Tribal development: displacement and rehabilitation

The first principle

Tribal communities live where India keeps much of its land, forests, minerals and rivers, so the nation's development projects and tribal people's lives meet on the same ground. When development takes that ground without consent or fair rehabilitation, tribal people bear its costs while others enjoy its gains. Tribal development is therefore a question of who decides about the land, but it is also, like all development, about schooling, health, livelihood and dignity, and a good answer must hold both of these together.

The core

Three approaches to tribal development

• Isolation. Verrier Elwin, in The Loss of Nerve (1941), argued that contact with outsiders had brought debt, land loss and cultural decay, so tribal areas should be protected, a position critics called the "national park" approach.
• Assimilation. G S Ghurye, in The Aborigines "So Called" and Their Future (1943), saw tribes as "backward Hindus" who should be absorbed into the mainstream, which risked erasing their identity.
• Integration. Independent India chose a middle path: tribes would develop and join national life while keeping their culture, land and self governance. This is written into the Fifth and Sixth Schedules and Article 46.

Nehru's tribal Panchsheel

• In his foreword to Elwin's A Philosophy for NEFA, Jawaharlal Nehru set out five principles: people should develop along the lines of their own genius; tribal rights in land and forests should be respected; tribal people should be trained to run their own administration and development; tribal areas should not be over administered or overwhelmed by schemes; and results should be judged by the quality of human character, not by money spent.

Planning for tribal areas

• The Tribal Sub Plan, introduced in the Fifth Five Year Plan (1974), required ministries and states to earmark funds for tribal areas in proportion to the Scheduled Tribe (ST) population. After plan and non plan spending were merged in 2017, it continues as the Development Action Plan for Scheduled Tribes (DAPST), under which 41 central ministries and departments earmark funds. Its weakness has been that money was often notionally allocated, spent on general works or left unspent.

Dimensions

Development induced displacement

• Dams, mines, industries, roads and protected areas need land, and most of that land is in tribal areas: the Scheduled Tribes are 8.6 per cent of India's population (Census 2011), yet the scholar Walter Fernandes estimated that about 6 crore people were displaced or affected by projects between 1947 and 2004, of whom about 40 per cent were tribal.
• The Xaxa Committee (2014), chaired by Virginius Xaxa, found that displacement was the single largest cause of tribal impoverishment, that most displaced tribal families had not been rehabilitated, and that land was often taken in violation of the Fifth Schedule and PESA. It recommended that consent of the gram sabha be mandatory and that tribal land be acquired only as a last resort.
• Displacement impoverishes in a chain. The sociologist Michael Cernea identified the risks as landlessness, joblessness, homelessness, marginalisation, food insecurity, illness, loss of common property, and social disarticulation. Tribal families suffer more than others because many hold land by custom, without a title (patta), and so are not counted as "project affected", and because forest produce and commons, which are never compensated, are central to their living. Women lose most, as they lose forest income and are left out of cash compensation paid to men.
• Examples include the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada, the Hirakud dam in Odisha, coal mining in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, and relocations from tiger reserves such as Kanha and Similipal.

In practice

Laws and policies on acquisition and rehabilitation

• National Rehabilitation and Resettlement Policy, 2007 (Ministry of Rural Development): required a social impact assessment for projects displacing 400 or more families in plain areas or 200 in tribal and hill areas, gave land for land where possible, and named a rehabilitation administrator. It was a policy, not a law, so it was weakly enforced.
• Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act (RFCTLARR), 2013 (Ministry of Rural Development): replaced the Land Acquisition Act, 1894. It requires the consent of 80 per cent of affected families for private projects and 70 per cent for public private partnerships, a social impact assessment, compensation of up to four times market value in rural areas, and a rehabilitation and resettlement package for both owners and livelihood losers. In Scheduled Areas acquisition is a last resort, needs gram sabha consent, and tribal families must get land for land and resettlement in the same area as far as possible.
• Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA), 1996 (Ministry of Panchayati Raj): the gram sabha must be consulted before land is acquired and before resettlement, and owns minor forest produce.
• Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act (FRA), 2006 (Ministry of Tribal Affairs): recognises individual and community forest rights, and no one can be evicted until the rights process is complete.

