The Union government is now looking to design a survey that can gauge the Human Development Index (HDI) specifically for about 28 lakh people of the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) living in over 22,000 villages across the country, Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda said on Wednesday (June 14) in New Delhi.
Calling it a first-ever attempt, Mr. Munda said, “We will collect information about the changes in their lives and document it - and simply put, make a database from it at the village-level. We basically want to draw up an HDI for primitive tribal groups. This will also be able to quantify how government policies are changing their lives.”
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had in this year’s Budget speech announced a ₹15,000-crore expenditure outlay for the Pradhan Mantri Primitive Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PM-PVTG) Development Mission, to be spent over the next three years. The programme envisions connecting all 22,544 PVTG villages to basic government services like communications, electricity, public education, healthcare, water supply, and connectivity.
It is part of this programme that Mr. Munda said the survey to create an HDI for PVTGs will be conducted. “Such a policy with such an allocation has never been made before. With a holistic approach, we will document their lifestyle, their culture, so that we can show the world as to how they proudly and happily live their lives despite being in remote regions,” said the Minister, who was addressing the press on the PM Narendra Modi-led government’s achievements in the last nine years.
He added, “We want to see how their purchasing capacity is increasing, how their economic activities are changing, whether and what government services and facilities are reaching them. We intend to create a database that will have all this data.”
Comment | The wide disparities in human development
While speaking of other initiatives taken by the Tribal Affairs Ministry in the last nine years, Mr. Munda spoke of a similar programme to test and collect data of tribespeople on Sickle-Cell Disease (SCD). For this initiative too, the government is trying to bring interventions to decrease prevalence of the disease among tribal populations.
It has embarked upon a mass testing drive for this, with a target of screening around 9 crore people by 2025-56. However, The Hindu had reported that as of March this year, the mission had achieved just 1% of its target of 1 crore people for 2022-23.
The Minister said that work on this programme is progressing rapidly and that the mission for “eliminating” SCD from India by 2047 was achievable.
Mr. Munda also spoke of the rapid pace at which Eklavya Model Residential Schools (EMRSs) for tribal students had been sanctioned by the PM Modi-led government. The number of sanctioned schools has gone up from 167 to 690 since 2014, with over 3 lakh students enrolled at the schools. But only 401 of the schools are functional, many in buildings not their own.
The Minister also said that the government had solved teacher shortages at EMRSs by creating the National Education Society for Tribal Students (NESTS) to centrally monitor their administration and now recruit teachers as well. The government has already announced this and said 38,800 teachers and support staff will be hired for EMRSs soon.
Officials said the first batch of 10,000 teachers should be ready to start by the end of the year.
Mr. Munda also highlighted the Pradhan Mantri Adi Adarsh Gram Yojana as another achievement. He said that under this scheme, over 36,000 tribal villages are being developed to become model villages. The Minister also spoke of the overall increase in Budget allocation for tribal affairs in the last nine years, highlighting that the allocation, put together with the Scheduled Tribe Component Fund (STCF), was the highest it has ever been at over ₹1.3 lakh crore.
Mr. Munda also said that the government, under the leadership of PM Modi, had given the respect that primitive tribal groups have always deserved. He said that this was shown when the government brought representatives of all 75 PVTGs for a meeting with President Droupadi Murmu. “They were also brought to the Central Hall of the Parliament to meet with the Speaker,” he said.
Mr. Munda said, “We are not looking at development from a political lens. This clearly shows our government’s commitment to bring public facilities even to the most marginalised among us who are yet to secure participation in our democratic processes.”
