Books
SOCIAL EXCLUSION AND ADVERSE INCLUSION: Development and Deprivation of Adivasis in India
edited by Dev Nathan and Virginius Xaxa. Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2012.IN this era of rapid growth, India has emerged as a significant economic power. In the process, however, some of the government’s policies have had an adverse impact on communities like the adivasis. Social Exclusion and Adverse Inclusion edited by Dev Nathan and Virginius Xaxa looks at how under the guise of deve-lopment and the imperatives of national reconstruction, adivasis have lost access to their land and forests, their mainstay in life. Xaxa points out that often what appears to be reflective of geography is in fact an outcome of the politics of exclusion. As a result, we have today two nations within one state.
Hamid Ansari asks if the experience of the last six decades has been different from the earlier millennia and whether adivasis have been treated with greater attention and justice. The response is obvious. The glaring truth is that all the indicators related to adivasis are pathetic. The government’s own data shows that tribal literacy levels are extremely low, while infant mortality rates and malnutrition are much higher as compared to other population groups. A combination of geographical and social exclusion leads to extreme poverty and lack of access to administrative and judicial mechanisms exacerbates their condition.
The book brings together several elements that impact the lives of adivasis, cutting across all categories. For instance, it raises the issue of discrimination that is embedded in policy initiatives. Regions where adivasis live have little access to government services. Ironically, however, when it comes to extraction of minerals, use of water resources for electricity generation or recruiting unskilled labour, these areas receive undivided attention. Xaxa argues that the growing inequality between the urban population that has gained enormously from current development policies, and those who have has lost the ownership of land and forest as well as their identity, like the adivasis, is a result of these policies. In the sphere of social exclusion this would be termed ‘adverse inclusion’.
In the case of adivasis, exclusion takes two forms – denial of basic rights to health, education, water, sanitation, proper housing and livelihood, and also an absence of voice, the right to express themselves and be represented. A combination of the two leads to absolute deprivation, which is most visible in tribal communities.
Questioning the positioning of adivasis as out- siders, Bhagya Bhukya points out how adivasis have historically been the custodians of the country’s biological and cultural diversity. Their adaptive and resilient approach to life and nature has (so far) ensured that the forest, its extent and diversity, has been protected. They were also able to adequately support and provide for their households. But with the acquisition of their rich and fertile lands, they were turned into landless labour, working for non-adivasi landlords. Such concerns have rarely been part of our mainstream dialogue. A stark reality of adivasi deprivation is the number of starvation deaths which even if reported in the media, rapidly go off the radar and no attempt is made by the government to address the underlying causes.
Maitreyi Bordia Das, Soumya Kapoor and Denis Nikitin attempt to link modernization and forced appropriation of land and denial of access to forests with the loss of nutritional resources for adivasi families. Every year a frightening number of child deaths are reported, a majority of them belonging to adivasi families. An adivasi child under two years faces a greater risk of dying than a non-adivasi one. According to the official child health indicators, mortality rates in tribal children under five remain unacceptably high, especially in states where tribal populations are large. Unlike non-adivasi children, where the indicators show an improvement, child mortality rates in adivasi children have stagnated.
Meena Radhakrishna also focuses on starvation among adivasis, especially the denotified tribes, who are even more marginalized. She focuses on how government schemes have been ineffective in combating starvation among these tribes. The irony is that the government seems more concerned about conserving forests but not human life.
The health of the child is greatly influenced by the mother’s own condition prior to birth, during her pre-gnancy and after giving birth. If denied appropriate nutritious food, she is unable to provide quality care to the infant, right up to the age of five. Non-availability of facilities like anganwadis, foodgrains under government schemes and support from ANMs, coupled with low awareness about proper feeding practices, play havoc with the child’s health and nutrition. However, the extent and pattern of poverty and chronic undernutrition is also closely linked to the dynamics of forests and development. In most areas, where livelihood patterns have changed due to displacement, there is a greater concentration of poverty.
