Tribal Policy: Pulling Back from the Brink?

Tribal people share with other disadvantaged groups most of the common burdens of poverty. The Planning Commission's estimates of poverty, based mainly on consumption flows, indicate that the proportion of persons below the poverty line among Scheduled Tribes is substantially higher than the national average. The figures for 1993-1994 provide an illustration of this gap, which is significant even though narrower than the nearly 20 per cent level of 1983-84 (Planning Commission, 2000).

Table 1: Percentage of Population Living Below the Poverty Line

Rural Urban

Scheduled Tribes 51.92 41.14

General 37.27 32.36

Source: Government of India, 1998-1999.

Further, the higher proportion of the Scheduled Tribe population (32.69 per cent) engaged in agricultural wage labour compared to the general population (25.74 per cent), indicates the livelihood vulnerability of tribal peoples and the problems caused by land deprivation (described below) and dependence on marginal, low-productivity land.

Tribal communities also suffer deprivation with regard to a crucial source of human capital - education. For example, in 1991, as against the national average of 52 per cent, the literacy rate of Scheduled Tribes was around 29.60 per cent. More strikingly, more than 80 per cent of Scheduled Tribe women are illiterate (Planning Commission 2000).

However, from the viewpoint of policy, it is important to understand that tribal communities are vulnerable not only because they are poor, asset less and illiterate compared to the general population. Often their distinct vulnerability arises from their inability to negotiate and cope with the consequences of their forced integration with the mainstream economy, society, cultural and political system, from which they were historically protected as the result of their relative isolation (see above section).

The process of internal colonisation that accompanied and subsequently survived imperial rule is best illustrated by the State-led resource emasculation of forests, the most important endowment of tribal communities for survival and livelihood. Even today, according to Saxena (1996) (quoting Lynch 1992),'there are about a 100 million forest dwellers' and 'another 275 million' who depend on the forest produce for their livelihood'. Though exact figures are not known, a substantial proportion of these would be tribals.⁹

Yet, considerations of maximising State revenues from forests have dominated forest policy from colonial times. Community control over forests was no longer recognised legally, and the State became the ultimate owner and custodian of forests. Forest dwellers became ‘encroachers and trespassers,’ as monoculture and clean felling for timber extraction dominated forestry operations. The conversion of complex forests into genetically simplified industrial plantations add to State revenues and benefit industries, but a wide range of species critical to the survival and well-being of tribal forest dwellers are depleted severely and sometimes even lost forever.

Governments have created new rights of industrialists to forest produce at highly subsidised prices. Saxena (1996) gives instances of industries being supplied bamboo for the manufacture of papers at 1 to 5 per cent of the auction rate, whereas purchase at auctions is the only source of bamboo for tribal artisans, such as the Koya of Orissa. State monopolies over collection of NTFPs have also followed this same pattern of maximising corporate interests and State revenue, at the expense of the subsistence of large populations of tribal collectors. In contrast to deregulation in the corporate sector, irrational barriers to the processing of NTFPs, even for the manufacture of brooms, leafs plates and agarbattis abound.¹⁰

In the process of internal colonisation, a fatal blow was the introduction of the legal regimes of private property to replace age-old practices of various forms of community control, and individual access mediated by community assessment of individual needs. The cumulative result of this has been the massive and steady transfer of lands held in the past by tribal communities and cultivators into the hands of non-tribals. This process of expropriation has continued unabated especially since the turn of the century in all regions of the country in which aboriginal populations held forest and agricultural lands. Despite the enactment of laws in several states to protect tribal landowners from such exploitation, tribal land alienation has continued at a disastrous pace, both through loopholes in the law and in contravention of it.

Tribal land alienation is the most important cause of the pauperisation of tribal people, rendering their economic situation, which is extremely vulnerable even at the best of times, even more precarious.¹¹ We have already noted how the access of tribals to forests for their livelihoods has shrunk both because forests themselves have shrunk, and because the regulatory regime continues to restrict tribals from collecting and processing non-timber forest produce for their livelihoods. Shifting cultivation has also been severely restricted. The most important livelihood option of the tribal today is settled agriculture. However, as tribals are systematically deprived of their cultivable holdings, by non-tribals and even by the government itself, they are reduced to assetless destitution.

The Department of Rural Development, Ministry of Rural Areas and Employment, Government of India commissioned in 1997-1998 a number of state- specific studies of the problem, and reports have been received by the Ministry from Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra.

The reports (as yet unpublished) paint a grim and disturbing picture, which confirm that massive alienation of tribal lands continues in tribal regions in all parts of the country. The magnitude of the problem can be assessed in the Andhra Pradesh report for instance, from the fact that today non-tribals own more than half the land in Scheduled Areas of the state. The figure is 52 per cent in Khamman district, 60 per cent in Adilabad district and 71 per cent in Warangal district. It may be noted that these are official figures based on land records, and would not include ‘benami’ holdings in the name of tribals but held by non-tribals.

The continuing gravity of the problem in Madhya Pradesh has been assessed by the census, which reveals that the percentage of Scheduled Tribe cultivators to total Scheduled Tribe workers fell from 76.45 per cent in 1961 to 68.09 per cent in 1991. Correspondingly, the percentage of Scheduled Tribe agricultural labourers to total Scheduled Tribe workers rose from 17.73 per cent to 25.52 per cent. Similar empirical evidence is available from other states as well.

The studies commissioned by the Government of India have revealed the causal chain that leads to this state of affairs and confirmed that the fundamental reason for tribal land alienation is the fragile, constantly shrinking economic base of the tribals. Their traditional skills in the gathering of forest produce lost significance with the introduction of State ownership of forests, so that from food-gatherers they were reduced to wage earners or encroachers. Private property in land extinguished the erstwhile right of tribal communities to free access to land in consonance with their needs. Settled agriculture brought with it its inevitable linkages with credit, inputs and markets, rendering the tribal even more dependent and vulnerable.

As the tribals have an innate fear based on bitter past experience of banks, co-operative institutions and other government sources of credit; they prefer the predictability of the moneylender despite his usurious interest rates. In any case, most banks and co-operative institutions are unwilling to provide consumption loans, and moneylenders are the only sources of consumption credit.

A combination of these factors lead to an extreme dependence on moneylenders on the part of the tribal, keeping him in perpetual debt and resulting in the mortgage and ultimate loss of his land. Though this phenomenon is common enough, another particularly tragic outcome of this indebtedness is the phenomenon of bondage, wherein people pledge their person and sometimes even that of their families against a loan. Repayments are computed in such terms that it is not unusual for bondage to persist until death, and to be passed on as a burdensome inheritance to subsequent generations. The practice of bonded labour is known by different names in different regions. In Rajasthan, it is called Sagri; in Andhra, Vetti; in Orissa, Gothi; in Karnataka, Jetha and in Madhya Pradesh, Naukri Nama.

The studies also establish the sad fact that government policy itself has, directly or indirectly, contributed to the phenomenon of tribal land alienation. It has been noted in several states that tribal land is being legally auctioned by co-operative credit societies and banks to recover dues. Auctioned land is purchased by non-tribals as well as rich tribals. Authorities responsible for regulating sale of tribal lands to non-tribals have been found to frequently collude with non-tribals to defraud the tribal landowners. The same collusion has deprived tribals of their rights to land in times of land settlement, or implementation of laws giving ownership rights to occupancy tenants.

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