78: Rich world view, poor Adivasi: Status of Adivasi Livelihoods Report: Dibyendu Chaudhuri and Parijat Ghosh, PRADAN

The Elephant in the Room

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“I would say that this report presents a contradictory picture, which is probably a feature of this report. And this contradiction is about rich Adivasi and poor Adivasi. Rich Adivasi in terms of their world view and cultural practices, but poor Adivasi in terms of the deprivation”

The 78th episode of The Elephant in the Room podcast, is a follow up episode, on the first ‘Status of Adivasi Livelihoods’ (SAL) Report by PRADAN. The report based on a survey of around 5000 households from across 16 Adivasi dominated districts of Jharkhand and Odisha, paints a grim picture of Adivasis as one of the most deprived sections of Indian society.

India has several laws and constitutional provisions that recognise the rights of indigenous peoples to land and self-government. The Indian Constitution also provides for positive discrimination in employment, higher education and political representation in the Indian parliament and state assemblies. However, these positive discrimination efforts do not seem to have worked.

The big question is WHY? Who is measuring the impact of development programmes and interventions? Adivasi leaders, activists and academics believe this is because policy makers do not recognise them as different, which in turn does not allow them to define and design their own development agenda.

The main purpose of the Status of Adivasi Livelihoods report is to develop a more nuanced understanding of Adivasi livelihoods and the socio-cultural setting that shape these livelihoods, in order to evolve a better response to improve their plight.

As we navigate a deeply divided world on the cusp of climate crisis, it would make sense to learn from the deep knowledge and wisdom of the Adivasis who are not a part of caste society. Adivasis possess a worldview which is different from the non-Adivasis. They do not consider themselves superior to other creatures of nature and do not believe in the accumulation of wealth and exploitation of nature for human purposes. This worldview shapes their relationship with nature and society and influences their practices including livelihoods.

“Programmes and schemes for tribal communities need to align with their values of togetherness, living in harmony with nature and non-exploitative livelihood practices. That is the only way to ensure the challenges being faced by the Adivasis are addressed without compromising the Adivasi way of living.”

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Memorable passages from the podcast

👉🏾 Okay, thank you Sudha. So see, PRADAN has been working in this Central Indian belt for last almost four decades, 40 years. And our intervention to impact the livelihoods of Adivasis has been helpful to some extent I would say. And this has been largely due to the development of many livelihood prototypes, such as Tussar prototypes, smallholder agriculture, small enterprises, like broiler poultry farming, mushroom, all these things.

👉🏾 Now all these models were developed by taking into account the distinctive features of the region and the Adivasi households. But despite efforts of PRADAN and other similar well-meaning agencies and government, by and large Adivasis in this region, the central Indian belt have remained deprived. So this is the reason why PRADAN thought to come up with a periodic status report of Adivasi livelihood. So that organisations including government, remain periodically informed about the status of Adivasi livelihoods. That's the purpose that I would say.

👉🏾 Let me try it. If we consider the whole of India, the population of ST is 8.6%, as you mentioned. However, if we look at the states where they live, such as Jharkhand, Odissa, MP, Chhattisgarh states of Northeast, the share of the population is quite large.

👉🏾 And they're mostly living in the areas, which are rich in natural resources such as forest, coal and minerals and now this is a unique situation. Historically Adivasis were displaced from time to time for various reasons. On one hand government needs these natural resource-rich areas for big development projects, such as dams, mines, et cetera. On the other hand, government also worked out various acts and provisions to protect their rights. They are considered to be the most marginalised section of the society as Dibyendu also mentioned.

👉🏾 Therefore it becomes important to understand the real status of their life and livelihood. And as of now there is no systematic data kept on this. There are various interventions from government, many CSOs are working in these areas, but there is no systematic data to track the impact.

👉🏾 So we as fellow citizens also, we do not know much about them. So having a clear idea about the status and the reasons probably will help in coming up with better solutions. That's why it is extremely important that we come up with such status reports.

👉🏾 I can add two, three lines here. See so there are many kind of ideas about Adivasis. One set of people talk about their rich worldview and some other talk about their deprivation. And at the same time, there is a larger section of Indian citizens that Parijat was talking about, who do not have any idea about Adivasis. So that's why a public report was needed to let the citizen of this country know about situation of Adivasis, which constitutes a significant portion of our population, 8.6% in Indian population is huge. So this is apart from the fact, that the policymaker, CSOs, and academia, they will also be benefited from this data.