For health indicators to improve, it is essential to ensure food security at home. Dhrupad Choudhury and Brigite Ludac link health indicators to agricultural transformation. It is indeed imperative to re-examine policy approaches, possibly permit traditional practices like shifting cultivation and provide access to fertile land to adivasi families. But that is clearly not enough. Along with land alienation, an additional challenge in the form of climate change has severely affected the physical health of tribal communities. Phrang Roy and Govind Kelkar point out how crop failure and fuel shortage due to climate change has severely impacted household food security in adivasi families. Prior to the implementation of the forest laws, most families had a regular food supply in the form of vegetables like potatoes, maize, beans, sweet potatoes, sag (greens), corn, tuber, roots, pulses, millets, fruits like banana, jackfruit, citrus fruits and flowers like mahua as well as honey, which formed a large basket of nutrition sources. For protein, adivasis relied on fish, hogs and cattle, but now with restricted access to the forest and with the banning of hunting, families are deprived of animal protein in their diet. The number of cattle which provided milk too have declined since there is little land left for grazing.
The change in consumption patterns and a decline in calorie intake has led to calorie deficiency and widespread starvation, a common challenge in all regions where land alienation is high and access to forests denied to tribals. If the battle against chronic undernutrition among tribal children and mothers is to be won, the way forward is to restore land and access to forests. Subsequently, strengthening agricultural practices by permitting traditional methods and with financial assistance to women farmers to increase their income would ensure household security and improve the qua-lity of life in their own communities. To fight undernutrition, health facilities must be functional, with staff and amenities to address chronic undernutrition, as well as optimal antenatal and postnatal healthcare for mothers.
Anvita Abbi underscores the importance of communication since adivasis are often unaware of their rights. Knowledge sharing is done through language. But with modernization, adivasis, more familiar with traditional dialects/language which are increasingly discouraged, are unable to comprehend their rights. Low awareness is one of the main reasons why adivasis find it difficult to fight the system for what is rightfully theirs. It is necessary for adivasis themselves to be better informed to participate in the political process for a more inclusive development approach.
India’s growth and development approach needs to be far more inclusive so that access to all basic ser-vices is provided equitably. It will enable adivasis to demand land and property rights as granted to other non-adivasis citizens and to work towards adequate representation. Their engagement in governance will both help protect their livelihoods, forests and land rights and enhance their voice in the mainstream. These would be the first steps to end what is still a deep divide in nation building.
The book could serve as a powerful tool for the public to understand the form and extent of adivasi deprivation and push policy makers to formulate agendas that are conducive for their development and growth.
Mohuya Chaudhuri
Journalist, writer and researcher
RECASTING CASTE: From the Sacred to the Profane by Hira Singh. Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2014.
CASTE is among the most researched and talked about subject in India today. Contrary to the common sense predictions about its eventual decline with the advance of modern and urban processes, the public presence of caste has only grown over time. However, the discourse of caste has understandably seen many changes over the years. While social anthropologists in the 1940s and 1950s, meticulously documented food restrictions and possible kinship relations across caste groups, or the manner in which the traditional jajmani system produced a structure of reciprocal ties in the village community, by the 1960s political sociologists were excited about its resilient and changing nature while actively intersecting with electoral politics in democratic India. By the 1990s, the caste question began to be articulated from below, primarily by those who had been its victims and in the language of identity, rights and representation, not purity and pollution.
Hira Singh takes us back to some of the ‘old’ questions about the theories and conceptions of the caste system. The title sums up well what the author attempts to do in the book. He questions the popular view that tends to locate its explanation in the religious tradition of the Hindus, and constructs caste as a peculiar ideological system unique to India. This view has been popular not only with the ‘traditional’ layperson, who invokes the idea of karma and refers to Manusmriti as a source of its legitimacy, but also among the mainstream western social scientists.
