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The Santals are popularly known as Satars in Nepal, but they prefer themselves to be called a Santal. The total population of Santals in Nepal is 42,698. Out of them, about 93% live in the districts of Jhapa (23,172 individuals) and Morang (16,387 individuals). The remaining population of Santals is distributed in Sunsari and other parts of the Eastern Tarai. In addition to Nepal they also live in India, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. The Santal society is basically egalitarian. Their social life is a shared, ordered and has a defined role of each family member which is based on their traditional village organization and political organization. The Santals of Nepal prefer to live in a nuclear family due to their economic instability, landlessness and poverty. Presently as they live in mixed society of new environment many traditional culture and customs have been diffused in the changing context. The present paper highlights the forces that have brought in changes to the traditions of the Santals in Nepal.

KEYWORDS: Santal. Traditions. Culture change. Jhapa, Morang. Eastern Nepal.

The present study aims to examine the association of social support with the nutrition and instrumental activities of daily living of the oldest-old people of Midnapore Town of West Bengal. 500 individuals (249 males and 251 females) above the age of 80 years have been randomly chosen for the present study. Socio-demographic information has been collected with the help of pre-tested questionnaires. Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) and Instrumental activities of Daily Living (IADL) related data have been collected by universally accepted questionnaires. As no sexual dimorphism has been observed in the prevalence of MNA and IADL categories using chi-square analysis, the data has been pooled for sex. Step-wise logistic regression analyses predict years of living alone and family type as the best predictor of MNA and IADL, respectively. The present study showed that the Oldest-old people were more comfortable in living in nuclear and joint families instead of a broken family.

KEYWORDS: Oldest-old. MNA. IADL. Social Support. Midnapore. West Bengal.

Bastar is the cradle of tribal habitat with distinct territorial enclaves and cultural attributes. The present paper highlights the Muria tribe and their heritage institution – Ghotul (the youth dormitory) and its function on their personality building and imparting the value system of the society. Among many ethical value which were imparted among the inmates of ghotul, one among such was ‘if par chance any drop of blood is oozes on the earth their earth deity, Tallurmuttey, becomes angry and entire village is punished; so they strictly avoid any kind of human bloodshed’. In absence of such an institution, which is now in a shattered shape, it needs to be seen how they cope up with the changing situation. Here is an attempt of social audit with special emphasis to understand the social unrest which in far-off lead to disturb peace and social harmony of the territory.

KEYWORDS: Ma Danteshwari. Ghotul. Akomama. Dadabhai. Tallurmuttey

The Kurmali speaking community in West Bengal is a part of a continuum of the Kurmali belt which exists in northern part of India. The continuum occurs through Jharkhand, Bihar, Odisha and West Bengal. In this paper the kinship terms of Kurmali have been studied from both linguistic and anthropological point of views. Kurmali is an Indo-Aryan language which been comparatively less studied. This paper explores the standard kinship relations and the associated set of kinship terms in Kurmali of West Bengal. The formations of such terms are also elaborated with grammatical analysis. Moreover the present paper has compared the Kurmali kinship terms with Bengali kinship terms as Bengali remains the major language of the area. The comparison is used to explore the contact situation as well as the historical development of Kurmali. The comparison has also been expressed through simple statistical constants. The study is based mainly on primary data collected from Kurmi community of Purulia district of West Bengal, India. This study shows that there are eight terms for core consanguineal relations in Kurmali. There are no sex and age neutral terms in Kurmali which are found in English like parents, brother, sister, etc.

