Sustainable Livelihoods Development of the Scheduled Tribes

The Adivasis are the ancient and indigenous people, with a distinct identity and culture that has territorial identification, a harmonious and symbiotic relationship with the earth as her children, internally organized on egalitarian and communitarian basis, with systems of knowledge, self-governance and nationhood”. This is the definition that we read to understand the Scheduled Tribes of India. Tribal people are the most vulnerable and extremely marginalized and India is home to 10,42,81,034 STs.

Due to several reasons, the tribal people now became the migrant, forced labour and most marginalized vulnerable communities and unable to continue their traditional occupations. They are displaced, their livelihoods resources are exploited, their life became nomadic and living in extreme poverty with illiteracy and they are poorest of the poor in India.

Tribal people possess very small and uneconomical land-holdings and depending on natural resources for their livelihoods - that are repeatedly controlled and restricted by forest departments and forcefully occupied by the companies that resulted among the innocent people that created poverty over 80% among the tribal population and 71% are still illiterate and about 51% are displaced. There are more than 270 million people living below the poverty line in India among them adivasi people are the major population.

Among the tribal community, women and girls are the most affected and vulnerable population in the society. Tribal women are discriminated and exploited in many ways. Women Rights are not considered as Human Rights. Women members face numerous issues including violence, discrimination, atrocities, exploitation, inequality, low wages, pushed migration, forced displacement, bonded labour, sexual exploitation, brutality and many other issues in connection with poverty and patriarchy. Actually adivasi women are the centers of the family. Though the role of women is very important and crucial in a tribal economy, yet they are the invisible workers and lead a tough life. Women are actively engaged in all the activities right from the house to the fields.

Tribal Women spend almost 90 percent of their time in collecting fuel wood, fodder, grass, minor-forest produce, doing farming activity and they are more close to nature and but still living in extreme poverty because, lack of opportunities and scope. Tribal women knows the techniques of forest protection, biodiversity conservation, sustainable usage of natural resources and livelihood development with agricultural activity but they have not given chance for utilizing the natural resources properly for overcoming poverty and their traditional knowledge is not recognized. Building skills and capacities of the tribal women and girls to fight against inequality, violence, human trafficking, discrimination, forced displacement and utilizing laws and constitutional rights to obtain gender equality and protection of their fundamental rights are most important. This will also create a unified voice for the people’s rights. It will become as a model for sustainable approach.

LIVELIHOODS DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES FOR TRIBAL PEOPLE:

The traditional livelihood system of the Scheduled Tribes was based on customary, generational and indigenous knowledge over land and forests to fulfil their needs. It was also an “extensive” system of food production. The ‘common pool’ nature of resources supported customary rights and prevented the intensification of production, in the interest of conserving and sustaining the long-term productivity of livelihood resources. The sustainability of tribal people's livelihoods was thus firmly rooted in a system of ‘common property’ rights over land and forests. As a consequence, the livelihood system's ‘carrying capacity’ was relatively low and it typically supported sparse populations relative to the size of the ‘territory’.

The customary rights of tribal people over livelihood resources and their territorial sovereignty (insofar as land was territory, not property) increasingly came into conflict with the forces of ‘modernisation’, which was defined by the developmental state through various legislations. Thus, forced the tribal people to live in extreme poverty and pushed for migration in-terms of projects including “tiger sanctuary”. However, the state and central government is trying to promote new opportunities for the advancement of adivasi community through different schemes, budget allocations and involvement of various departments.

1. Land-based Development and Agricultural promotion

2. Tribal livelihoods Promotion with Minor forest production

3. Ecological Tribal Tourism and Increasing conservation awareness

4. Tribal Cooperative tea Estate with industrial setup

5. Tribal Dairy & Animal Husbandry

6. Tribal herbal products and indigenous healing system

7. Special focus on the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs)

CONCLUSION

The Scheduled Tribes of India are the most marginalized section of the society; therefore to assist their socio-economic development, there is an imperative need to provide more employment avenues and sustainable income generation opportunities. We need to aim at accepting their knowledge, analysing their resources, upgrading their skills, adequately providing financial assistance for the various initiatives in various vocations depending upon their needs, skills, capacities, qualification, present economic trends and the market potential, which would enable them to gain suitable employment or enable them to become sustainable development. This is the process for overall development of the tribal people of India. Our strategy shall be to enable the socially, educationally, politically, culturally and economically vulnerable people in order to overcome economic difficulties through building skills with professional training and facilitating them to help themselves through a systematic process for sustainable development. This is the only way for the development of adivasi people of India.