Vol. 5 · No. 1 · 2001 · pp. 154-167 (14)

V. Arivudai Nambi

Introduction

Transhumant and nomadic animal husbandry is a widely practised strategy in the whole of South Asia. As a response to a seasonal resource scarcity in one region, most transhumant and nomadic communities move in search of feed and water for their herds or flocks of sheep, goats, cattle and camels. This paper is a study of such nomadic herders in southern India who move with an as yet little documented type of herd-ducks. These families migrate across vast tracts, relying largely on modern technologies, credit arrangements and markets. Cultivation by farmers of short duration high yielding varieties of paddy, roads and transport networks, credit arrangements, incubator hatched eggs, markets for sale of their eggs and meat are some of the modern technologies around which their nomadism is built. Thus, although natural resource based, several technological and financial inputs are crucial for this form of animal husbandry, and indeed this form of herd management is a recent development that has only come into existence in the last twenty-five years. Data used in this paper were collected at various times between March 1987 (Vania 1994) and February 2000 from fourteen districts in the southern Indian province of Tamil Nadu, in addition to information obtained from eight nomadic duck herders and from two egg sellers/financiers at Polur and Arni towns of Thiruvannamalai District.