Their dress is scanty, consisting of a compromise between a langoti (a loincloth) and a dhoti, a strip of cloth wound tightly round the waist in rope-like folds and passed between the legs with the spare end hanging down in front below the knees.

A curved knife with a brass mounted handle is stuck into the waist cloth and, from the shoulder dangles the ever handy axe without which a Gond seldom moves.

Seen in the glow of a huge log fire, glinting on the shining beads and barbaric ornaments of the dancers, with the throb of the drums and the beat of many feet moving in unison to the wild music of the voices in chorus, a Madia dance is a spectacle not easily forgotten, but lingers as a characteristic scene when other details have faded out of the memory.

According to the excise arrangements now in force in that area, each individual applicant is granted Toddy licence for tapping trees ranging from 1 to 5 for domestic consumption.

They are safe in their offices or hideouts," a resident of Bhamragad is mentioned saying in the article.The police are quoted as saying that The Communist Part of India (Maoist) has around 250 full-time members and 3,000-odd local supporters.

Despite the constant fear, Adivasis do agree that naxalites have forced contractors to give them higher wages for tendu leaves collected and bamboo cut.

The possibility of justice and action against their exploiters – the forest department, the police, the government, the contractors, makes the Madia Gonds sympathise with the naxals.

[15] Tendu patta, or the leaves of the Diospyros melanoxylon[16] (an ebony tree with date-like fruit) in which tobacco is rolled to make beedis; is for the poor in this impoverished eastern Maharashtra district a crucial source of livelihood.

In no time the forests are transformed into a beehive of activity, with small armies of women and children plucking tendu leaves with assembly-line precision.

The day's collection of tendu patta is taken to the market or phad at around 4.30 pm and laid out in long, neat rows that stretch for acres in sun-baked fields or dry riverbeds.

[18] the board of trustees recognizes their enhancing the capacity of the Madia Gonds to adapt positively in today's India, through healing and teaching and other compassionate interventions.

[23] The primitive tribe status of the Madia Gond make them the subject of various studies, such as the following: A Microsatellite diversity was analysed in Gondi language speaking Madia Gonds of Maharashtra and three other Marathi speaking Proto – Australoid tribal groups, to understand their genetic structure and to identify the congruence between language and gene pool.

Allele frequency data at 15 Short tandem repeat (STR) loci in studied tribes was compared with data of 22 Indo-European- and Dravidian-speaking caste and tribal populations using heterozygosity, allele size variance, analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA), GST (Glutathione S-transferase) estimate, PC plot, and Mantel correlation test.

Results demonstrate that Gondi tribes comprising the Madia-Gond, a hunter-gatherer population, harbour lower diversity than Marathi tribal groups, which are culturally and genetically distinct.

The microsatellite variation clearly demonstrates the interplay of sociocultural factors including linguistic, geographical contiguity, and microevolutionary processes in shaping the genetic diversity of populations in contemporary India.

The ongoing struggle engaged by the Madia women against poverty, prejudice, male domination and vested interests in the form of the Naxals, the politicians and the bureaucracy.

[25] The results of the Bench Mark Survey was organised in the tribal area of the Maharashtra State pertinent to the Madia Gond are tabulated hereunder.