Relative socio-economic and human development profile of scheduled tribes in India

摘要

The central and state governments and planners have formulated and implemented various policies aiming at raising the social and economic conditions of the communities such as the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) who had remained traditionally backward for historical reasons. Few comprehensive studies based on primary data collected with the specific purpose of assessing the social and economic conditions of the SCs and STs have, thus far, been undertaken. The present study attempts an analysis of the household level data collected by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in its Human Development Indicator survey from a sample of 33 230 rural households - 7943 belonging to the SCs and 4220 belonging to the STs, to assess their level of development. The results of the study show that the number of STs has grown at a faster rate than others, increasing their share in total population over the decades. Among the major states in India, Madhya Pradesh has the highest percentage (23.3 percent) of ST population. Other states where the proportion of ST population is higher are Orissa (22.2 percent), Gujarat (14.9 percent) and Rajasthan (12.4 percent). Every alternate person belonging to SCs and STs is poor while every third person not belonging to SCs and STs is poor. Higher incidence and intensity of poverty between SCs and STs is perhaps a consequence of lower access to productive assets. Keeping in view the proportion of STs in rural population, proportion of landless households among them is quite high. However, there has been a decrease in the incidence of landlessness between STs. Regarding the availability of amenities STs are in much better position than SC population. As regards to the development of education STs clearly are not the better performers if the output parameters like literacy rate, ever enrolment rate, discontinuation rate and percentage of population (aged 15+ years) completing middle level are considered. Interstate variation in literacy between both STs and SCs as measured by coefficient of variation also shows a decreasing trend over time. This means that the backward castes are improving at a faster rate. On coming to some of the health and demography-related parameters, STs are better off than SCs as well as total population as far as major morbidity rates are concerned. Crude birth rate and total fertility rate are high and the contraceptive prevalence rate is also high among STs as compared to SCs.