39: India's first 'Annual Adivasi Development Indices' Report a conversation with Dibyendu Chaudhuri

India's first 'Annual Adivasi Development Indices' Report a conversation with Dibyendu Chaudhuri: 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.