state to make regulations for the "peace and good government" of scheduled areas, including the power to restrict transfer of tribal land to non-tribals, regulate money-lending, and apply or modify parliamentary laws. The Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (PESA) further extends local self-governance rights to Gram Sabhas in scheduled areas.

Fifth Schedule states: Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, and Telangana.
PESA, 1996: Gram Sabhas in scheduled areas have rights to manage natural resources, approve development projects, and control land use within their jurisdiction.
The Niyamgiri Hills fall within a scheduled area in Odisha — making both Fifth Schedule protections and PESA applicable in addition to the FRA.
Implementation gaps remain: studies consistently document that Fifth Schedule and PESA protections are poorly enforced, leaving tribal communities vulnerable to land alienation.

Connection to this news: The constitutional and legal architecture built around scheduled areas — Fifth Schedule, PESA, and FRA — was designed precisely to protect communities like the Dongria Kondh. The Niyamgiri story, and this portrait of Dongria Kondh life, are case studies in both the power of these protections when enforced and the fragility when they are not.

Key Facts & Data

Dongria Kondh population: approximately 10,000 across ~120 settlements in Niyamgiri Hills, Odisha (Kalahandi and Rayagada districts).
PVTG status: one of 75 PVTGs across India; Odisha has 13 PVTGs — the highest among all states.
Literacy: overall literacy below 10%; female literacy approximately 3%.
Language: Kuvi (Dravidian family), no script.
Forest Rights Act, 2006: recognises individual and community forest rights; Gram Sabha is the decision-making unit.
Niyamgiri SC judgment: April 18, 2013 — 12/12 Gram Sabhas voted against Vedanta mining.
MoEFCC rejection of Vedanta clearance: January 2014.
Fifth Schedule (Article 244): applicable to 10 states including Odisha; special governance protections for tribal areas.
NTFPs gathered: wild mango, pineapple, jackfruit, honey, medicinal herbs (for malaria, arthritis, snake bites).
Niyamgiri Hills altitude: settlements up to 5,000 feet above sea level.