Shownotes: 

Indigenous people make up 8.6% of the Indian population i.e. a staggering 104 million people (give or take) but they continue to live on the fringes of society and development. 

In terms of scale only 13 countries in the world have a population over 100 million. 

In India, they are known as Adivasis (or the earliest inhabitants of the continent), they are not a part of caste society. Their world view is of a non-hierarchical relationship with nature and people. A worldview considered backward by majority, modern industrial society worldview.

Non-Adivasi Indians have very little or no idea about this non-homogenous group of people and have very little interface with Adivasis or their way of life. 

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 HDI, human development index of Adivasis in India is 30% lower than the national HDI. 

Adivasi leaders, activists and academics believe this is because it does not recognise them as different and does not allow them to define and design their own development agenda. 

From a measurement point of view there is a shocking absence of systematic effort to periodically track the impact of various development programmes. 

So, on 9th August which is the 'International Day of World's Indigenous Peoples' PRADAN announced India's first every 'Annual Adivasi Development Indices Report' or (AADI). 

Listen to my conversation with Dibyendu Chaudhuri from PRADAN to learn more about this brilliant initiative. 

The photo is of Jacinta Kerketta, poet, writer and freelance journalist and Gunjal Ikir Munda an assistant Professor, folk musician and folklorist talking about the Adivasi worldview and celebrating the language and culture. 

Memorable Passages from the conversation: 

👉🏾 Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to talk about the indigenous people, their ideas, philosophy, and their issues. Thank you so much. 

👉🏾 So what I know I can tell you. World wide indigenous people have their own diverse languages, cultures, rituals and world views. World views means their way of living, their philosophy, their relationship with nature, their relationship with their own neighbours, the way they structure their society, their livelihoods, their knowledge system, or even their language. All these are shaped by this philosophy which you may call tribal worldview, the indigenous peoples’ worldview. Now, what is common among all these indigenous people worldwide is that all of them faced the same challenge throughout history and that challenge is the attack they faced from another worldview, the so-called modern worldview, which is based on you know, hierarchy, personal progress, exploitation of nature.

👉🏾 Now this worldview dominates the indigenous people's worldview. The worldview of indigenous people is considered backward by this modern worldview. In fact, all of us, you, me, probably all of us, are subscriber to this modern worldview. So as a result, the indigenous people have been asked to follow the same path that the industrial society, the modern society has followed. So in this clash of world views, indigenous people started losing their culture, their way of living. However, they never could fully be part of the modern society, nor the modern society could provide them everything that would have been required for them to be able to grab the opportunity available in the modern society.

👉🏾 Now let us come back to India. In India, people who were originally not part of the caste society and actually remained away from them are considered indigenous people. In Hindi we call them Adivasis, they also want to be known as Adivasis. They have a worldview different from the non-Adivasis.

👉🏾 This world view is also of a non-hierarchical relationship with nature and people. They believe in togetherness and for them, community wellbeing is considered more important than the individual progress. They think that they are part of nature. They take things from nature in a way that does not hinder the process of natural rejuvenation, because of their association with nature, they have developed a knowledge system that is more social. Social in a sense that it belongs to the community. So though there have been many clashes with the caste society and monarchy in India, even 2000 years ago, there is no evidence that the caste society people used to think of Adivasis as backward or inferior. They were considered different, but not backward.

👉🏾 For example, you may know Kautiliya was an Indian political economist, he wrote a book called Arthashastra. So there he mentioned how to defeat the gansanghas. Gansangham can be translated as democratic states run by the tribal assemblies. As they were threats to monarchy, but there is no mention that they were backward. Calling them as backward happened during the colonial period. When British colonisers came, they started using the term tribe and the sense of backwardness was imposed.

👉🏾 That was where this group of people with a different worldview and culture became known as backwards. So tribal means backward. The same pattern continued even after independence, the mainstream people continued to think of them as backward and could not recognise that there can be multiple world views. 

Apart from that, the Adivasis of central Indian plateau since the colonial period and after the independence also have been displaced and dispossessed for development projects, such as large dams, construction, or establishing a mining projects or mineral factories. So on this 'International Day of World's Indigenous Peoples', which was yesterday, the world recognises that there can be multiple world views, multiple ways of living. And this multiplicity is recognised on that day. 

