A Cure Called Inclusion

Their marginalisation affects the health of tribal communities.

A report in this newspaper (‘Health to poverty: Tribals scrape bottom of barrel’, IE, September 15) drew our attention to the findings of an Expert Committee on Tribal Health appointed five years ago by the Ministries of Health and Family Welfare and Tribal Development. The report revealed that tribal communities lag behind the general population on most health parameters. This should not surprise us. Health is an under-discussed matter, both for the country’s political class and a significant section of its civil society. Discussions on health-related problems of tribals, minorities and Dalits are even rarer, both in the corridors of power and within the educated social class of the country.

It is well-known that health is an interplay of a number of social, political, cultural, environmental and genetic factors. It is important, then, to identify the missing links in this sad story of tribal health in India. According to the 2011 census, Scheduled Tribes form 8.6 per cent of the country’s populations. Many of these tribes live in the most inaccessible geographical regions of the country. In fact, in a study, published in The Lancet in May, India ranked 145 among 195 countries in terms of healthcare accessibility — behind Bangladesh and Bhutan.

Access to healthcare depends on a number of factors of which female literacy is an important determinant — it is instrumental in shaping a group’s healthcare seeking behaviour. According to the 2011 Census, the female literacy of Scheduled Tribes is 56.5 per cent; this is almost 10 per cent below the national rate and is one reason for tribal groups doing poorly on health parameters. Financial insecurity is another major cause of the ill-health of tribal people. It is no accident that a majority of hunger deaths reported in the country in the past five years happened to be of members of Scheduled Tribes.

The poor health of an ethnic group is very often a result of the exclusion of that group from a country’s national imagination. Unfortunately, such exclusion is not unique to India. The infant mortality rate of native North Americans and Alaskan natives, both underprivileged groups in the US, is 60 per cent higher than that of the Caucasians. According to 2012 figures, more than 6 per cent people from these groups suffer tuberculosis — compared to 0.8 per cent for the US’s white population. A poll conducted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health revealed that about a quarter of Native Americans experienced discrimination when consulting a doctor or a health clinic. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia are also known to have poorer health compared to other Australians. Exclusion and marginalisation of a group leads to poverty, which in turn makes people from such groups vulnerable to diseases. This holds true for India’s Scheduled Tribes as well. Ending the marginalisation of tribal communities should then be at the heart of all government and civil society efforts to improve the health of people from tribal communities.

Universal healthcare is much more than providing infrastructure or alleviating specific health disorders through national programmes. It requires correction of a number of social parameters that govern health. Besides government apathy, problems specific to some tribal groups contribute to their poor health statistics. A 2004 study in Jhagram block of West Bengal’s Medinipur district, for example, showed that 63.6 per cent Santhal (a Scheduled Tribe) mothers were aware of family planning measures, as compared to 87 per cent non-Santhal women. Moreover, some Scheduled Tribe communities are known to be vulnerable to specific diseases — people of Odisha’s Gond tribe, for example, are susceptible to sickle cell disease.

Improving the health of Scheduled Tribes requires a multi-pronged approach. However, honest attempts at inclusion — politically, administratively and socially — should be behind all such endeavours. Measures to tackle group specific health issues and capacity building of a group would go a long way in promoting their health.

Source: Indian Express, 3/10/2018

Protecting the rights of tribals

Even as bilateral investment treaties are strengthened, domestic legislation must be implemented

Recently, Ras Al Khaimah Investment Authority (RAKIA), an Emirati investor, initiated an investment treaty arbitration (ITA) claim against India under the India-UAE Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT), seeking compensation of $44.71 million. This claim arose after a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Andhra Pradesh and RAKIA to supply bauxite to Anrak Aluminum Limited, in which RAKIA has 13% shareholding, was cancelled, allegedly due to the concerns of the tribal population in those areas.

Similarly, in 2014, Bear Creek Mining Corporation initiated an ITA against Peru under the investment chapter of the Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement, claiming violation of the investment obligations due to the withdrawal of mining concessions, allegedly as a result of the protests by indigenous peoples. These cases present an opportunity to evaluate the impact of the obligations of the host states under BITs on the rights of the tribal people.

Protection under law

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP), adopted in 2007, for which India voted, recognises among other things indigenous peoples’ rights to self-determination, autonomy or self-governance, and their right against forcible displacement and relocation from their lands or territories without free, prior and informed consent. In addition to the UNDRIP, there is the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, 1989 which is based on the “respect for the cultures and ways of life of indigenous peoples” and recognises their “right to land and natural resources and to define their own priorities for development.” India is not a party to this, but it is a party to the ILO Convention concerning the Protection and Integration of Indigenous and Other Tribal and Semi-Tribal Populations in Independent Countries, 1957 which is outdated and closed for ratification.

