TRIBAL DEVELOPMENT: A CRITICAL DISCUSSION
The issue of tribal development has become a major challenge in front of us. In view of time,
energy and money spent on tribal development, achievement in real terms have been far from
impressive. The question arises here why so?
Persons involve at various levels keep on criticizing others. Policy makers and planners are
blaming implementers at random and the implementers for their part, the target groups.
On the one hand, the political bosses, in most cases, claim that they cant rely on the
bureaucracys efficiency; the bureaucrats, for their part, express their inability to deliver the
goods due to the wheeling and dealing of political masters.
Various institutions involved in development process, starting from constitutional bodies to three
tier Panchayat raj institutions find fault with one another.
The ground level officials blame tribal and their society and culture for any failure.
All that we infer from this is that a perspective is missing, what is also missing is
comprehension, conceptualization and contemplation of what tribal development is?
It seems as if humanistic and scientific approaches are fraught with danger. Limiting tribal
development to achievement of targets, both financial and physical is like kick-starting in reverse
gear.
Development, no development matter little as long as the people, their culture are not respected
and their potential has not been harnessed.
Development as a particular cast of mind, which is hegemonic, needs to be abandoned.
Development has crippled tribesmens capacity for creative responses to the future. Development
strategies based on top down design have failed to reach their explicitly stated objectives.
Development has undermined their confidence in themselves and their own culture.
It converts participation into a manipulative trick to make people accept what the powerful want
to impose on them.
Tribal development is being pursued under income generating scheme and infrastructure
development scheme is implemented every year. However, it has failed to improve tribal people.
Their economic condition has not improved. Rather they have fallen into poverty trap. Their
potentialities are not being utilized. Nehrus hope that tribal people should develop in
consonance with their own genius has not been translated into action.
Failure of tribal development strategies are the failure of our appreciation of tribes, their culture
and society. Tribes are looked upon as aliens having queer habits, strange beliefs, mysterious
cults and unconventional chores and therefore deserving differential treatment. We feel as if
their development has little to do with our development.
In one hand each tribal individual exercise his free will and on the other they abide societal rules
and regulation. The degree of independence enjoyed by the individual tribes man makes their
social living harmonious. Their interdependence is based on the principle of reciprocity.
We have failed in understanding tribal communities: we feel they are peripheral community, they
have nothing to do with mainstream. Thyey are placed in lower level in caste hierarchy.
Tribes are living in hill and forest areas. This does not mean that they have been pushed to forest
by force anmd marginalized. Therefore their mental power is not so developed. On the contrary
they love to maintain an independent life and they love nature. They love to maintain their
cultural identity with pride and dignity.
Tribes are poor but self dependent. They are self-sufficient, and they function as self-contained
units. They maintain kin relationship. They depend ion kin relation not on outsider. What hurt
they is deprivation not poverty. Their land and territory, forest and built in social potential are
always under threat. Everybody exploited them. Govt. policy and programmes have failed to
cater the needs of those communities.
Misconception we have:
1. Tribes are half clad and their women are half naked:
Their dress are culturally prescribed. The ringa, the colourful head dresses, the bunch
of long necklaces, of jungle beads, varieties of ornaments worn by tribal women arec
considered dignified by themselves. If you say they are naked, they rebuff you saying
that we the critics are naked, for we do not use neck-bands, ear rings, nose rings etc.
If we feel proud for our own way, why not tribe feels on their own way. When western
people justify their dress style as an expose to sun light, why not tribal people? It has
nothing to do with poverty. For them small is beautiful.
2. Tribes are unclean and do not have hygienic practices:
Though they dont use modern detergent, soaps, they meticulously attend to their bodily
cleanliness. Their method of cooking is healthy. They mostly eat boiled, baked and
smoked. They never defecate in foot path. They keep their surround clean. They work
community as a whole to clean their surroundings. For them disease is a outsider. They
use shaman to make it out.
3. They are blind believers and superstisious.