👉🏾 I can talk about the purpose. Since independence many programs and schemes have been launched by government of India and even non-government agencies to improve the situation of the Adivasi people. The government of India in its fifth five-year plan came up with the provision of something called tribal sub-plan. Which is basically an allocation made by the central government development of scheduled tribe people in the state. Scheduled tribe people are the Adivasis. So mostly these terms in India are used interchangeably. There are other state and central schemes as well so there are other poverty elevation schemes as well, Like the Employment Guarantee Act, you know about NREGA, Right To Food Act, Right To Education Act. All these are not targeted towards only the Adivasis, they also safeguard the interest of the tribal people the Adivasi people. 

👉🏾 However, the situation of people in central Indian plateau is not changing. This is still one of the most poverty-stricken pocket in India. The income gap in India is generally attributed to the very low per capita income residing in this area. And if you think about other parameters, such as life expectancy at birth, literacy rate, infant mortality rate, these areas shows worse results in comparison with national figures. Further, within the central Indian plateau, Adivasis are most marginalised. If you compare Adivasis with non-Adivasis, even within the central Indian plateau. The HDI, human development index of tribes in India is 30% lower than the national HDI, of India. 

👉🏾 What are livelihood outcomes, income, food security, dietary diversity, what kind of food you eat, whether you get to get all kinds of foods. The other parameters are also very, very poor. However, there is a lack of systematic effort to periodically track those livelihood outcomes. 

👉🏾 Annual, Adivasis Development Indices Report is supposed to show the policymakers in a periodic manner, what is happening to the livelihood of Adivasis, so that changes if needed, can be done in approach and allocation of resources. This will help that administration and policymakers to design and implement schemes and programs based on ground realities. We had a wish to include the entire central India in this study. However, for resource constraints, this year, we will start with two states. We have already started with two states, Odisha and Jharkhand. 

👉🏾 Secondly, it will create a database that can be used to compare the situation of Adivasis of central India with the rest of the population in India. In terms of their resource base, livelihood sources, income, food adequacy, nutrition, health situation indebtedness, all these things. And thirdly, it will also help general citizen of India to know about Adivasis and their current status. or livelihoods canvas. 

👉🏾 There are some reports, but they are scattered. Like it was done once upon a time, but then there was no continuous effort. So the specialty of AADI is, it will be an annual report. There will be a periodicity to this report. So you'll be able to see if there is any change or the things are static. 

👉🏾 So let me start with the conceptual framework of the study. There are six aspects that have been studied in order to make an assessment of the status of livelihood. So first one is the cultural ethos. I was talking about the worldview. So this worldview reflects in culture, in which livelihoods are practised. So the cultural ethos of our community influences the thinking of members in relation to their own life goals in relation, to their interaction with resources and also with each other. So that is very, very important. The first one is cultural ethos, in which the livelihoods are practised. 

Second one is the resource base within which the livelihoods are practiced. Like the natural resources such as land, forest, water. The quality of those resources, access to and control over those resources. So those are very, very important. So this is the second thing. The third thing is external intervention to improve those resources. Like external intervention by government, external intervention by maybe agencies. One more fundamental part is the attribute of the households themselves, like their skill level, their knowledge level, their health, their education.

👉🏾 So this is the attributes of the households. Based on cultural ethos, resource base, external intervention and attributes of the households, any household does some kind of a livelihood activities. So then we will have specific activities practised in livelihoods.

👉🏾 And the last point is based on all of these five things, you get livelihood outcomes, and those livelihood outcomes are in terms of food security, dietary diversity, income, also health, also education. So this is the entire framework. We obtained information on cultural ethos of the communities as well as on certain dimensions of the resource base and external interventions from intellectuals who belong to Adivasi societies, from activists, from our donors, societies and academia through interviews. 

👉🏾 We talked to Dr Virginius Xaxa who is a very, very eminent personality in India, as far as tribal studies are concerned. We talked to James Herenj who is an activist. We talked to Dayamani Barla who is an activist who is also famous for a movement called Koel Karo movement. And we talked to Dr. Bipin Jojo. We talked to Gunjal Munda, we talked to Jacinta. So a lot of prominent people. And then information concerning the local resource base and issues of external influences, so all those were obtained through focus group discussion in the villages. Then information on household attributes and livelihood outcomes were necessarily obtained, through household surveys. The sample size was 5,000 for the Adivasi households. And we also took around 1,500 non-Adivasi household as a control sample size. And it was decided in such a manner that we'll be able to make statistically significant inferences at the state level. So we'll be able to say something about Jharkhand, we'll able to say something about Odisa . 

