Health and Traditional Medicinal Practices among the Hill Kharia of Odisha: Looking through the Anthropological Lens

Health is a big challenge for whole India, whether the tribal or other people. It is a keynote affair in all tribal society. Good health for tribal people has a social, economic and spiritual dimension. Tribal communities are not only economically backward but also have worth health indicators and deprived of modern health care communicable and non-communicable diseases and nutritional deficiency is major health problems in these populations. For the tribals, the concept of diseases and its treatment are diverse as per their cultural values. To the tribals, health, diseases and its treatment, death etc. everything‟s has different meaning but it is interesting noticed that each and every tribal community has belief on both benevolent and malevolent supernatural powers who are responsible for these all. The present paper is an endeavor to explore the repository of indigenous medicines used by the Hill Kharia of a particular village of, Mayurbhanj district, Odisha, India. The study is based on intensive fieldwork applying interview schedule, semi-participant observation, focused group discussion and case studies among the villagers of the studied village.