TRIBAL DEVELOPMENT-Law, Democracy and Governance

TRIBAL DEVELOPMENT : The Limits to Law, Democracy and Governance

Tribal Development Both PESA and FRA give powers to communities that allow them to determine their future destiny. What these laws also do is to make the state bureaucracy and for that matter elected, mostly non-tribal, representatives accountable to community institutions. The centre of power will, therefore, shift and allow tribals control over their own governance and natural resources that they are dependent upon for their livelihood. PESA and FRA can create a legitimate political space and democratic mechanism where equity, justice and participatory democracy are the core 

Tribal Development policy from its inception has always been beset by a contradiction, namely to recognize the uniqueness of tribal communities (including their governance systems) but yet deliver the benefits of mainstream development. In practice, the former has, for the most part been undermined, seemingly to attain the latter. However, even the latter goal mostly has not been achieved because of the wider priorities of ‘growth’ and ‘development’ for the nation. Over the last two decades since the adoption of the New Economic Policy in 1991 and the drive to speed up the growth process, a widening gap between the goals of national development and tribal development has emerged. The accelerated attempt to exploit natural resources in the name of economic growth has led to maladministration and misgovernance (‘governance deficit’) and neglect in terms of infrastructure, development and welfare (‘development deficit’) in tribal areas. These failures of state policy have led to the spread of Left Wing Extremism (LWE), pervasive now in 83 districts of the country.  

This is not to say that progressive Constitutional provisions and laws that empower tribal communities have not been periodically passed, but rather that, these have been for the most part undermined. From Article 244 of the Constitution, which led to the establishment of Fifth Schedule Areas, to legislation such as the Panchayati Raj (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (hereafter PESA), and the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (hereafter FRA), legal measures have been passed to empower tribal communities to govern themselves. But invariably these legal measures have to a large extent remained on paper because of a lack of political will to implement them, given the economic priorities of growth. 

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Challenges of the Marginalised

Challenges of the Marginalised 

The strategy for inclusive growth should not be just a conventional strategy for growth to which some elements aimed at inclusion have been added. On the contrary, it should be a strategy which aims at achieving a particular type of growth process which will meet the objectives of inclusiveness and sustainability

 

It is now well established that economic growth and prosperity in India has generally bypassed a large number of marginalised and disadvantaged people such as the dalits, adivasis, nomadic tribes, women, slum and pavement dwellers, the disabled and old people, and people living in remote areas, who have remained voiceless and ignored. The crux of such a hopeless situation for them lies in their inability to access and retain their rightful entitlements to public goods and services due to institutionalised structures and processes of exploitation.

Excluded groups are disadvantaged in many ways. They are victims of prejudice, are ignored, and are often treated as less than human beings by the village elite and government officials. They live in remote hamlets and are thus geographically separated from the centres of delivery. Their hamlets are scattered so that the cost of contacting them is higher. Finally it is their extreme poverty that prevents them from taking advantage of government schemes, whether it is free schooling (children are withdrawn because their labour is needed at home or for work), or immunization (they migrate along with their parents and therefore not present in the village when the health worker visits).

The 12th Five Year Plan, as expected, gives a high priority on paper to inclusive growth and reduction of inequality, but the past trends have not been very encouraging, as inequality seems to be going up, and the much needed policies and programmes for the disadvantaged are still to be put on ground.

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Holistic Panchayat Raj

 

Towards Holistic
Panchayat Raj

Arguing that “bad Panchayat Raj is perhaps worse then no Panchayat Raj”, the report stresses that Panchayat Raj must not deteriorate into sarpanch raj. To this end, the Report urges that PRIs be structured legally and administratively to function as collegiate bodies, with all elected members being involved in preparing programmes, key decisions being taken by the Panchayat as a whole and not at the whim and fancy of the President, and implementation being under the effective supervision of the Panchayat members concerned and not just the sarpanch

It is not by coincidence that this article carries the same title as our Report1, for this is by way of an introduction to a Report that we believe should be essential reading for all those who would like to see the fulfillment of Gandhiji’s dream for independent India. Replying to a query on his “Dream for Independent India”, he wrote in his journal, Young India, 10 September 1930:

“I shall work for an India in which the poorest will feel it is his country, in whose making he has an effective voice”

This vision is inscribed on the cover of the Report and constitutes its leitmotif.

There is no way in which the aam admi, let alone the poorest Indian, can have a sense of belonging in a Parliament in which his MP represents 15-20 lakh others, or an effective voice in decisions are taken in remote State capitals or Delhi, let alone even in the inaccessible reaches of the Collector’s office. 65 years after Independence, almost every Indian feels alienated from the political and administrative process, the sense of alienation being the greater the lower down the economic scale and social hierarchy that person finds himself or herself in, and also the more distanced he or she is geographically from the imposing Bhawans where his or her future is decided. Six and a half decades of democracy leave most individuals as distant from having an “effective voice” in the making of their country as their parents and grandparents were under colonial rule.

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Tribal Development Approach

Tribal Neglect and Limitations of Budget-centric Approach to Development

 

In addition to spending budgets, we need to give equal importance to non-monetary issues such as institutions, laws, and policies

  

It is well established that the central region of India, despite being resource rich, inhabits the poorest people who have not benefited from social and economic development to the same extent as people in other regions have, and in many cases have actually been harmed from displacement that growth entails. From the viewpoint of policy, it is important to understand that tribal communities are vulnerable not only because they are poor, assetless 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. Post-independence, the requirements of planned development brought with them the spectre of dams, mines, industries and roads on tribal lands. With these came the concomitant processes of displacement, both literal and metaphorical — as tribal institutions and practices were forced into uneasy existence with or gave way to market or formal state institutions (most significantly, in the legal sphere), tribal peoples found themselves at a profound disadvantage with respect to the influx of better-equipped outsiders into tribal areas. The repercussions for the already fragile socio-economic livelihood base of the tribals were devastating — ranging from loss of livelihoods, land alienation on a vast scale, to hereditary bondage.  

As tribal people in India perilously, sometimes hopelessly, grapple with these tragic consequences, the small clutch of bureaucratic programmes have done little to assist the precipitous pauperisation, exploitation and disintegration of these communities. Tribal people respond occasionally with anger and assertion, but often also in anomie and despair, because the following persistent problems have by and large remained unattended to:  

-Land alienation
-Indebtedness
-Relation with forests, and government monopoly over MFPs, and non-implementation of the Forest Rights Act, 2006
-Ineffective implementation of Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act of 1996 (PESA, 1996) for Schedule V areas.
-Involuntary displacement due to development projects and lack of proper rehabilitation.
-Shifting Cultivation, such as podu
-Poor utilisation of government funds, and
-Poor delivery of government programmes

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