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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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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