KEYWORDS: Kinship, Kurmali, Anthropo-linguistics, Indo-Aryan language

The objective of the study is to explore and analyze issues related to equity and gender as an integral component of the Forest Resource Management System of Nepal. The aim is to add knowledge about equity and gender issues in community forestry programs launched at the grassroots level. Women’s participation in formulation of constitution and operational plans, participation in executive committees, participation in general meetings, participation in community forest protection, participation in plantation activities, participation in forest product harvesting, participation in fund mobilization, participation in training and educational tours, gender roles in decision making process, women’s awareness and attitudes regarding forest management have been elaborately discussed. Women’s participation in forest related activities such as forest product collection is very high but due to the lack of knowledge, household burden and some socio-cultural norms and values, there is low participation in executive committees and fully absent in preparing constitutions, operational plans and decision making roles. Many factors are responsible for affecting women’s participation in forestry, which include socio-cultural restrictions, gender role and lack of knowledge It is essential to empower women in each and every aspect of community forest related activities and actions operated at the grassroots level.

KEYWORDS: Forest. Resource. Women. Community. Baglung. Nepal.

Obesity is a condition in which abnormal or excessive fat accumulation in adipose tissue impairs health. It is a complex, multifactorialand largely preventable disease affectingalong with overweight over a third of the world’s population today. If secular trends continue, by the year 2030, an estimated 38% of the world’s adult population would be overweight and another 20% would be obese. Obesity and its repercussions constitute an important source of morbidity, impaired quality of life and its complications can have a major bearing on life expectancy. Considering these issues, the present study highlights the prevalence of obesity and morbidity among 258 adult Moria Muslim and also tries to understand the association of obesity with self-reported morbidity. The present study has observed that self-reported morbidity and obesity were persistently higher among the females as compared to the males irrespective of the types of morbidities.

KEYWORDS: Nutrition. BMI Obesity. Morbidity Muslim, Assam.

Migration is a product of social, cultural, economic and/or physical circumstances in which individuals and societies find themselves entrenched. After the partition of India a good number of Theravadi Bengali Buddhists (Baruas) started migrating from Chittagong of present-day Bangladesh to India and settled mostly in West Bengal, Tripura and Assam. The present generation Baruas of North Bengal migrated here during the time of Bangladesh War of Liberation in 1971. Buddhist Baruas are a religious minority and associated with Magh tribal identity. Behind the term Magh there is a Arakan-Burmese influence and history of long, arduous journey from the present Bihar state (Magadha) and other parts of Northern India to Chittagong. But what trajectory they followed in settling in this part of the country? Before India’s independence, Chittagong was inhabited by Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Burmese, Arakanese, Bengalis, Tripuris, Portuguese and British. It is said that from these people the root of present Baruas are traced. Then how they could retain their Bengali language heritage while following a tortuous course of periodic dislocation from one place to the other? An attempt has been made to demystify these paradoxes by tracing their origins down to their present location and unravel the patterns of migration they followed, commenting on their ethno-religious peculiarities.

KEYWORDS: Migratory Movement. Theravadi Buddhists. Magh-Baruas. Religious Minority.

A schedule based cross-sectional study was executed among 533 mothers aged 17- 49 years to find out the influence of biological societal elements such as age at marriage, birth order, consanguinity, same clan marriage, blood group compatibility, admixture rate, etc. on infant and child mortality among the Zou, a tribal population of Manipur state of Northeast India. The findings show that age at marriage, age group of the mother and ABO incompatible have shown significant associations with infant and child mortality.

KEYWORDS: Biological elements. Infant, child, mortality. Zou.

Dermatoglyphics, also known as fingerprinting, is study of patterns of epidermal ridges on palmar and plantar surfaces of the hands and feet. It has been developed as a useful tool towards the understanding of some basic questions in biology, medicine, genetics, evolution and personal identification. Grew, Bidloo, Malpighi, Purkinje, Azizul Haque and Hem Chandra Bose and many other researchers were pioneers of the scientific study of fingerprinting. Dermatoglyphics has been extensively applied in different fields such as in the study of population variation, disease association, disputed paternity and among the non-human primates. Researchers from India have made significant contributions in the field of dermatoglyphics. The present paper is an attempt to document the development of dermatoglyphics with special reference to India.

KEYWORDS: Dermatoglyphics, Fingerprint, History, Applications, India