RAMPACHODAVARAM: Startling as it might appear, tribals don’t drink milk. And the reason they attribute to their collective abstention is that they do not want the calves to starve. No wonder milk consumption is considered a sin in tribal habitations.

Endowed with good cattle population, the Agency area of Rampachodavaram is home to a number of tribes that neither neither consume milk or sell it to the people of the plains. It also comes as a surprise why tribals rear only cows and not the buffaloes.

This rather strange habit has had a telling effect on the general health of tribals making them them less resistant to disease besides rendering them undernourished.

A tribale elder Kattula Sankureddy of Ramannavalasa, an interior tribal village, 40 km from here, argues that a just as a mother feeds her child with her milk so does the cow to the calf.

“We consider it as a sin and leave the whole milk for the calf. All the 65 families in the village have cows but they never consume or sell milk,” says he. A majority of tribals prefer their traditional livelihood and depend on forest products which they sell to the Girijan Cooperative Society.

Sankureddy further said that they eat jowar porridge (jonna ambali) and go for collection of forest products or hunting. He said the tribals trek nearly 5 km to 10 km three times a day to have `Jeelugu Kallu’ as there would be no agricultural work including `Podu’ till February.

Rampachodavaram Additional DM&HO P Syam Prasad and medical officer Neeraja said that deficiency of nutrients was found more among tribals. As they consume more quantity of toddy, there is a threat of fall in glucose levels in some cases and they reach hospital in an unconscious stage. They said many tribals were found anaemic and deficient in calcium and iron.

Though the State Government has been boasting of welfare programmes for tribals, the trib pvkrao@epmltd.com als are still suffering from disease cand deficiency of nutrients.