Judgements

• Samatha v State of Andhra Pradesh (1997): land in Scheduled Areas cannot be leased to private, non tribal mining companies, since the state itself counts as a "person" barred from transferring such land.
• Orissa Mining Corporation v Ministry of Environment and Forests (2013), the Niyamgiri case: the gram sabhas of the Dongria Kondh must decide whether bauxite mining would harm their religious and cultural rights under the FRA; all twelve gram sabhas rejected the project.

Recent schemes

• Pradhan Mantri Janjati Adivasi Nyaya Maha Abhiyan (PM JANMAN), November 2023 (Ministry of Tribal Affairs): about ₹24,000 crore over three years for 75 Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) across 18 states and one Union Territory, covering houses, roads, water, electricity, health, schooling and livelihood in their habitations.
• Dharti Aaba Janjatiya Gram Utkarsh Abhiyan, September 2024 (Ministry of Tribal Affairs): aims to saturate about 63,000 tribal majority villages with 25 interventions through 17 ministries, reaching about 5 crore tribal people.

Does tribal development centre only on displacement and rehabilitation?

• Yes, in large part. Tribal regions hold most of the country's coal, iron ore and bauxite, most dense forest and many dam sites, so displacement has been the most visible way the nation has touched tribal life. Most protective laws and landmark judgements arose from land conflicts, and since rehabilitation has so often failed, tribal unrest in central India, including the spread of left wing extremism, is closely tied to it.
• No, not only. Tribal literacy was 59 per cent against a national 73 per cent in 2011, tribal children have the highest rates of stunting and child mortality, sickle cell disease is concentrated among tribes, and forest rights under the FRA, minor forest produce prices and self governance under PESA shape daily life more than any single project. Identity, language and culture (covered in the note on tribal communities) are also central. Even in tribal districts with no large project, poverty remains high, which shows that displacement is only one axis.
• A balanced view. Displacement and rehabilitation have shaped tribal development and remain its sharpest test, but a sound policy rests on several axes: land and forest rights, education in the mother tongue, health, livelihoods and self governance, with consent at the centre of all of them.

Issues and way forward

• Consent turned into consultation. Gram sabha resolutions are often manipulated or ignored; the Xaxa Committee recommended that consent be binding and recorded openly.
• Weak implementation of FRA. Many community forest rights claims are rejected or pending; the Ministry of Tribal Affairs has urged states to review rejections and map community forest resources.
• Rehabilitation without livelihood. Cash compensation is spent quickly; land for land, jobs and a share in project revenue, as with the District Mineral Foundations under the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2015, give lasting income.
• Underused funds. Spending under DAPST must be tracked by outcomes in tribal areas, as the Xaxa Committee urged.
• Health and schooling. Eklavya Model Residential Schools and the National Sickle Cell Anaemia Elimination Mission (2023) need trained local staff and teaching in tribal languages in early grades.

Common confusions

• Displacement and resettlement. Displacement is the loss of home and land; resettlement is physical relocation; rehabilitation is the restoration of livelihood and community, which is the hard part.
• Fifth and Sixth Schedules. The Fifth covers Scheduled Areas in most states through Governors and Tribes Advisory Councils; the Sixth gives autonomous district councils in Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram.
• Tribal Sub Plan and DAPST. They are the same idea; the name changed after the 2017 budget reform.
• PVTGs and Scheduled Tribes. PVTGs are 75 of the most vulnerable Scheduled Tribe groups, identified by pre agricultural technology, low literacy and stagnant or declining population.

For the exam

• Keyword bank: isolation, assimilation, integration, tribal Panchsheel, DAPST, development induced displacement, impoverishment risks, social impact assessment, gram sabha consent, RFCTLARR, PESA, FRA, Samatha, Niyamgiri, PVTGs, PM JANMAN.
• Previous year questions: Practise the previous year questions on this topic →
• Use in an answer:
  • Introduction (data): Scheduled Tribes are 8.6 per cent of India's people, yet scholarly estimates put them at about 40 per cent of those displaced by development projects since Independence.
  • Introduction (judgement or report): In the Niyamgiri case (2013), the Supreme Court let the gram sabhas of the Dongria Kondh decide on bauxite mining, and all twelve said no, showing that consent can change the course of development.
  • Conclusion: Tribal development must move from treating tribal land as a resource to treating tribal people as decision makers, in line with Nehru's Panchsheel and the gram sabha powers of PESA and the FRA.
  • Conclusion: Displacement and rehabilitation are the sharpest test of tribal policy, but development will be real only when schooling, health, forest rights and self governance advance together.