The traditional Gounder belt is the area now known as Kongu Nadu. Cocerned scientists have warned the community to have atleast two children per family to maintain steady trends. We have to remember that no government eternally is steady to guarentee safety and there is always a safety in numbers. Thus Gounders are silently slipping into political and demographical doom though outwardly they seem to prosper. This self centered lifestyle has resulted in the undesirable increase of egotic personalities unwilling to unite even at the most demanding situations. This materialist lifestyle has resulted in the steady decline of the Gounders to 10% of the total state population from the pre-independence 25%. Thus the community is losing its identity and distinct culture due to over adherence to norms. These single children from the lonely nuclear families (which includes the family of the author himself) have become lonely isolated and self-centered individuals popularly called ''islands''. This along with the nuclear families concept has made the individual families prosper though shattering many of the age old cherished values of Gounders. Now the estimates stand around a near hundred.Today one can see single child families in thousands of their families thereby might be credited as the only caste in India having reverse growth ratio thus projected to lose its majority status in the region.

When the government announced the two children norm, the Gounders were already having upto 80% of single child families. The child control measures started from the pre-independence era, mostly as a localised phenomenon due to high economic growth.

This is even before the government launched popular population control measures which has surprised the social scientists. The Gounders have however reached this level coming down from 1/4th of the total state popualtion during the British Raj. The population surpasses that of the other landed castes as a single mass unit. There have also been some exaggerated estimates from about one to one and a half crore people of the caste. Unofficial population estimates give figures around the seventy to eighty lakh margin. The Gounders are the single largest agrarian and intra-marriagable caste hailing from the Kongunadu (Sans: Ganganadu) region which forms the western part of the present linguistically organised Tamilnadu state. The readers are advised to have a prior reading of the author's blog on Kongu history before going through this blog for easing their strain. The author of this blog, himself a Gounder belongs to the Elumathur Panangadai clan, seeks to venture at the various facets of the inseperable Gounder and Kongu histories. The secrets for such a developed region go back to the Gounder caste which mostly go unresearched partly due to the heavy stench of ideological biases of contemperory Tamil historians and partly due to the jelousey and the resulting fear of the caste itself. This region supports the Tamil Nadu state from economic collapse and single handedly manages its fame. They have been instrumental in the welfare of the Kongunadu zone, which is predominantly rainfed but blest with a cooler tropical plateau climate.

The Kongu Vellala Gounders are appreciated for their varied qualities like untiring hardwork, objective nature, high moderation, honesty, humanitarian spirit, commitment, philanthrophy, strong bonding, innovative mind and reliability. The Gounders have been credited by many as unique among the other caste groups of the region and southern India as a whole. The history of the Kongu Vellala Gounder caste is one of the most obscure along with the history of the Kongunadu region itself.

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