Tribes or Adivasis or Indigenous or foragers are now centre of question for many development practitioners and the capitalists. On one hand development practitioners are putting full efforts for the development of the tribals on the other hand the capitalists are leaving no caution to displaced the tribals from their place of origin for the sake of development. In return they are ready to provide best of development to the tribals demanding the land they are living for ages. This certainly sound like double edged sword.
Reading daily news paper on these issues, discussing and debating with peer groups, I often questioned myself 'Do tribals really need development?' I was asked by one of my senior friend 'What can be done for the economic upliftment of the tribal's?' I gave a deep thought to the question. It indeed took me back to the history of tribal origin. The era of kings, where tribals used to have their own dynasty, territory, cultural and political organizations. They indeed never needed any economic support from the kings. Rather it was kings who used to take support from the tribals to help in their economic activities. Let me give you example of Juangs who are now called as the Particularly Vulnerable Groups of Odisha who used to have their own territory known as Juang Pidha. It was king who officially given the geographical territory to the Juangs so that they can take care of the forest and the wild animals. It was believe that tribals are the best care taker of the forest. They used to practice their own economic activities and were empowered with their own indigenous knowledge. Infact they never needed any outsiders to teach them the indigenous technology rather it was inheritate from their forefathers. With the enforcement of British rule things started changing tremendously, the administrative setup was formulated. The Saheb culture started tagging the tribals as uncivilized and jungle people. To make them civilized the official cadre was formulated in each districts, it was Britishers who have written most of the Gazetteers for the districts. After going through few of the district Gazetteers, I got shock of my life that Britishers had never used to appreciate the Adivasis. Infact they were always been abused and wrongly represent since time and memorial. This trend is still going on in each and every places in India. If one visit the government officer and talk about adivasis the very common sentence one hear is ' Adivasis are uneducated, uncivilized and drunkard people. They can never be changed'.
After working in various setup for the cause of the tribals I came to realize that tribals are the most knowledgeable and has well equipped indigenous techniques, good medicinal healer and well acquainted with the nature may it be forest, animal or water sources. They have the best techniques of growing number of corps in a natural condition. If one try to look into the indigenous knowledge of the Dongria Khond they grow the best pulses and turmeric in the state. I always wonder why don't the Government officials who are working for the betterment of the tribal development never try to understand the indigenous knowledge of the tribals. This is one of the reason why the best of livelihood schemes failed in the tribal regions. The imposition of the modern techniques on the tribals without really going deeper into their practices is the main cause of the failure of many development schemes. Many of the development schemes are either top down approach or lack participatory approach. How can one ignore the faulty implementation of the tribal subplan projects and policies by the government? Even if you have best of administrative officers in the district in most cases due to lack of department coordination the schemes failed.
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| The Dongria Khond of Kandhamal |
