Tribal development: policy and institutions

The first principle

Tribal communities did not join the Indian state as citizens alone; they came with their own land, forests, customs and ways of governing themselves. Tribal policy therefore has two jobs at once: to bring the benefits of development (schools, health, income) and to protect the community's control over the resources and institutions that make it a community. When the first job crowds out the second, development itself becomes the cause of dispossession, and that tension runs through every law, scheme and institution in this note.

The core

Who is a Scheduled Tribe

• Article 342. The President, after consulting the Governor, notifies the communities that are Scheduled Tribes (STs) in each state or Union territory, and only Parliament can add or remove a community by law. The Constitution gives no criteria; in practice the government follows the Lokur Committee (1965): primitive traits, distinct culture, geographical isolation, shyness of contact and backwardness.
• Numbers. Census 2011 counted about 10.4 crore STs, 8.6 per cent of the population, belonging to more than 700 notified communities.

The constitutional shield

• Protective provisions. Article 46 directs the State to promote the educational and economic interests of STs and protect them from social injustice and exploitation. Articles 15(4), 16(4), 330 and 332 allow reservation in education, jobs and legislatures, and Article 275(1) provides special grants from the Union for ST welfare and for raising the level of administration in scheduled areas.
• Fifth Schedule (Article 244(1)). The President declares scheduled areas, now in ten states. Each such state has a Tribes Advisory Council of up to 20 members, three fourths of them ST members of the state Assembly. The Governor may direct that any Act of Parliament or of the state shall not apply to a scheduled area, or apply with changes, and may make regulations to prohibit transfer of tribal land, regulate allotment of land and control money lending, with the President's assent. The Governor reports every year to the President, and the Union may give directions to the state on administering these areas.
• Sixth Schedule (Articles 244(2) and 275(1)). Tribal areas of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram are run through autonomous district councils, which make laws on land, forests, shifting cultivation, inheritance, marriage and social customs, run village courts and collect certain taxes. The Sixth Schedule therefore gives legislative autonomy, while the Fifth relies on the Governor's protection.
• Institutions. The Ministry of Tribal Affairs was created in October 1999 out of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. The National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST) under Article 338A, created by the Eighty ninth Amendment (2003), investigates safeguards and complaints.

Three ideas of tribal policy

• Isolation. Colonial rule kept many tribal tracts as "excluded" and "partially excluded" areas under the Government of India Act, 1935, and the anthropologist Verrier Elwin at first argued for protecting tribes from outside contact.
• Assimilation. The opposite view, associated with G. S. Ghurye, treated tribes as "backward Hindus" to be absorbed into the mainstream.
• Integration. Jawaharlal Nehru took a middle path in his foreword to Elwin's A Philosophy for NEFA, the tribal Panchsheel: tribes should develop along the lines of their own genius; their rights in land and forests should be respected; their own people should be trained to run administration; areas should not be over administered, and work should go through their own institutions; and results should be judged by the quality of human character evolved, not by statistics or money spent.

Dimensions

• Constitutional and legal. The Fifth Schedule makes the Governor the guardian of scheduled areas, but in practice Governors act on the advice of the state government and have rarely used their power to modify laws.
• Economic. Tribal livelihoods depend on land, forests and minor forest produce, so loss of land to dams, mines and industry has meant loss of income as well as home.
• Political. The Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (PESA) and the Forest Rights Act put the Gram Sabha at the centre, recognising that tribal communities governed themselves through village institutions long before panchayats.
• Social and cultural. Policy has to respect customary law, language and the sacred landscape. The Niyamgiri case turned on the religious and cultural rights of the Dongria Kondh over their hills, not only on the environment.
• Inequality among tribes. The Dhebar Commission (1961) noticed that some groups lagged far behind other tribes, which led to the category of Primitive Tribal Groups in the Fifth Plan, renamed Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) in 2006. There are 75 PVTGs, identified by pre agricultural technology, low literacy, a stagnant or declining population and a subsistence economy.

In practice

Planning and schemes

• Tribal Sub Plan (1974 to 75). From the Fifth Five Year Plan, states and Union ministries were to earmark funds for tribal areas at least in proportion to the ST population, delivered through Integrated Tribal Development Projects. After the plan and non plan distinction ended in 2017 to 18, this continues as the Development Action Plan for STs, under which about forty Union ministries and departments set aside a share of their budget.
• Eklavya Model Residential Schools (EMRS). Begun in 1997 to 98 with Article 275(1) grants, the scheme was expanded in 2018 to 19 so that every block with more than half its population ST, and at least 20,000 tribal persons, should have one school, a target of 740 schools run through the National Education Society for Tribal Students.
• Van Dhan Vikas Kendras (2018). Under the Pradhan Mantri Van Dhan Yojana, the Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India (TRIFED) organises forest gatherers into clusters of self help groups that process and market minor forest produce, alongside a minimum support price for such produce.
• PM JANMAN (2023). The Pradhan Mantri Janjati Adivasi Nyaya Maha Abhiyan, launched on Janjatiya Gaurav Divas (15 November, the birth anniversary of Birsa Munda) in 2023, has an outlay of about ₹24,000 crore for housing, roads, water, health, education and livelihoods in PVTG habitations, through nine ministries.
• Dharti Aaba Janjatiya Gram Utkarsh Abhiyan (2024). Approved in September 2024, it extends the same convergence model to about 63,000 villages with large tribal populations, drawing on the schemes of 17 ministries.