The most influential among these theorists of caste was Louis Dumont who, in his well-known book Homo Hierarchicus, developed a comprehensive exp-lanation of caste, presenting it as a religious and ideological system of the Hindus. Caste was not comparable to any other form of inequality, he argued. For Dumont, caste hierarchy was fundamentally different from the inequality of class based on material processes of ownership and non-ownership of means of production. Caste was also not to be confused by the simple fact of division of labour and a system of hierarchy emerging out of occupational differences. Caste emanated from the Hindu religion and its scriptures. This ‘book view’ of caste based on opposition of pure and impure provided a structural logic to the system. The actual realities of caste or varna may not always concur with this description, but the ultimate explanation of hierarchy could be inferred from this systemic logic. Hira Singh rubbishes this theory from all possible angles.
For Hira Singh this formulation of Dumont is merely an extension of Max Weber’s distinction between status and class as two distinguishable dimensions of power. Weber, in his work on development of capitalism in Western Europe, had disagreed with Marx who had given primacy to class in his theory of social inequality and treated status as a part of the superstructure. For Weber, status could have its own autonomy. He also argued that distinctions of status could be found in all societies and caste was thus only a specific form of status hierarchy. Dumont took it further. Caste, for him, was a unique system of status hierarchy, and it could not be compared with any other society, anywhere in the world.
Hira Singh provides a lucid and critical exposition of this view and repeatedly questions its validity, logically as well as empirically. There is nothing unique about caste, he argues. It is only a specific manifestation of social and economic inequality, closely tied to historically evolved social and economic relations. For him, inequalities of caste can be best understood by invoking the Marxist method of class analysis. Even though caste presents itself as an ideological system, produced through kinship and notions of hierarchy, caste relations are ‘embedded in dominant economic political relations’. The most critical determinant of rural society in India is the structure of land relations. The prevailing nature of agrarian relations shapes caste differences and caste consciousness. He develops this Marxist critique of Dumont by providing counterpoints to almost all the elements of his theory: varna and caste; class and status; status and power; hierarchy and stratification; caste and feudalism, among others.
In one of the chapters he also engages with subaltern studies and discovers their analysis of subaltern consciousness as being close to an Orientalist view of India that tends to present India as being uniquely different from the West. He strongly disagrees with their view that unlike the West where class was an important factor in political mobilization, in India identities like caste, community and religion are what have shaped the peasant consciousness. This, he argues, is a ‘form of elite ideology’, ‘emanating from conservative epistemology – Brahmanical, orientalist, structural/functionalist and bourgeois-liberal.’ (p. 182)
Hira Singh invokes a wide variety of sources in support of his formulations and passionately restates the classical Marxist view that approaches caste from a historical perspective by giving primacy to class relations. He also provides examples of doing empirical sociology of India by using such a method. His chapter on ‘changing land relations and caste’, adapted from a paper he published in Economic and Political Weekly in 1969, is an interesting study of village level leadership and growing assertion among the tenant castes after India’s independence and implementation of land reforms.
Hira Singh’s critique of Dumont is not entirely new. Most of the arguments presented by him are well known to the students of caste. However, what is interesting is his persistent advocacy of the Marxist perspective and its relevance in the study of caste in India. What, however, is missing in the book is any engagement with the contemporary manifestations of caste in urban India, outside the economic frames of agrarian society. Caste survives today also as prejudice and a source of exclusion, experienced mostly by those who come from the margins of the traditional caste hierarchy. Even when leaders like Mayawati are able to successfully compete with dominant political parties in our electoral democracy, it is only the Dalits, the ex-untouchables, who continue to experience the humi-liations and violent atrocities of caste.
Surinder S. Jodhka
Professor of Sociology, JNU, Delhi
THE ADIVASI QUESTION: Issues of Land, Forest and Livelihood edited by Indira Munshi. Essays from Economic and Political Weekly. Orient BlackSwan, New Delhi, 2012.
INDIA may well be the largest democracy in the world, yet even six decades after the nation became independent there are groups who remain among the most marginalized. The worst affected are adivasis, who remain invisible, struggling against many forms of discrimination. There are over eight million adivasis in the country who have been denied their rights.
