Social watch
Favouring
Tribals
ignoring
Adivasis!
Mohan Guruswamy
The Constitution of
India, Article 366 (25)
defines Scheduled
Tribes as "such tribes
or tribal communities
or part of or groups
within such tribes or
tribal communities
as are deemed under
Article 342 to the
Scheduled Tribes (STs)
for the purposes of this
Constitution.
Tribal people account for
8.2% of India’s population.
They are spread over all of
India’s States and Union Territories.
Even so they can be broadly
classified into three groupings.
The first grouping consists of
populations who predate the Indo-
Aryan migrations. These are termed
by many anthropologists as the
Austro-Asiatic-speaking Australoid
people. The Central Indian Adivasis
belong to this grouping. The
other two major groupings are
the Caucasoid and Sino-Tibetan
or Mongoloid tribal people of
the Himalayan and Northeastern
regions who migrated at later
periods.
The Constitution of India, Article
366 (25) defines Scheduled Tribes as
"such tribes or tribal communities
or part of or groups within such
tribes or tribal communities as
are deemed under Article 342 to
the Scheduled Tribes (STs) for the
purposes of this Constitution.”
The criteria for classification
being geographical isolation,
backwardness and having distinctive
culture, language, religion and
“shyness of contact.”
ST’s are found in the greatest
numbers in Madhya Pradesh
(12.23 million, or 20.3% of the
state's population), Maharashtra
(8.58 million or 8.9%), Orissa (8.15
million or 22.1%), Jharkhand (7.1
million 0r 26.35%), Chhattisgarh
(6.16 million or 31.8%), Andhra
Pradesh including Telangana (5.02
million or 6.6%), and West Bengal
4.4 million or 5.5%).
By proportion, however,
the populations of states in
the northeast had the greatest
concentrations of ST’s. For example,
31% of the population of Tripura,
34% of Manipur, 64% of Arunachal
Pradesh, 86% of Meghalaya, 88% of
Nagaland, and 95% of Mizoram are
ST’s. Other heavy concentrations
18 February 2020 | www.smartgovernance.in