Tribal Development Report 2022

Recently, the Bharat Rural Livelihoods Foundation, an independent society set up under the Ministry of Rural Development, released a first-of-its-kind Tribal Development Report-2022.

• The report focuses on the status of tribal communities at an all-India level and central India in particular, concerning livelihoods, agriculture, natural resources, economy, migration, governance, human development, gender, health, education, art, and culture.

Major Highlights: India’s tribal communities form 8.6 per cent of the country’s population according to the 2011 Census.

• Central India is home to 80% of the tribal communities in the country.
• The indigenous communities of India have been pushed farther away from alluvial plains and fertile river basins into the harshest ecological regions of the country like hills, forests, and drylands.
• Of the 257 Scheduled Tribe districts, 230 (90 per cent) are either forested or hilly or dry. But they account for 80 per cent of India’s tribal population.
• The broad overview of the contemporary macroeconomic situation of tribal communities also shows neglect faced by tribal areas in developing infrastructure.
• Adivasi sub-districts belong to a larger contiguous backward region or Adivasi belt, which goes beyond the frozen administrative categories of state, district and sub-district.
• After the enactment of the Forest Conservation Act in 1980, the conflict came to be seen as between environmental protection and the needs of local Adivasi communities, driving a wedge between people and forests.
• It was in the National Forest Policy of 1988 that domestic requirements of local people were explicitly recognised for the very first time.
• The Policy emphasised safeguarding their customary rights and closely associating Adivasis in the protection of forests.
• But the movement towards a people-oriented perspective has not been matched by reality on the ground.