Various problems of tribal communities in India

  • Resource exploitation:
    • The policy of liberalization and the new state perceptions of utilization of resources are diametrically opposed to the adivasi worldview of resource exploitation and this divide has only widened further with the intrusion of globalization’s market oriented philosophy of development.
    • The recent rapid technological advancement and unrivalled economic and political strength of world capitalism have created favourable conditions for the evasion and extraction of natural resources from the ecologically fragile territories of tribal people.
    • All available laws those relating to lands, forests, minor forest produce, water resources, etc. restrain people from using forests.
    • Primary resources such as fuel, fodder and minor forest produce which were available free to villagers are today either non-existent or have to be brought commercially.
    • For the Tribals, globalization is associated with rising prices, loss of job security and lack of health care.
  • Displacement:
    • Since the emergence of liberalization, privatization and globalization (LPG), the areas inhabited by tribal population have been subject to various protests due to involuntary displacement.
    • Thus, forced evictions of tribals make way for mammoth capital-intensive development projects have become a distressing routine and ever-increasing phenomenon.
  • Gaps in Rehabilitation:
    • There are gaps in the rehabilitation of the tribal community members displaced by development projects.
    • Only 21 lakh tribal community members have been rehabilitated so far of the estimated 85 lakh persons displaced due to development projects and natural calamities.
  • Varied Problems across communities :
    • Health : For instance, recently Seven adults of the KhariaSavar community died within a span of just two weeks. Their lifespan is approximately 26 years less than the average Indian’s life expectancy.
      • Nearly 10% in West Godavari District are affected by Sickle Cell Anaemia.
    • Alienation : The problems in Red Corridor areas (especially Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh) is governance deficit and unfinished land reforms that has deprived the well being of tribes.
    • There is widespread infighting amongst tribes of North-East for natural resources and also of territorial supremacy.
  • Vested interests:
    • In the name of upgradation of lifestyle of poor indigenous tribal people, the market forces have created wealth for their interests at the cost of livelihood and security of these tribes in the areas.
  • Unemployment:
    • There is a heavy concentration of industrial and mining activities in the central belt. Despite intense industrial activity in the central Indian tribal belt, the tribal employment in modern enterprises is negligible.
    • Apart from the provisions of Apprenticeship Act, there is no stipulation for private or joint sector enterprises to recruit certain percentage of dispossessed tribal workforce.
    • They are forced onto the ever-expanding low paid, insecure, transient and destitute labour market.
    • About 40 per cent of the tribals of central India supplement their income by participating in this distorted and over exploitative capitalist sector.
  • Affecting social life:
    • Many more are slowly crushed into oblivion in their homeland or in urban slums. Their economic and cultural survival is at stake.
    • The globalization behemoth has added new dimensions to the vulnerability of India’s downtrodden by exacerbating their social exclusion, and making large segments of tribal groups also vulnerable and excluded.
  • Leading to subnational movements:
    • Inadequate social and economic infrastructure in areas that have insufficient resources for participation in mainstream development also has been at the root of various “sub-national movements” such as the Jharkhand, Uttarakhand and Bodoland.
  • Tribal women:
    • Tribal forest economy is primarily a women’s economy, and it is women who are most directly affected by the corporate exploitation of their traditional lands.
    • In poverty stricken tribal areas large scale migration has revealed the increasing movement of young women towards urban centres in search of work.
    • Their living conditions are unhygienic, the salary is poor and tribal women are vulnerable to exploitation by unscrupulous agents.
    • There is a large number of anemic women amongst the tribes. There is a shortfall of 6,796 sub-centres, 1,267 primary health centres (PHCs) and 309 community health centres (CHCs) in the tribal areas at an all-India level as on March 31, 2015.
    • They have become the prime targets of sexual violation by managers, supervisors and even fellow male workers in the plantation industrial sectors.
  • Informal jobs:
    • Construction sites, such as mines and quarries, and industrial complexes spelt doom for the local adivasi communities with the influx of immigrant labourers.
  • Cultural Defacement:
    • Tribals are being forcefully integrated in to the society leading to them losing their unique cultural features and their habitat threatened.
  • Isolated Tribes such as Sentinelese as still hostile to outsiders. The government must enforce “eyes on hands off ” policy in these cases.
    • The Jarawa community is facing acute population decline due to entry of outsiders into the area(The Andaman Trunk Road, among other projects, has cut into the heart of the Jarawa reserve).
  • Denotified, semi-nomadic and nomadic tribes are yet to be included as Scheduled Tribes.
    • Their traditional occupations (snake charming, street acrobatics with animals) are now illegal and alternative livelihood options are not provided.
  • Certain tribes have been characterised as Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) (earlier known as Primitive Tribal Groups) on the basis of their greater ’vulnerability’ even among the tribal groups. There are 75 such tribes in India.