The Political Economy of Capitalism, ‘Development’ and Resistance: The State and Adivasis of India

This report is circumscribed in its aims, limiting itself to a subset of all that could be written about the status and situation of Scheduled Tribes in India today. An introduction in chapter 1 sets out demographics of the tribal population and the characteristics of their habitat, predominantly in mainland India. In chapter 2, it set out how the colonial State constructed and codified the ‘tribal’ and the ‘tribal area’, with a narrative of a civilising mission thinly disguising instrumental forays to support the security and economic needs of the Empire. The post-colonial State begins with an isolationist stance, but quickly reverts to the mode of the colonial State. In chapter 3, the use of the same categories of the ‘tribal’ and the ‘tribal area’—ostensibly for progressive policies and special dispensation—but increasingly such categories are used to further an integrationist agenda whereby their ‘modernisation’ and ‘development’ is closely shadowed by security imperatives. In chapter 4, it empirically examine how the Scheduled Tribes have been faring on poverty, deprivation and some other development indicators over the past two decades. Soon after India’s liberalisation, the 8th Five-Year Plan onwards, the post-colonial State formulated new institutional reform legislations, such as the Panchayat (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act in 1996 and Forest Rights Act in 2006, which are discussed in chapter 5.