“I will never go back,” said Madakam Adama, referring to his home in Chhattisgarh’s Gedampal village, which he last saw 13 years ago, in 2006. Adama, who looks about 60 but says he is 45, now lives in Kota Namilipeta, a settlement of 27 mud-walled houses in the middle of a forest in Andhra Pradesh’s West Godavari district.
Adama is among the thousands of Adivasis (tribal, indigeneous people) displaced from their homes and villages in southern Chhattisgarh. The Adivasis were fleeing violence allegedly inflicted by a state-sponsored militia, the Salwa Judum, soon after it