Reproductive Life of the Bhatra Women of Bastar,

Abstract: The present study embraces the reproductive performance among the Austric-speaking proto Astraloid tribe of Bhatras of Bastar district in Chhattisgarh of central India, which is based on the reproductive history of 359 ever married women. Efforts have been made to determine fertility reproductive index and fertility of women completed reproductive age along with their mean age at menarche, mean age at marriage and age at first child birth among the Bhatra tribe and also to examine reproductive status of Bhatra women with compare to other tribal women of India. The present study indicate that the proportion of survinging children, abortion and still born is higher than others, While the reproductive wastage is the highest at 7th birth order (14.28%). The proportion of reproductive wastage is found to be 8.46 percent as compared to 91.53 % of survinging children among Bhatra tribe. However the average number of children born per mother is observed to be 3.06 which is higher than pahira of Bihar and Andamanese. The net reproductive index (1.22) is observed to be higher than Bhoksa, pahira, Kond, Gadaba and Andamanese where as the average no. of children born per mother of completed fertility is 3.78 higher than Gadaba of Bastar only