The Adivasi Question: Issues of Land, Forest and Livelihood discusses the causes that have contributed to the non-inclusion of adivasis in the mainstream, elements that have remained largely absent in the public domain. This collection of articles by some of the best scholars and collated from the Economic and Political Weekly between 2010 and 2012 foregrounds the history of indifference on the part of successive governments towards adivasis and the strategic implementation of laws on forest and land acquisition in the name of development which resulted in systemic alienation of tribal communities. In the name of progress, adivasis were denied access to their traditional habitats and forest resources that contributed to their disempowerment and deprivation, endangering their very survival.
Each author highlights a different aspect of tribal alienation that occurred over the last century. Ramachandra Guha provides an in-depth analysis of how forestry and laws that govern forests and define its ownership historically, resulted in the disenfranchisement of tribals. For its own economic and commercial interests, the British regime introduced laws that transformed the tribal landscape. As the government took over control of forest reserves to build roads and harvest timber, tribal groups lost their hold over forests and their common lands. They could no longer depend on forest produce or land for their living. Driven out of their traditional habitation, and forced to live on the periphery of forest areas, this form of alienation drove thousands of families into penury. Guha accurately states that even today in a sharply stratified society, while the rich destroy the environment, the adivasis, who depend on nature for survival and are its caretakers, remain in a dire condition.
Even after the end of the colonial era, the state continued to exercise control over forest reserves and land. Mathew Areeparampil links the issue of tribal displacement and dispossession with mineral exploitation. Under the paradigm of development, mining projects and building of dams and power stations were given the go ahead in these resource rich tribal areas. Private transfers of land were widespread, often without engaging adivasi cooperatives or gram sabhas, which is a breach of law. Rarely have any of the beneficiaries been adivasis. What it did was to bring catastrophic change to their lives, which was unprecedented. So far they had been stable and self-sufficient, but large-scale industrialization transformed their landscape. With no reliable liveli-hood options, a widespread loss of land, income and access to forest resources, which also provided household security, pushed families into debt bondage, a condition they continue to struggle with. Caught in a quagmire of impoverishment, families suffered from ill health and malnutrition, especially children. Mortality and morbidity rates remain high as a result.
Sohel Firdos looks at the impact of forest degradation, changing workforce structure and population redistribution in the Birhor community, a particularly vulnerable tribe in Jharkhand. For generations the Birhor have depended solely on forests, also their primary source of food. Previously hunter-gatherers, they lack the skill to survive in urban settings. He highlights how, under the law, those displaced must be rehabilitated but all they get are small homes without any land, which denies them the opportunity to make a living. This is a new form of internal colonialism being unleashed on adivasis under the guise of development and national interest. Instead, adivasis have been dispossessed of their political autonomy, their communities broken up and segregated and left powerless.
Asmita Kabra examines how wildlife sanctuaries have come up in areas which, with their high grade fertile soils and adequate water helped adivasi families cultivate well. However, post displacement relocation on lands whose quality is poor only added to their indebtedness. She argues that the government must ensure sustainable livelihoods for adivasis in order to end such penury.
Adivasis have not always been silent. They have fought against the injustices heaped on them. K. Bala-gopal explains how over the years adivasis have resisted the government’s decision to allow corporates to undertake mining projects without involving gram sabhas, a blatant violation of the Constitution. Under the Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA), gram sabhas have the power to decide whether such projects can be undertaken, but the law is rarely enforced. The impact of these measures on adivasi lives has been severe. Since these mining sites are often close to where they reside, the pollutants in the ash ponds and areas where effluents are dumped have contaminated water sources, posing serious health risks for families and making the areas uninhabitable since adivasis were not exposed to such environments previously, a situation that resonates across all tribal populated areas.
Most forest dwellers prefer to not move out of their habitats in search of work because they are afraid of hostility and exploitation that they face in the mainstream environment.
Sagari R. Ramadass shows how turning adivasi habitats into an elephant sanctuary in Andhra Pradesh resulted in an uprising. Families faced a threat to their lives and livelihood because of eviction. Local communities were mobilized to invoke the Forest Rights Act (FRA) to claim their rights over the land and prevent the establishment of the sanctuary, but the tribal and forest department officials did not relent.
