13/09/2017 WednesdayPrashant Mavani, is an expert in current affairs analysis and holds a MSc in Management from University of Surrey (U.K.). Above all he is a passionate teacher.

• Are tribals fundamentally different? Do they need protection from modernisation?

• Some activists say economic development and modernisation are disastrous for tribals.

• Yet, tribals need to be brought, with care and sensitivity, into the mainstream, and not treated as a separate species.

• Independent India has treated them dreadfully. Many projects have been disasters for them.

• But other examples show mainstreaming is possible with limited trauma.

• All humans were tribals for 99.9% of their history.

• Some of us came out of the forest a few hundred or thousand years ago, a tiny period on the evolutionary scale.

• Those left behind are not museum pieces to be preserved.

• They can catch up, given empowerment and access to modern facilities.

• The World Bank’s Morse Commission echoed the claim of activists that tribals would fail to handle commercial life, would be duped into losing their land and compensation, and end up penniless.

• Similar sort of views are found, if one reads only Medha Patkar, VandanaShiva or Arundhati Roy.

Research work done by Neeraj Kaushal of Columbia University and Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar

• They researched tribals ousted by the Sardar Sarovar Dam.

• Comparing oustee households with those still in the forest, they found that, far from being decimated by modernisation, tribals can adjust quickly and flourish.

• The research data shows that the oustees were far better off in material terms (TVs, mobikes, pukka houses, school access, electricity) than a comparable forest group — their former neighbours in semi-evacuated villages above the reservoir waters.

• Their survey shows that World Bank’s Morse Commission findings/views are just myths.

• Comparing resettled with semi-evacuated villages, land ownership for self-cultivation is 83% versus 65%; for tenant cultivation is 3% versus 2%, and landless or marginal farmers working as agricultural labourers is 4% against 23%.

• Several oustees have leased land from Patels for cultivation, 25 acres in one case.

• Some oustees lease out poor-quality land and work as labourers.

• Some have found new vocations.

• Interviews revealed one oustee owning several dhabas and two operating commercial threshers, charging fees from Patel clients.

• Earlier researchers reported damaging impacts of resettlement on religious practices, traditional customs and social status.

• But today, 60% of oustees say resettlement did not affect their religious practices; 56% say their traditional customs and rituals remain unaffected, and 58% say their social status is unchanged.

• Tribal culture and traditions are resilient, changing but not erased.

• Forest tribals grow mostly rainfed coarse grain and dal for self-consumption.

• Activists feared the oustees would fail to adapt to new crops and techniques.

• In interviews, oustees said it took just one or two years to learn to grow irrigated paddy and cotton.

• No wonder their living standards shot up.

• Cellphone ownership, the epitome of modernisation, was 88% for ousteesversus 59% in the semi-evacuated forest villages.

• Tractor ownership was 7% versus 2%.

• Cellphones and tractors are penetrating even forest villages.

• Despite better material conditions, 54% of oustees said they would rather return to the same land they once occupied in the forest, proving that attachment to ancestral land and can be more important than TVs and mobiles.

• But 56% of those under 40 years opposed return.

• Researchers asked two groups of tribals in the forest whether they would like to be ousted and get the resettlement package: 52% and 31% respectively wanted to quit the forest and be resettled.

• “Caste in a Different Mould: Understanding the Discrimination” by R K Shukla, Sunil Jain and Preeti Kakkar, provides insight.

• Using national survey data, they found that while over one-third of tribals were in the bottom income quintile, no less than 11% were in the top quintile.

• Indian tribals span a wide spectrum, from affluent foreign-educated ones to hunter-gatherers in loincloths.

• Tribals in hill states earn well above the national average.

• Education and infrastructure have enabled hill tribals, many of whom in colonial times were hunter-gatherers and jhum cultivators, to leapfrog into modernity with minimal trauma.

• The same is possible in central India. Unfortunately, it is thwarted currently by state-Maoist civil war.

• Too often, activists focus only on the least developed tribals, which is misleading.

• Many of those near the Sardar Sarovar Dam have cell phones and motorcycles, and can download their land titles from internet cafés.

• The Supreme Court recently declared bamboo to be a grass, not timber, and, hence, by law, belonging to tribals and not the government.

• Some tribals in Gujarat have banded together to become bamboo suppliers to paper mills.

• Aided by NGOs, the first year’s bamboo supply yielded Rs 12 crore in wages and net profits of Rs 6.5 crore, which the panchayat will recycle into forestry.