At the domestic level, the Constitution provides autonomy to tribal areas in matters of governance under the Fifth and Sixth Schedules, which is further fortified by the Samatha v. State of Andhra Pradesh & Ors (1997) judgment where the Supreme Court declared that the transfer of tribal land to private parties for mining was null and void under the Fifth Schedule. The framework for protection of the rights of tribal and indigenous people is further strengthened by the Recognition of Forest Rights Act, 2006 which protects the individual and community rights of tribal people in forest areas and their right to free and prior informed consent in event of their displacement and resettlement.

Investment promotion

While the legislation for the protection of the rights of tribal people are in place, they are regularly flouted as has been highlighted by the Xaxa Committee report of 2014. Instead of ensuring that tribals are not ousted from the land to which they are historically and culturally connected, the state becomes more concerned about fulfilling contractual obligations towards the private investor. This means that constitutional and legal principles are discarded. This is evidenced by the increasing number of MoUs being signed by natural resources-endowed states with investors for facilitation of developmental projects. For instance, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand have reportedly entered into 121 and 74 such MoUs, respectively, with various private players as of 2014. All this materially alters the role of the state vis-à-vis the tribal people as the state prefers economic expediency at the cost of the rights of tribal people.

For economic development, states invite investments not only from domestic investors but also from foreign players whose interests are not only protected under domestic laws but also under the BITs. The purpose of BITs is to give protection to foreign investors while imposing certain obligations on the host state. For instance, if a development project involving a foreign investor in tribal areas leading to acquisition of tribal land is met with protest, there may be two possible scenarios. One, the State government due to socio-legal and political pressures may yield to the demand of the tribal people to the detriment of the foreign investor, which is what has happened in the case of RAKIA. Two, assuming that the government continues with the project, the judiciary may order the cancellation of permits given to the foreign investor, which is what happened in the case of Vedanta in 2013 (Orrisa Mining Corporation Ltd v. MoEF and Ors). In both cases, foreign investors may drag India to ITA claiming violation of obligations under the BIT, such as fair and equitable treatment or indirect expropriation. This perceived threat of ITA against the state may compel the latter to refrain from implementing tribal rights in the development project area.

Conflicting interests

A recent report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recognises three main reasons for the serious impact that foreign investments have on the rights of indigenous people: failure to adequately address human rights issues of tribal people in BITs; the perceived threat of ITA for enforcement of investor protection; and exclusion of indigenous people from the policymaking process.

What then are the possible options available to India to tackle these issues? First, none of the 80-plus BITs signed by India contains even a single provision on the rights of tribals. Even the 2015 model Indian BIT does not contain any such provision. Thus, to avoid ITA cases by foreign investors, the government’s approach should be to include provisions relating to the protection of indigenous people in BITs. There are many examples from around the world: Canada, in many of its BITs, has several exceptions to protect the rights of indigenous people. The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement also incorporates the rights of the Maoris from New Zealand. Since India is going to renegotiate its existing BITs, it should create a special exception for taking regulatory measures for protecting the rights of tribal people, in which case it should have a textual basis in the BITs to derogate from investment protection obligations under BITs.

Second, the strengthening of BITs must go hand in hand with the implementation of domestic legislations for the protection of the rights of tribals, where the state does not consider tribals as impediments in the development process. Third, as far as possible, tribal people should be given representation even in investment policymaking.

Pushkar Anand and Amit Kumar Sinha are Assistant Professors at the College of Legal Studies, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun

Source: The Hindu, 27-02-2017

Status of tribal development remains poor: Ministry report

The tribal population In India lags behind other social groups on various social parameters, such as child mortality, infant mortality, number of anaemic women, says the latest annual report of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs.

Tribal population, with a vast majority engaged in agricultural labour, has the largest number of anaemic women, the report states.

The community also registered the highest child mortality and infant mortality rates, when compared to other social groups, the data indicates.

While educational achievements on the whole has improved, statistics cited elsewhere in the Report shows that the gross enrolment ratio among tribal students in the primary school level has declined from 113.2 in 2013-14 to 109.4 in 2015-16. Besides, the dropout rate among tribal students has been at an alarming level.

Source: Ministry of Tribal Affair  

 

While the overall poverty rates among the tribal population have fallen compared to previous years, they remain relatively poorer when weighed against other social groups.

Health infrastructure has also been found wanting in tribal areas. At an all-India level, there is a shortfall of 6,796 Sub Centres, 1267 Primary Health Centres and 309 Community Health Centres in tribal areas as on March 31, 2015, the Report points out.