E. Selvarajan’s study in Tamil Nadu also relates the current status of adivasis to illegal acquisition of land in tribal areas. He argues that land continues to be the mainstay for 90% of adivasis. But they face the threat of eviction in the name of development because laws that provide protection to adivasis are blatantly bypassed. Currently, there is little authentic data on the magnitude of tribal land alienation, which takes many forms such as outright sale, encroachment, mortgage, leasing or simply cheating by private parties. The government, he says, promised to rehabilitate those whose land had been taken away, but while they got small homes, no land was given, making it hard for them to eke a living.
B.B. Mohanty draws attention to the huge gap in our understanding of the ways land has been acquired in India. He shows how land distribution has always followed hierarchy. Large landowners are inevitably upper caste, while those who cultivate belong to the middle class and farm labourers are always from scheduled caste or adivasi communities. Policy makers often bend before social pressures and fail to legislate radical institutional reforms, thereby perpetuating inequality and destitution.
Brian Lobo describes how policy changes in the name of land reforms in recent years have disrupted the adivasi world. For instance, the Maharashtra Private Forests Act nullified the benefits accruing from earlier land reform legislation. Land previously distri-buted among landless tribes has now been reacquired in the name of forest preservation. Farmers are prohi-bited from cultivating or undertaking any other activity in these areas. The state takeover of forest areas has meant that at least one lakh cultivators in Thane district face eviction, once again pushing them to the brink.
Similarly, Nitya Rao looks at the land tenure system through the process of displacement of land. In several states like Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, the amended Forest Right Act continues to be ignored by the forest department. Adivasis are prevented from accessing the forest and excluded from decision making by ignoring community rights, thereby denying them the right of land ownership to which they are entitled under the Constitution. She urges that a systemic review be done to analyze livelihood problems to initiate suitable strategies. She argues that though some attempts were made soon after independence to restore adivasis rights to land and forest, they fell short. The Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act (SPTA), which provided the crucial legal framework to protect the interests of Santhals, allowed them to practice shifting cultivation. But even after land was restored to them, the practice was not regularized. There were other anomalies as well. Though land in this region was made non-transferable under the act, it changed hands over time.
Renu Modi brings on board adivasis not residing in forested areas who too have suffered because of government policies, viz., those who were displaced because of the Sardar Sarovar dam. At least 40,000 Bhil families and perhaps an equal number from different groups are still coping with displacement. They have been irreversibly affected by secondary relocation to regions where their lives are at stake. Earlier, their food security came from cultivating three crops a year, growing an assortment of vegetables, cereals and fruits. But in the areas where they have been relocated, the land is barren and not suitable for cultivation, which has drastically cut into their income.
Judy Whitehead says the only way to address their problems would be to repopulate the landscape and provide adivasis with cultivable land, irrigation, food and water, fuel and reassertion of cultural identity and literacy for their children. But who is listening? The government has ignored their demands for decades.
Pankaj Sekhsaria foregrounds the plight of the Onge tribe, which is endangered and rapidly diminishing because of deforestation in Andaman and Nicobar. For generations, these tribes enjoyed a close relationship with the forest and thrived in them. Their knowledge of the forest is extensive. However, they now face a threat of extinction since outsiders have taken over as much as one third of the island for agriculture, plantation and timber extraction. The Onge, who used to be hunters earlier, are now being given rice, sugar and even tobacco in exchange for their land, foods they are unfamiliar with. As a result, the long-term health risks have magnified. The Onges have their own home-grown remedies for illness but for that they need access to forests, which determines their survival. Contact with mainland communities has exposed them to new diseases. The only way to prevent their extinction now is to restore their land to them, but with a population size of 101 Onges, their voice is unlikely to be heard.
Ashoak Upadhyay looks at peasantization of adivasis and how they were turned from hunter-gatherers into peasants. In Thane, Maharashtra, adivasi land was acquired and locals were forced to engage in farming for abysmally low remuneration. Without the skills of cultivating outside forest settings, many struggled to adjust to the new environment. Tilling and hunting may have been a minor source of revenue, but their land ownership had remained intact. But the new laws took away their land and turned adivasi communities into bonded labourers, submerged in debt.