👉🏾 Yeah, I can talk about the climate change. See the climate change is undoubtedly the result of human activities. Unlike you know, about the paleocene eocene thermal maximum, which took place around 56 million years ago when global temperature rose up to 5 degrees centigrade. But CO2 emission at that time was comprising of carbon 13 isotope, which come from the volcanic activities, whereas burning fossil fuel releases carbon dioxide with carbon 12 isotope, which is the main component of the current CO2 causing global warming. So that's how there is no doubt that global warming today is due to human activities, there is absolutely no doubt.

👉🏾 Now there are two main ways to fight this crisis. The first is changing our lifestyle so that we need less exploitation of nature and emit fewer greenhouse gases. The Adivasi worldview of non-accumulation of wealth becomes important here. The second way I would say is the carbon sequestration which is much talked about nowadays, here also the indigenous people's practice becomes very important. One of the main mechanism of carbon sequestration is increasing the forest cover. Now worldwide, if you look at data, it indicates that deforestation rates, are two to three times lower in lands held by indigenous peoples, this is world. Even in India, this can be observed, you can see that forest are intact in tribal region and all. So when it comes to conserving nature and biodiversity Adivasi communities can teach the world, teach us how to do that.

👉🏾 Let me also talk about their basic values, which we can learn in today's world. The Adivasis believe in a harmonic non-extractive symbiotic relationship with nature, which Dibyendu mentioned. And these are actually reflected through their language, dance, song, painting and all other art forms. And their religious rituals are also connected to nature and they celebrate together, human values like mutual support, collaboration and cooperation are the integral part of the tribal society. So in today's society where it is all about individual prosperity and we compete with each other, these sets of values can actually make the world a far better place to live in.

👉🏾 They use local seeds, locally available material for crop production, which helps in rejuvenation of the local soil. Their agriculture is also community based, it used to be, it is changing, but it used to be like that. So Dibyendu also mentioned that their relationship is not extractive. In mainstream, idea of development we extract things from nature for our own good. But their relationship is more mutual and they actually try to take things which actually they need, not more than that. And they're also help in rejuvenating the nature, the way they use it. So these sets of values and way of life probably needed to keep this planet suitable for human species for a longer time.

👉🏾 Yeah, so you are right, the term tribe, Scheduled tribe, Adivasi, have been used interchangeably to refer to these social groups that were not part of the caste system, at least originally.

👉🏾 And also it is a fact that the British coloniser's experience of Africa and America made them think about these groups as kinship based groups, which have primitive traits and which are in a stage of evolution, so that's the history. Now, most of these so-called tribes were dependent on both agriculture and forest, historically. There are other groups also, which have been mostly hunting and gathering, but by and large they were dependent on agriculture and forest. Now post-independence, they have been displaced, dispossessed for the sake of building large dams, exploitation of mineral reserves and establishment of wildlife sanctuaries. In response to this, this displacement and dispossessions, tribes started claiming that they were the original inhabitants, which is Adivasi of the region.

👉🏾 Now, this Adivasi identity contains two different political ideas. The first one is that the Adivasis are original inhabitants of the place where they are living now, and they have a historical right to their homeland. The second form of Adivasi political identity is based on the idea that tribal culture is superior because it is more, egalitarian and ecologically sustainable as compared to modernity or capitalism or industrial model, all those things. So during this study of Sal, we came across both these ideas, a set of people said that this is our original homeland and we cannot be dispossessed from the area and there are a set of people who were proud of their culture, their worldview, which talks about equality, which talks about togetherness being with nature, and they were proud of that. So both of these identity-based ideas we came across.

👉🏾 Yeah where we conducted this study of Sal, I think most of them would like to call them as Adivasis because this is the identity under which they were all mobilised and they relate to this identity. Tribes from other regions, for example, Northeast and other areas, they may not relate to this term of Adivasi, they may be more related to the term tribe. But the people who are residing in the central Indian plateau, the way we understood during this study that they mostly would like to associated with the term Adivasi more than ST. ST they use for the official purpose, of course, cause that's the government term.

👉🏾 Okay, let me start and Dibyendu maybe add. What I understand that the overall report shows that the status of Adivasis in livelihood, income and other areas, whatever data we collected and analysed, the situation is worse than the national average. The national per capita income is around 14,780 in Jharkhand and we have 13,034 in Orissa. Although farming is reported by more than 90% of the families in both the states as the major source of livelihood, but in case of Jharkhand this is the highest contributed to the total household income, which is almost 42% and followed agriculture. In Orissa agriculture is the first, but second highest is the wage.

👉🏾 So you can see this contrast, that whether more than 90% of the families do agriculture but the contribution or income is not that high from the agriculture, rather wage is more in that case. And though Adivasis in these two states lead in foresting the areas, the income from the forest does not contribute very significantly to the total income. They're dependent in forest in many ways, but if you calculate in monetary term as income from forest, that is not significant, which is a significant the way we thought it could be. So that became a little counterintuitive for us also.

