NEW DELHI: Despite bureaucratic hurdles and financial hardships, a JNU student became the first student to complete a PhD on the Jarawa tribe of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Promod Kumar, who in January confirmed that the video on human safari was a recent one, received the news of his successful completion of his PhD on “Discriptive and typological study of Jarawa” from the JNU vice-chancellor, S K Sopory on Tuesday.Kumar started his study of the Jarawas in 2004under the guidance of senior faculty of Centre for Linguistics, JNU and expert on languages of Andaman Islands, professor Anvita Abbi and director of Max Planck Institute, Bernard Comrie.Speaking about his research, Kumar said, “This is the first ever descriptive study about the grammar of Jarawa language and to place them in typological framework. I spent four year in studying their language. I stayed with the Jarawas for over two years learning their language. I recorded their language and understood it through various methods like pictures of body parts, birds, animals and studying their daily activities and sign languages.”Recounting how he became a part of the Jarawa community, as till that time this tribe hardly came in contact with the outside world, Kumar said, “The elders of the community used to go for hunting and collecting food. During this time the young ones are left with female members. Once a kid was crying and seeing that no one is attending her, I picked her up. When her mother returned she was thankful for my gesture and gradually they started accepting me as part of their community.”Kumar had to face a lot of hardships in getting permissions. “Despite the SC guidelines, things are still not implemented in the right manner. On one hand researchers are not given permission and on the other illegal human safaris are happening,” rued Kumar.On the significance of the research, Abbi said, “This is the first and only document on Jarawa language. It is significant as for the first time we came to know of the structure of the language and opened world of looking into Austronesian language family.”