Structure of Family Among the Baiga Tribe of Chhattisgarh, India

Introduction: Anthropological principles, in the study of the family certain paradigms provide the base. Among such paradigms, one that plays a key role is the number of members in that family. Baiga is one of the five identified primitive tribes of Chhattisgarh. They are mostly inhabited in Kabirdham and Bilaspur districts of Chhattisgarh. Baigas could consider themselves a Narotrias, Barotrias, Binjhwars, or Bhumias-all endogamous Baiga group names- Bhumia had other meanings. Baiga considered themselves Bhumia or "lords of the soil. Objectives: Objectives of the present study were to explore the type of families on the various theoretical bases and to know how the families structure of the Baiga help their "primitive" aspects of life.

Methodology: The universe of our sample is 400 married Baiga males belonging to age 18-49 year from Bodla and Pandariya tehsils of Kabirdham district of Chhattisgarh, India. In the present study multi-stage and stratified random sampling method were followed. Data were collected through structured interview schedule and focused group discussions. The results were analyzed using the 16.0 SPSS package.

Results: As per the findings the 400 respondents' families, out of them the majority (90.2%) of families pertain to nuclear type. In a Baiga family the mean number of family members comes to 5.23 ± 1.955. The mean number of male members was 2.64 ± 1.360, whereas, the mean number of female members was 2.61±1.293. Between the two the estimated sex ratio was 988.66/1000. In Baiga, two main residential patterns are prominently noticed. Out of the two, the Neolocal residential pattern was the greater number (53.8%) whereas the second, patrilocal residential pattern was 43.8% - a lesser number.

Conclusion: The result makes the point clear that from structural perspective the Baiga families are nuclear families even to this new millennium, which characterize 'primitiveness' as one of their main features, as post marriage neolocal residence pattern is found. On the basis of number of family members, the Baigas' families were found moderate size. The observation confirms that the sex ratio in Baiga family is good.