👉🏾 The situation of functional literacy is really very poor, only 45% male household heads and 63% female household head could not read and write in Jharkhand and then the number is even higher in case of Orissa, 55% male and 75% female household heads not at all read and write. The status of infrastructure, including road connectivity and other connectivity is poorer in the Adivasi areas, that's what the report is saying. So these are some of the major findings, and I would like Dibyendu to add.

👉🏾 See this is one-time report, so it's basically very difficult to say trends only from this report. But if you can compare this report with earlier reports where similar data is there, it shows that Adivasis land holding is decreasing. So this is one thing I can tell you definitely. Other things we have to see.

👉🏾 I would say that this report presents a contradictory picture, which is probably a feature of this report. And this contradiction is about rich Adivasi and poor Adivasi. Rich Adivasi in terms of their world view and cultural practices, but poor Adivasi in terms of the deprivation that's talked about. This report does not say any reasons for deprivation, hints at points, which are mostly external to Adivasis. So the report talks about displacement and dispossession that we discussed already, since independence and probably prior to that also. But it also talks about reach of development services and facilities in terms of the existence of all weather roads, telecoms, educational institutions, health infrastructure, all these things, and which are poorer in Adivasi villages compared to non Adivasi villages in the same geography. I can't remember exactly now, but for instance, mobile connectivity was found available around 70% Adivasi villages as compared to approximately 90% of the non Adivasi villages in both the states, something like that.

👉🏾 See there was a group who actually helped us during the design of the study. So this group also comprised of academician, the activists, the social workers, many kind of people. So the most important input that we received from them was that the Adivasi livelihoods are not only about livelihood outcomes, such as income or food security or dietary diversity.

👉🏾 If you want to understand Adivasi livelihoods, it is important to understand the cultural ethos that shapes their livelihoods, their relationship with nature and their relationship among themselves. So that is the main contribution I think, otherwise we were only going with probably the outcome-related things and it would have been just another report with some poverty indicators. So their input made it very different, the Adivasi context and issues were captured because of that.

👉🏾 Yes. I mean, in the larger society and development forums, those who talk about Adivasis and their issues are mostly non Adivasis. Those who formulate policy in the government also they're mostly non-Adivasi. Therefore we miss out to understand things that Dibyendu explained. I mean, this livelihood is not only about outcome it's also about this cultural ethos. Collaborating with Adivasi activists, academicians, and politicians, that also helped us to understand that there are diversities among the Adivasi also we call them Adivasi and put them in one bracket that probably is not the right representation of the diversity they have within themselves. So this collaboration helped to develop this understanding. There are common things and binding factors as the Adivasi community, as well as there are huge diversities also among Adivasis. And I hope this does not become one-time collaboration and we continue to work together to come up with ways for the Adivasis to self-determine their development agenda rather than others speaking on behalf of them.

👉🏾 So far it has been received well, most of them said, those who went to the report or attended session they said that this kind of status report came up with very important insights and that it will be helpful in deciding their own future course of action. They also came up with suggestions for next reports for how that can be more helpful, what more we can include. And overall I sense that there is an increasing interest and acceptance among the stakeholders.

👉🏾 This is the first status report, so therefore we probably need to continue to work with the stakeholders to disseminate the findings for the report and findings for the report to be more relevant for advocating the desired change that we are talking about. So I would say overall, there is an increasing interest. It is received well so far, but more work needs to be done so that all the stakeholders actually referring to this report, when they're talking about or thinking about their communities

👉🏾 Yeah, actually we received many messages from CSOs and donor agencies, they were thanking us for making this report available in the public domain specifically. Some agencies said that they would leverage it with their clients to drive the focus towards Adivasi population. Some of them have also appreciated that the Adivasi community voices have been kept at the centre of this report.

👉🏾 So yeah, we conducted webinars where Adivasi scholars were present so they appreciated the presence of this kind of a report and they said that this kind of reports were needed. And not only like one-time report, this has to be a periodic report so that one can see if there is any change in the situation. So that was appreciated quite a lot.

👉🏾 So I think that data will be mostly used to track the overall impact of all the efforts made by various agencies, to improve the situation of Adivasis, that we already talked about. Additionally, I would say we will identify areas where deeper studies needed to understand the reason of marginalisation. See this report doesn't talk much about the reasons, it hints at some of the, possible reasons, but it does not directly talk about those.

👉🏾 We decided that probably some deeper study would be required to understand the deeper reasons, correlate findings, statistically, and also establish causality. And we are hoping that many academic institutions can do this because this is a public report, anyone can use the data of this report. So the academic institutions may do this on their own, or we can collaborate with them. Deeper studies on areas to understand the