Kotta is a kind of traditional bamboo basket that the Kadar ethnic people use. They are an indigenous forest-dwelling people who live in the Anamalai hills of Tamil Nadu. The Kadar has earned a reputation for coexisting with the forest and leading a sustainable lifestyle, crafting such useful tools as Kottas from easily available natural resources around their habitat.
The making of this basket is with strips of reed, a forms material-being quite flexible and light in weight which requires quick weaving. Its structure being roundish and square at the base, it gives spaciousness and stability at the same time. Unlike other tribal baskets, the Kotta has its structure very loosely woven; being thus, it makes ventilation possible and can be used for temporary storage or even transporting what requires ventilation, such as leaves, busts, or collected forest debris.
Its simplicity and lightness made the Kotta gain its value in the highly functional lives of people in the Kadar community in the forest. It matters during food collection, paper design transportation, or inside the house: the Kotta looks less like a domestic instrument. The open weave again is valid for the practical knowledge possessed by the tribe concerning the properties of materials and their usage according to the context.
The basket is not just an instrument of the daily life of the Kadar, but it bears also the history of the co-existence of the Kadar with nature, passed down through the forebears.