Place · tribal hill town · India
Paderu
The hill-town and administrative centre at 850m in the tribal Eastern Ghats of Alluri Sitarama Raju district, Andhra Pradesh, 90 kilometres west of Visakhapatnam. Paderu is the headquarters of the Integrated Tribal Development Agency (ITDA, established 1976) that administers welfare and development programmes for about 500,000 tribal residents of the surrounding Eastern Ghats — Kondh, Konda Reddi, Konda Dora, Porja, Gadaba, Savara and 11 other communities. The 1922-24 Rampa Rebellion led by Alluri Sitarama Raju against British forest laws operated in the hills around Paderu. The town's weekly tribal market and the Khanda forest reserves attract visitors; the 2024 Paderu became an assembly constituency reserved for Scheduled Tribes.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 18.080, 82.670
Connections (2)
- CampaignAlluri Sītārāma Rāju
The Rampa country of the Eastern Ghats rose in 1879 and again under Alluri in 1922, both times against the forest department rather than the revenue department: the reservation of forest, the ban on podu shifting cultivation, and forced labour on road gangs. The agency administration that still governs these hills as a Scheduled Area is the settlement that followed.
- Route adjacencyAraku Valley
Araku and Paderu are the two centres of the Visakhapatnam agency tracts, the hill country where the Rampa risings of 1879 and 1922 were fought over forest reservation and the podu ban, and where the Srikakulam movement began in the 1960s. The same hills, the same grievance about land and forest, three risings in ninety years.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Paderu”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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