Tribal Development Approaches for their All Round Development

The tribal population of India constitutes around 8% of total population over 94,000 tribal villages. Tribals are mainly concentrated in Andhra Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, West Bengal, North-Eastern States and North-Western Himalayan States.

The small, marginal, fragmented, unirrigated and mono crop agriculture holdings and low productive livestock population do not offer adequate opportunitiesto to the tribals. Tribals in remote areas are still devoid of common infrastructure facilities of road and communication, health and education and safe drinking water, which do not allow  them to absorb technological and financial facilities provided by government.

So for their All Round Develpment,  In 1972, Tribal Development Directorate established for effective implementation of  Tribal Welfare Schemes.  In 1976 Tribal Development Commissionerate was established for All Round Development of Tribal. In 1984 separate Tribal Development Ministry was established to strengthen the Tribal Development Department, Directorate was merged into Commissionerate in 1992.

The comprehensive Tribal Development Approach involves the following
components

• Orchard development (fruit/ plantation/herbal crops & forest plants) as the core componen
• Soil conservation in the wadi
• Water resources management (conservation and use)
• Sustainable agriculture
• Human resource development (community development)
• Women development - A special emphasis is given for involvement of women in all spheres ofthe programme.
• The components include drudgery reduction measures, on-farm and non farm income generating activities and self help groups for inculcating thrift and credit habits.
• Community Health
• Micro-enterprises for landless people
• Processing & marketing
• Other auxillary components to dovetail with above activities.

Objectives of Tribal Development Approach

• To promote sustainable participatory livelihood programmes
• To take up promotional efforts such as capacity building, exposure visits, training, developing literature, sensitization programmes etc.
• To implement sustainable livelihood programmes
• To support promotional activities for micro-credit, promotion of SHGs, Income
• Generating Activities for land-less, SC / ST communities and other weaker sections of the community
• To support activities related to development of tribal market
• To support other relevant activities as approved by NABARD

Participant Groups (PGs)
The core activity will be a family based programme and will be undertaken by the member of
tribal family. For better planning and management, the individual project participant
will come together as small groups of about 10 members each.

It is necessary for people to understand the relationship between their poverty and
the degraded environment in which they live in. They must also be provided with an equally
good, if not better, economic alternative.

Social
empowerment, improvement in quality of life including health and women development,
in tribal predominant areas of the country through demonstration projects supported
through Non Government Organisations (NGOs)/ Community Based Organisations
(CBOs) / GOs.