Water can uplift tribal livelihoods, stop mass migration: Study

Prudent investments in providing irrigation water for agriculture could be a blessing for about 100 tribal-dominated districts located across central India from Gujarat to West Bengal and could help curtail mass migration of tribals.

A recent study carried out in these districts, under the International Water Management Institute (IWMI)-TATA water policy research program, points to an "outdated tribal policy," which is largely "confused", "politically-driven" and suggests using unexplored opportunities for enchancing tribal livelihoods by focussing on agriculture, said Sanjiv J Phansalkar, senior scientist at the IWMI at Anand.

These districts, running from Dungarpur in the west to Dumka in the east, covering Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand and West Bengal, which are home to more than 70 per cent of India's tribal population, represent perhaps the largest concentration of rural poverty in South Asia.

"The policy on tribal welfare over the years has so far given inadequate emphasis on their livelihoods, enhancement and improvement of economic status," said Phansalkar, who led the two-year study, conducted in a broad alliance of about 40 researches and practitioners.

"Tribal development policies have so far focussed largely on attacking the symptoms (health and education), rather than the root cause (livelihoods)," the senior scientist added.

The economy of tribal people in central India can be defined as an interaction between three livelihood spheres: forests, agriculture and migration, said Phansalkar.

For most tribal groups in central and eastern hills and plateau regions, forests are a source of sustenance and employment. The second sphere is that of agriculture. Most tribals cultivate on their own lands or the disputed forest lands, for instance, paddy is grown in eastern hills, minor cereals in central region and maize in western region. This sphere also includes allied activities like dairying and livestock rearing.

The third sphere is of post-harvest migration for work. This migration occurs to distant agricultural wonderlands for eastern India tribes, or to the urban streets as casual labourers for western India tribes.

While the traditional sphere of tribal livelihoods declined due to the decline in forests, the alternative sphere of agriculture could not take its place, partly due to the fact that tribal agriculture was not well developed. Also, the state did not focus attention on developing agriculture as a permanent source of livelihood, said Shilp Verma, another researcher who conducted the study.

Being novices in intensive agriculture, tribal people turned to migration to fill the food-gap. Any little effort put towards agricultural development has been hampered due to the absence of irrigation facilities, Verma said.

Further on, Verma added, the state policy on creating water resources has been focussed on building catchment-dams-canal network. Given the fact that the tribals tend to settle on higher reaches of any river basin, this type of irrigation model, automatically excluded tribals from the benefits of irrigation.

Tribal agriculture, is generally far less productive, when compared with that practiced by non-tribals. This, results from a host of factors including poor quality of lands and poor access to markets and others, Verma said.

The current policy of central and state governments, misses these crucial aspects of tribal life, he remarked.

Therefore, the study suggests that rapid agricultural development through improvements in land and water resources management can be a significant intervention to meaningfully fight poverty in the region, Verma said, adding, watershed development interventions was an example of conserving water.

While there has been some efforts in this respect, by government as well as NGOs, their spread is still small and needs to be suitably scaled up, he added.

The study therefore suggests, a classification of the central Indian tribal homelands into four distinct tribal socio-ecologies, to capture diversity and asks policy-makers to evolve separate strategies for the nature of infirmities suffered by the people belonging to scheduled tribes and scheduled castes.