Rights laws and judgements

• PESA, 1996. Following the Bhuria Committee (1994 to 95), PESA extends panchayats to Fifth Schedule areas with a Gram Sabha that safeguards customs and community resources, approves plans, selects beneficiaries, must be consulted before land acquisition, owns minor forest produce, can prevent land alienation, and controls money lending, village markets and liquor.
• Forest Rights Act, 2006. The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA) recognises individual rights over land cultivated before 13 December 2005 (up to four hectares) and community rights over minor forest produce, grazing and water bodies, including the right to protect and manage community forest resources. The Gram Sabha starts the process, and no one can be evicted until it is complete.
• Samatha v State of Andhra Pradesh (1997). Leases of land in scheduled areas to private mining companies were held void, because the bar on transfer of tribal land to non tribals covers the government and companies too.
• Orissa Mining Corporation v Ministry of Environment and Forests (2013). The Supreme Court held that the Gram Sabhas of Niyamgiri must decide whether bauxite mining would affect their religious and cultural rights, and all twelve Gram Sabhas consulted rejected the project.

Issues and way forward

Does policy match the promise of equity based, socially grounded governance?

• In design, largely yes. The Panchsheel, the Fifth and Sixth Schedules, PESA and the FRA together recognise tribal self rule, and newer schemes such as PM JANMAN target the most deprived groups first.
• In implementation, much less. Several states framed PESA rules late or kept key powers with officials, so Gram Sabhas are consulted on paper and overridden in practice. A large share of forest rights claims has been rejected, often without reasons, and community forest resource rights lag far behind individual titles.
• Displacement. The Xaxa Committee (2014) found tribal people heavily overrepresented among those displaced by dams, mines and industry, with poor rehabilitation. The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 requires Gram Sabha consent in scheduled areas, but forest and mining clearances often move faster than consent.
• Outcomes lag. Literacy among STs was 59 per cent in Census 2011 against 73 per cent for all, and the National Family Health Survey 5 (NFHS 5, 2019 to 21) shows stunting among ST children above the national figure of 35.5 per cent.

Source: Census of India, 2011.

Way forward

• Make the Gram Sabha real. Every Fifth Schedule state should frame PESA rules that give Gram Sabhas binding say over land, minerals and forest produce, with funds and staff to match.
• Complete forest rights. Review rejected claims with reasons given, give priority to community forest resource rights, and link titles to credit and irrigation.
• Activate the Governor. Tribes Advisory Councils, which meet irregularly in many states, should meet regularly, and Governors' annual reports should be published and debated.
• Plan from below. Village plans prepared by Gram Sabhas should drive the Development Action Plan, with spending tracked by outcome rather than allocation.
• Close the human development gap. Mother tongue teaching in early grades, residential schools that respect tribal culture, and health services for sickle cell disease and malnutrition would honour Nehru's test of judging results by people, not money.

Common confusions

• Fifth and Sixth Schedules. The Fifth relies on the Governor and the Tribes Advisory Council and covers ten states; the Sixth creates autonomous district councils with law making powers and covers four states in the North East.
• PESA and the Forest Rights Act. PESA (1996) is about self government in scheduled areas through the Gram Sabha; the FRA (2006) is about recognising rights over forest land and resources, and applies wherever forest dwellers live, not only in scheduled areas.
• Scheduled Tribe and PVTG. All PVTGs are STs, but PVTGs are a subset of 75 groups singled out for their extreme vulnerability.

For the exam

• Keyword bank: Article 342, Fifth Schedule, Sixth Schedule, Tribes Advisory Council, tribal Panchsheel, integration, Dhebar Commission, Tribal Sub Plan, PESA, Gram Sabha, Forest Rights Act, community forest resource rights, Samatha, Niyamgiri, PVTGs, PM JANMAN.
• Practise the previous year questions on this topic →
• Use in an answer:
  • Introduction with data: "India's 10.4 crore Scheduled Tribes, 8.6 per cent of the population in Census 2011, live mostly in forested and mineral rich regions, so tribal development is inseparable from the question of who controls land and forests."
  • Introduction with a judgement: "In the Niyamgiri case (2013) the Supreme Court let twelve Gram Sabhas decide the fate of a bauxite mine, turning the promise of tribal self rule in PESA and the Forest Rights Act into practice."
  • Conclusion: "Tribal policy in India is socially grounded on paper; it will be equity based in practice only when Gram Sabhas decide, not merely get consulted."
  • Conclusion: "Nehru's Panchsheel asked that results be judged by the quality of human character evolved rather than money spent, and that remains the right test for PM JANMAN and every scheme after it."