👉🏾 At the same time, the sample size will let us make a comparison between major tribal groups, major tribal groups means like Santhal, Oraon. Those who are like more in numbers in terms of their population and the particularly vulnerable tribal groups. These are called PVTG in short, these are smaller tribal groups who traditionally used to be artisans or shifting cultivators. And the population of these group of people are very, very well less. So we'll be able to compare all the variables between these two groups, like the major tribal groups and the PVTGs. 

👉🏾 So research and advocacy unit is spearheading this work mostly and we have taken help from academicians, activists to design the study. We took help from Nandani Sundar from Delhi university We took help from again Johnny Oommen you will be knowing he's a doctor. Yeah, so James Herenj, we took help off So, yeah. Then we designed based on their feedback and probably after the first report, the first draft report comes up, we'll again, go to them, we'll take their feedback. And based on that, we'll rectify our report. This time we have started with Odisha and Jharkhand and we have a plan to include more states. 

👉🏾 This is a very, very interesting question. See, I read many history books and it talks about many factors, so I'm not going to history. But, ultimately for different historical reasons, the Adivasis by and large live in forest fringe areas or in forest areas in the central Indian plateau, in the forest itself. So I'm not here talking about the tribal groups of Northeast India. Their story is entirely different. Now it is true that since independence, the central and state governments are working to improve the situation of Adivasis. However, two things happened, which have been largely overlooked. Firstly, the Adivasis continued to say that they were different and they should be allowed to decide their own part of development.

👉🏾 But the state didn't hear that, they heard that Adivasis wanted development. They didn't hear that Adivasis are also saying that we are different. So Adivasis were not given the chance to decide their own development path, they remained beneficiaries rather than designers of their own destiny. So the acts like PESA which is actually an act for self-governance of Adivasi, didn't get fully implemented in letter and spirit, but had it been implemented fully, it would have changed the entire scenario of self-governance. 

👉🏾 So PESA gave the Adivasis an opportunity to self govern themselves. Self-governing means they will have authority and say over what is going to happen with their resources? What is going to happen to their lands, forest. So ultimately the Grahm Sabha, which is governing body within the village, is a traditional governing body of the Adivasis.

👉🏾 I would not say it has hindered. It has not yet been implemented fully in its letter and spirit. The issue is PESA is an act, now the states, which comes under PESA, there are 10 states, they have to formulate their own rules. Now four states, which are more or less like the most Adivasi dominated states like Odisha, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh they have not yet formulated. PESA has not been implemented fully in no states. Even the states who have made the rules, they have not also fully implemented it. The problem is it has not been implemented fully and probably it's because some people in the area may not be wanting this to happen and that's why it's not happening.

👉🏾 That will be an important step in the struggle for Adivasis identity. Adivasi worldview is about living with nature that I already talked about and worshipping nature. This is non-hierarchical and on the other hand, if you look at the mainstream religious ideologies, such as Christianity or Hinduism, these are based on a worldview which is hierarchical that gets reflected in their rituals. Now, Adivasis are continuously saying that they are different. This distinction has not been recognised. They have been considered only as a set of poor people. The recognition of a separate tribal religion will be a step towards the recognition of the fact that there exists many ways of living and all these ways of living are legitimate. So that's why this is very, very important. 

👉🏾 It is in our ambit of work, PRADAN works with Adivasis to strengthen in their livelihood and this includes agriculture, horticulture. In fact, 50% of people with whom PRADAN works are Adivasis. 

👉🏾 Now talking about forest-based livelihoods. It includes two kinds of intervention from PRADAN. One is called the Tasar seri culture, which used to be the traditional activity of the tribes. They used to rear Tasar Cocoon,. PRADAN helped them improve the quality and quantity of Tasar host plants and trained Adivasis to identify disease-free layings with the help of microscopes, so these are the interventions. This has reduced the risk of crop failure to a great extent. There are village-level groups who are involved in Tasar cocoon rearing. Through their producer companies or cooperatives, they sell their products and the co-operatives helps to negotiate price, as you already said. 

👉🏾 Another forest-based activity was the cultivation of Lac. And PRADAN also helps to reduce risks involved in this activity by providing training on controlling disease and pests. For agriculture and horticulture activities also PRADAN is in the process of promoting, farmer producers organisations. This helps them to identify crops that can fetch better price in the market, FPOs as they're called, helps the farmers with sustainable cultivation practices and it also helps in input procurement, in bulk and thereby reducing the production costs to a great extent.

👉🏾 Another strategy is to rejuvenate natural resources by soil and moisture conservation,...