Environmental Issues and the Resulting Cultural Changes – A Study in the Hilly Tribal Ecosystem

Tribal communities have deep connection to environment because they have a greater dependency on natural resources. When the natural environment is altered, it disproportionately affects the tribal life. Overburdened with the environmental issues, they have problem of change in culture and further facing lot of health hazards. Hence, the present study was taken up to document the cultural changes occurring due to the changes in natural environment and to identify the probable causes of factors responsible for each issue. For documentation of the issues, the Nilgiri district of Tamil Nadu was selected considering the highest proportion of tribal population in the district. Ex-post facto research design was used. Totally there were seven major cultural changes have been identified viz., changes in the regular food habits, changes in the health management practices, changes in the dressing pattern, remarkable changes in the celebration of family festivals and ceremonies, changes in the housing pattern, disappearance of traditional utensils and changes in the water use tradition. For the above identified cultural changes, probable responsible factors were also identified and ranked by employing Garrett ranking method.