Gaps in rehabilitation

Further, it exposes the gap in rehabilitation of tribal community members displaced by various development projects. Out of an estimated 85 lakh persons displaced due to development projects and natural calamities, only 21 lakh were shown to have been rehabilitated so far, the Report states.

Responding to this figure, Sudhir Pattanaik, Odisha-based social activist and Editor Samadrusti told The Hindu that even the 21 lakh resettlement figure in the Report is questionable as there is no way to verify this data. Based on what he had witnessed in the case of displacement caused by mining plants and captive power projects set up in the past several years in Angul, Koraput, Raigadh and Kalahandi districts in the State, Mr. Pattanaik said that it was tribal land acquisition and not tribal development that was the focus of the government.

“Rehabilitation only happens on paper, and any compensation for displaced adivasi folks is siphoned off by others in their name,” he said.

In 2014, the Central government initiated the Vanbandhu Kalyan Yojana for the holistic development and welfare of tribal population on a pilot basis. However, the Annual Report points out that the token budgetary provisions being made under the scheme to the tune of Rs.100.00 crore and Rs.200.00 crore for 2014-15 and 2015-16, respectively, is minuscule and barely sufficient to meet the purpose of the Scheme given that it intends to cover 27 States across the country.

The Ministry has emphasised that more funds be provided for the Scheme from the year 2016-17 onwards.

Source: The Hindu, 28-12-2016

Rights for the rightful owners

On the tenth anniversary of the historic passage of the Forest Rights Act, tribal resistance to defend their rights is growing even as government after government tries to dilute its provisions

On this day 10 years ago the historic Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act was passed in the Lok Sabha. Its conception and passage was the result of the decades of struggles and sacrifices of millions of tribals across India, of their organisations, of numerous activists and intellectuals working on tribal issues, and because of the commitment and efforts of the Left parties.

Attempts at dilution

A century ago colonial chicanery had turned tribal owners of the forests and its resources into encroachers. A decade ago, the Indian inheritors of this legacy of fraud were working against the Bill till literally the last moment. The real encroachers and plunderers of the forests, the mining companies, the private power sector companies, those involved in irrigation projects, the timber and paper industries, the forest resort tourist industry had high stakes in preventing the passage of the Bill. They were in the company of fundamentalist wildlife and environmentalist groups with their close links with the powerful forest bureaucracy. They made a motley though influential crowd and had the ear of very important people in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government hierarchy.

They succeeded in diluting some important recommendations of the Parliamentary Select Committee on community forest rights, access to minor forest produce and so on. The clause that Non-tribal Traditional Forest Dwellers would have to show evidence of their occupation of the land for 75 years virtually negated the inclusion of these largely poorer sections, many of them Dalits, in the law. The Left had proposed that for these sections the Supreme Court-proposed cut-off year of 1980 would be appropriate, while for tribal communities the cut-off year should be 2005. But at the last moment the government surreptitiously brought in the three generation or 75-year clause.

The Bill with these obnoxious clauses was circulated and listed for immediate discussion and passage. As soon as we saw it, the Chairman of the Select Committee, Kishore Chandra Deo, and I rushed to the chamber of Pranab Mukherjee, then External Affairs Minister, who was the point person for the Bill on behalf of the government in the negotiations with the Left. There was a mini-drama and heated discussion which finally ended with the arrival of the Tribal Affairs Minister, P.R. Kyndiah, who had been summoned by his senior. In the discussions he assured us that he would move amendments to the Bill. At that time there was no choice but to accept the assurance at face value. It had taken more than a year of struggle to finally get the Bill included in the business agenda of Parliament and listed. The powerful lobbies against the Bill would have used our opposition to once again shelve it. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was playing a duplicitous role — its Adivasi MPs supported the Bill while others were dead against it. They ran a campaign among MPs from the Northeast that if passed, the law would legalise encroachment by “illegal Bangladeshis”. This was utterly misleading, but anything was fair in the war against tribal rights.

The missing amendments

The Bill became law, but without the amendments promised. After much discussion and pressure, some of them were included in the Rules. This also was a big struggle and there was a strong group of activists who along with the Left representatives could work out a fairly good set of Rules. It included giving prime importance to the role of the gram sabhas.

In spite of its inadequacies, there can be little doubt that the Forest Rights Act (FRA) stands as a powerful instrument to protect the rights of tribal communities. It is a hindrance to corporate interests to their free loot and plunder of India’s mineral resources, its forests, its water. But the Narendra Modi government is systematically implementing its plan to weaken and dilute the Act in several ways.

