QUES. Critically examine how India’s development process has affected tribes across India.

RELEVANCE – GS MAINS PAPER I ; TOPIC – Salient features of Indian Society, Diversity of India. Role of women and women’s organization, population and associated issues, poverty and developmental issues, urbanization, their problems and their remedies. Effects of globalization on Indian society, Social empowerment, communalism, regionalism & secularism.

HINTS :

The tribal population of India since the British era has faced some sort of discrimination or the other be it with respect to ignoring their developmental needs, or depriving them of control over the forest resources.

Post Independence, Nehru in his Tribal Panchsheel policy envisioned holistic development of tribes without forcing them to be assimilated in mainstream. However even today the problems faced by the tribal population is huge and requires focused attention.

The nationalistic developmental goals have following impact on the tribal population:

1 . National development, particularly in the Nehruvian era, involved the building of large dams, factories and mines. Because the tribal areas were located in mineral rich and forest covered parts of the country, tribals have paid a disproportionate price for the development of the rest of Indian society. This kind of development has benefited the mainstream at the expense of the tribes.

The process of dispossessing tribals of their land has occurred as a necessary byproduct of the exploitation of minerals and the utilisation of favourable sites for setting up hydroelectric power plants, many of which were in tribal areas

2 . The loss of the forests on which most tribal communities depended has been a major blow. Forests started to be systematically exploited in British times and the trend continued after Independence. The coming of private property in land has also adversely affected tribals, whose community-based forms of collective ownership were placed at a disadvantage in the new system.

The most recent such example is the series of dams being built on the Narmada, where most of the costs and benefits seem to flow disproportionately to different communities and regions

3 . Many tribal concentration regions and states have also been experiencing the problem of heavy in-migration of non-tribals in response to the pressures of development. This threatens to disrupt and overwhelm tribal communities and cultures, besides accelerating the process of exploitation of tribals. The industrial areas of Jharkhand for example have suffered a dilution of the tribal share of population. But the most dramatic cases are probably in the North-East. A state like Tripura had the tribal share of its population halved within a single decade, reducing them to a minority

4 . Many of the states of the North-East, for example, have been living for decades under special laws that limit the civil liberties of citizens. Thus, citizens of states like Manipur or Nagaland don’t have the same rights as other citizens of India because their states have been declared as ‘disturbed areas’.

The vicious circle of armed rebellions provoking state repression which in turn fuels further rebellions
has taken a heavy toll on the economy, culture and society of the North-eastern states

The Constitution and government have undertaken several steps to ensure that fruits of development reach to each and every strata of society. These steps are:

Certain tribal dominated areas fall under Schedule 5 and Schedule 6 of the Constitution where the Gram Sabha and the Tribal Committees have greater autonomy to decide on issues which affect them

Extension of PESA to Schedule 5 areas to give Gram Sabhas the control over usage of forest resources, land right management, lending of money etc is a positive step

To grant statutory protection to tribal rights over management of forest resources, government has enacted the Forest Rights Act, 2006

The government has come up with the National Rehabilitation Policy to deal with people displaced by construction of dams etc

In Spite of these positive steps, the Virginius Xaxa Committee highlighted that problems of tribals population continue as the constitutional and statutory safeguards for them are not implemented properly. The dilution of Forest Rights Act by some state governments is a regressive measure.

The health situation of tribal population continue to remain poor. This shows that a lot more empowerment of tribal population is required in the country