Order of the Supreme Court in the matter of Sugra Adiwasi & Others Vs Pathranand & Others dated 29/04/2025. The bench of Justice Pamidighantam Sri Narasimha and Justice Joymalya Bagchi directed the state of Madhya Pradesh as well as the central government through the the Ministries of Tribal Affairs and …
THE Dilip Singh Bhuria Parliamentary Committee, set up to recommend special provisions for the introduction of Panchayati Raj in tribal areas (under the 73rd Constitutional Amendment), has just submitted its report. It is natural for a lay person to question why a separate committee was needed to make special provisions …
On the Andaman islands, located in the Indian Ocean close to Burma and Indonesia, live the Onge, the indigenous negrito hunter-gathers of modern times. The Onge are one of 4 hunter-gatherer groups who occupy different islands of the archipelago. These groups have been separated long enough to have developed substantial …
Tilomajhi and Andharmajhi from Kalahandi, Orissa, were appointed as special police by the government of Orissa, entrusted with the power to break any country liquor pot they come across. Both have been consistently waging a crusade against daru (liquor) for many years. Says Andharmajhi, "I have been fighting against liquor …
On May 28,1995, 3 jeeps full of uniformed officers and forest guards along with a truck and a tractor arrived in Haliasahi, a remote Adivasi hamlet in Kashipur block, Rayagada district, Orissa, and seized the entire stock of hillbrooms belonging to the local Mandibisi Mahila Mandal (MMM). Hillbrooms are a …
The slasb-and-burn method of cultivation is ecologically disastrous and economically fruitless for the tribals. To provide a viable alternative to this shifting cultivation, the Social Forestry Project of Orissa in collaboration with the Swedish International Development Agency chose 14 landless tribals in Bhatiguda village of the state as beneficiaries under …
WITH the Bejing World Conference of Women, 1995, taking off on September 4, different parts of India saw a flood of meetings, conferences and seminars. The Adivasi women's conference in Rourkela, Orissa was held from June 18- 20, 1995. The conference was mainly organised by groups working in the Adivasi …
Primitive men still exist in this modern era. In Indonesia a tribe has been discovered which still dwells in trees and actually practices cannibalism. The tribesmen were spotted in tree houses in the easternmost island of Indonesia, Irian Jaya. The area is called Merauke and it borders Papua New Guinea …
What is wrong with progress and development? Can they be the culprits in a process that has wrought gradual marginalisation of the tribal people? Suresh Sharma asserts that the modern world with science and technology as its strong supporters has dealt most cruelly with a race that took nature as …
THE oft repeated story of exploitation has raised its ugly head again, this time in Orissa's Kalahandi district. Women of the mainly tribal population in the panchayats of Thuamul Rampur, Kaniguma and Nakrundi, who collect phoo1jitadu (broomsticks) - a minor forest produce - from the jungle, are forced to sell …
THE Indian government's plans of green signalling the Nagarhole Tiger Project in Karnataka's Mysore district has incurred the wrath of several activists, academicians and lawyers - many of them tribals. A meeting was held at Anandwan, in Chandrapur, Maharashtra, from July 14 to 19, to formulate alternate drafts of the …
Tribal leader B D Sharma explains the adverse consequences of the new economic policy on the tribal people in Globalisation: The Tribal Encounter. It vividly brings out their reaction to the emerging situation and their views on the Bodhghat ownership and, endorses forcefully their right to part ownership of industry …
WE are a tribal people from Western India, from a predominantly tribal area, about 125 kilometers north of Bombay. Though barely a 2-hour journey from the suburba prima of India, we are part of a third world within the Third World, so we are really 6 worlds away from you. …
Although the prime minister's programme to lay the foundation stone at the 710 mw Koel Karo hydel project on March 5 was shelved, the anti-dam lobby demonstrated its muscle by gathering at Torpa village, 95 km from Ranchi. A 20,000-strong crowd -- mainly tribals -- prevented the Bihar chief minister, …
The scourge of malaria is terrorising the tribals of Bangladesh's border areas, killing them like flies; Joyrampur's (Mymensingh district) Garo tribals are no exception. Fifteen hundred people living on the borders have already fallen prey to the disease since it broke out early this year. Abject poverty and a woeful …
The Namibian and Angolan governments' joint plans to build a hydel-project dam on the Kunene river is threatening the very survival of the Himbas tribals living in the border area. The proposed dam will submerge 290 sq km of Himba country, including their grazing grounds and ancestral graves. Said Hikominue …
The Masais of Loita, semi-nomadic tribals who are jealously guarding one of the few remaining indigenous forests in East Africa, are in a state of despair. The Kenyan government's recent decision to turn their homeground into a reserve for the development of mass tourism has unnerved the entire community. In …
The forest department's dismal performance is in sharp contrast to the signal service rendered by a voluntary organisation, the Radhasoami Satsang. The people in the forest villages here had been settled by the British at the turn of the century to work on felling trees. They were allowed to cultivate …
It was a blazing mid-March afternoon in Ahwa, 130 km from Surat. Some "modern" men were enacting what seemed for all practical purposes a medieval drama. The lawns of the Ahwa collectorate, the headquarters of the Dangs district, were suitably decorated. The local maibaaps (virtual satraps) -- the district"s bureaucrats …
According to David Hardiman, a historian at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, the Bhils came to the Dangs around the 14th century, almost simultaneously with the Konkanas, who were initially subjects of the Bhils. The Konkanas practiced rab cultivation in the flatter regions of the valleys. Forest …
The Dang durbar (court) that opened this year on March 13, and continued till Holi (March 17) is an annual pageantry coming down from the Raj days. What actually happens here clearly symbolises the plains-people's and the bureacracy's patronising, condescending, yet authoritarian attitude towards forest tribals. The Dangs durbar dates …