• These are capable, modernising people.

• For too long, our laws expropriated tribals and facilitated their exploitation by contractors and petty officials.

• Recent laws have given tribals land rights, bamboo rights, a share in mine profits and the right to approve mining projects.

• Implementation remains weak.

• But the research proves that, given the will, much can be done quickly.

• The destruction caused by Hurricane Irma, an extremely powerful tropical cyclone, should be a wake-up call for India.

• This is because the country too much to lose if an Irma-type storm hits the 7,517 km-long densely populated coastline.

• Along with the human cost of such a catastrophe (remember the cyclones in Orissa, cyclone Hudhud and the tsunami?), the coastline also houses a web of infrastructure, including transport and freight networks, road and rail corridors, industrial zones and parks, maritime and port facilities, petroleum industries and refineries.

• Then there are new projects such as the NDA government’s SagarmalaProgramme. • Under the programme, there will be an investment of approximately Rs 8 lakh crore in

415 projects, which includes several ports.

• The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC-AR5) has warned that due to climate change extreme weather events are likely to become more frequent and stronger. • The events would hit coastal life and property even harder when their impacts get

combined with the sea level rise that climate change is causing.

• To save lives and infrastructure, Indian cities have to build resilience so that they can withstand such natural shocks, which, as several studies have pointed out, are expected to increase, thanks to frequent and intense heavy precipitation over most regions.

• But building resilience, as Judith Rodin, president of The Rockefeller Foundation, writes in a blog, is not a sprint or even a marathon. It’s a relay race.

• According to a policy brief by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), the main challenges for incorporating climate resilience into coastal infrastructure starts with the non-availability of fine-resolution data such as sea level measurement and variation in precipitation.

• Such location-specific information – within the larger picture of how climate change is affecting or will affect the Indian coast – can help plannersand administrators to build in climate resilience.

• Planning for climate resilience would need to start from the time of locatingthe infrastructure facilities. • For instance, infrastructure for solid waste management, especially landfills, have to

be located keeping in mind the projected sea level rise.

• Similarly, planning for climate resilience would mean ensuring water supplychannels have back-ups for extreme weather events.

• Critically, building climate resilience also requires coordination among multiple stakeholders.

• But at the moment we don’t hear too many politicians losing their sleep over the challenge of climate-protecting their constituents.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley says zero balance accounts under the Jan Dhan Yojana have come down to 20 per cent from the earlier 77 per cent.

• He was speaking at the Conclave on Financial Inclusion by United Nations in Delhi.

• Mr Jaitley said 300 million accounts were opened under Prime Minister Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY).

"Almost 42 per cent of Indian households on the day the scheme was initiated were outside the banking system. So, the number of accounts of opened numerically is more than the number of families itself.“

• Launched in 2014 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana is aimed at providing universal access to banking facilities.

• Mr Jaitley said these Basic Banking Accounts could get overdraft facility of 5,000 rupees.

United Nations on Myanmar

• The United Nations Security Council will hold a closed-door session today on the violence in the Rakhine state of Myanmar.

• The meeting was requested by Britain and Sweden.

• The exodus from Rakhine state began after Rohingya militants attacked police posts on the 25th of last month, prompting a military backlash that forced nearly 3 lakh 70,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee their homes.

• Myanmar government has been accused by the UN of ethnic cleansing.

• Myanmar's military says it is fighting Rohingya militants and denies reports that it is targeting civilians.

• The Rohingya, a mostly Muslim minority in Buddhist-majority Rakhine, have long experienced persecution in Myanmar, which says they are illegal immigrants.

• Last week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres wrote a letter to the Council urging members to send a message to Myanmar authorities to end the security operation.

Typhoon Talim

• Taiwan has issued a maritime warning as the Typhoon Talim, is expected to hit northern cities, including Taipei today.

• The Central Weather Bureau said Talim is expected to gain in strength as it swept towards the capital and other cities, lashing them with strong wind and heavy rain.

India-Pakistan

• India will hand over its written arguments, known as memorial, to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the Hague today on its plea to declare Pakistan as violator of international law for sentencing former Indian naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav to death.

• A senior official of the legal and treaties division of the External Affairs Ministry will hand over the memorial.

• New Delhi is expected to highlight the denial of consular access to Jadhavwhich is a violation of the Vienna Convention.

• Pakistan has rejected India's request for consular access 18 times. ICJ had restrained Pakistan from executing Jadhav in May this year.

• Note: The decisions of ICJ are not binding.

The End

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