Women in adivasi communities play a major role in collecting forest produce like mahua, tendu leaves, firewood (used for domestic fuel), fruits and nuts. They also go to the marketplace to sell some of these pro-ducts as well as take care of household work. However, at the village level, women do not have decision making powers. DN (Dev Nathan) who draws out the relationship of women and forests states that after their ownership and access to forests became limited, women were forced to step forward to work as daily wage labour, helping carry felled timber for sale. Those who migrated found the situation even more difficult. With no money, families cannot afford to buy goods. Mothers are forced to leave their children to fend for themselves while they are at work, and so most of them struggle with chronic undernutrition and ill health.
Amita Baviskar shows how commercial pressures led to uncontrolled deforestation, especially in tribal areas, since they are resource rich, which has left adivasi families battling a host of problems. By tradition, adivasi communities are protectors of the forest, providing no examples of over-exploitation of either land or forest produce. In fact, they have resisted infringement into forest reserves and exploitation of resources. However, once large areas of forests were earmarked as official forest reserves and came under the control of the state, power and control over land was taken away from tribal groups. The fate of the forest and that of the adivasi is linked. As long as adivasis are exploited and impoverished, so will the forest. If adivasis are made secure and prosperous, the environment will be protected as well.
Neela Mukherjee reiterates the need to devolve power to the community and ensure that the FRA is implemented if conflict between the adivasi and state is to end. Efforts must also be made for officials, both from the forest department and sanctuary, to forge a bond with the local habitants to build a strong relationship in order to prevent degeneration of land, depletion of forest, and to protect wildlife. As a team, they could help families create nurseries for plantation and facilitate other forms of livelihood to make adivasi communities economically secure. Such a collaboration will not only help conserve forests and its biodiversity, but also prevent displacement and forced migration of adivasis.
B.B. Mohanty argues for stronger land reforms, implementation of the Forest Rights Act and inclusion of adivasi communities in decision making to transform the current scenario of displacement, deprivation and impoverishment and help adivasis live a vibrant and dignified life. Sanjeeva Kumar shares success stories of tribal communities standing up for their rights. In the North East, the Garo community fought for the right to manage their forest resources and earn a livelihood on their own terms. Even though they had to pay tax, they still retained control over their land.
Selvarajan emphasizes the need to assess the extent of alienation of tribal lands to institutions and non-tribals, identify the forms and causes of land alienation, examine the adequacy of laws and administrative machinery to ensure that land alienation is prevented. He goes further to suggest that previously acquired lands be restored to adivasis since it is their only tangible asset.
Jyoti Satyapalan advocates the implementation of the Forest Rights Act for adivasis to get their due. She feels there is growing realization that without the active participation of forest dwellers, conservation of forests is difficult and highlights the importance of ensuring community rights over the use of forest pro-ducts by sensitizing them about the provisions of these acts.
Madhav Gadgil feels that the best way ahead is to empower gram sabhas by sharing and informing them of their rights, and promoting them instead of continuing with the control and command approach that the state currently practices. Similarly, M. Gopinath Reddy, K. Anil Kumar, P. Trinadha Rao, Oliver Springate-Baginski, state that gram sabhas and FRCs, meant to protect tribal rights over land and forest, have turned into powerless bodies. As a result, the government has not paid heed to their claims. As an institutional reform to address the historical injustice done to forest dwellers, FRA is a strong law but it needs to be implemented so that forest dependent communities can be ensured a livelihood, which has the potential to transform the adivasi horizon.
According to Dev Nathan and Govind Kelkar, under a system that permits unrestrained movement of capital, one way to restore adivasis rights is through a more equal distribution of community lands. This would prevent land grabbing by the politically influential. There is also a need to intervene in the privatisation process by involving adivasi communities in decision making, whether it be about environmental needs, preservation of cultural heritage, land reforms, or provision of education and health and other services.
Overall, the book provides a useful overview on a range of issues affecting the world of the adivasi.
Mohuya Chaudhuri
Journalist, writer and researcher