New attempts at dilution

First, it has brought a series of legislation that undermine the rights and protections given to tribals in the FRA, including the condition of “free informed consent” from gram sabhas for any government plans to remove tribals from the forests and for the resettlement or rehabilitation package. The laws were pushed through by the Modi government without any consultation with tribal communities. They include the amendments to the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act and a host of amendments to the Rules to the FRA which undermine the FRA. The requirement of public hearings and gram sabha consent has been done away with for mid-sized coal mines. BJP State governments and partners in the National Democratic Alliance such as the Telugu Desam Party government in Andhra Pradesh have introduced government orders to subvert the FRA. In Telangana, in total violation of the FRA, the government has illegalised traditional methods of forest land cultivation. The Jharkhand government has brought amendments to the Chotanagpur and also the Santhal Pargana Tenancy Acts which eliminate rights of gram sabhas and permit tribal land to be taken over by corporates, real estate players, private educational and medical institutions in the name of development, without tribal consent. In Maharashtra the government has issued a notification of “Village Rules” which gives all rights of forest management to government-promoted committees as opposed to the gram sabha. This is the law-based offensive.

Second, there is the policy-based war. The Modi government has declared its commitment to ensuring “ease of business”, which translates into clearing all private sector-sponsored projects in tribal-inhabited forest areas. The National Board for Wildlife, with the Prime Minister as Chairperson, was reconstituted,slashing the number of independent experts from 15 members to three, packing it with subservient officials. In the first three months of assuming office, the Modi government cleared 33 out of 41 proposals diverting over 7,000 hectares of forest land. Of this the major share was for Gujarat companies. In two years the clearances for projects have included “diversion” — or more appropriately land grab — to the extent of 1.34 lakh hectares of forest land. In many areas this will lead to massive displacement of tribal communities. In the multipurpose Polavaram project in Andhra Pradesh alone, now given a national status by the Central government, 2 lakh hectares of forest land will be submerged affecting around 85,000 families, more than half tribals, including 100 habitations of particularly vulnerable tribal communities. In almost all these projects, the affected tribal families have not yet received their pattas (land ownership documents), one of the conditions set by the FRA. This wilful disregard and blatant violation of the legal protections given to tribals has become the cornerstone of the policy.

Third, there is the deliberate freeze of the actual implementation of the FRA. Neither individual pattas nor pattas for community forest resources are being given. During the UPA-II government the implementation of the Act was virtually hijacked by the Ministry of Environment and Forests and rejections of claims increased. However, now the situation has worsened, and the rate of rejections has gone up during the Modi regime. According to one analysis, between May 2015 and April 2016, eight out of every 10 claims were rejected. This is the ‘Gujarat model’ in operation. The State has one of the worst records in implementation of the FRA. Although 98 per cent of the approximately 1.9 lakh tribal claims had been approved by the gram sabhas, the bureaucrats in the sub-divisional committee and above brought the acceptance down to just 38 per cent. This is in sharp contrast to a Left-led State such as Tripura, where 98 per cent of tribal claims have been recorded and titles given.

Mixed signals from the judiciary

The judiciary has also had a role to play. The same institution, which gave tribals hope through the Samata judgment, the historic Niyamgiri judgment, has also clubbed together a number of hostile petitions to the FRA and is giving them a sympathetic hearing. In January last year the court in an ominous intervention in a writ petition filed by Wildlife Trust of India and others issued notice to all State governments to “file an affidavit giving data regarding the number of claims rejected within the territory of the State and the extent of land over which such claims were made and rejected and the consequent action taken up by the State after rejection of the claims”.

This has rightly been taken by tribal communities and their organisations as a prelude to mass evictions. Maharashtra issued a notification dated April 23, 2015, directing the police to take action against “identified encroachers”, namely those whose claims have been rejected. Till 1985, the department of “Tribal Affairs” was under the Home Ministry. Tribal rights and struggles for justice were viewed as a “law and order issue, always a problem”. Under the present dispensation this retrograde approach seems to have been resurrected.

On the tenth anniversary of the historic passage of the FRA, tribal resistance is growing all over the country to defend their rights under FRA and other related issues.

Source: The Hindu, 15-12-2016

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India’s forests valued at Rs 115 trillion, but tribals unlikely to get a share

India’s forests are worth as much as the Bombay Stock Exchange with a notional value of Rs 115 trillion but the money collected from diverting parts of this land for industries won’t go to communities that live in and are dependent on the jungles.

The Union environment ministry accepted most recommendations of a 2013 expert panel that hiked the rates at which industrialists pay for diverting forest land but dropped a crucial clause mandating half that money be used to compensate tribals for the loss of jungles, documents reviewed by HT show.

A new law enacted by the Centre to disburse these funds – Rs 42,000 crore at present – also says the money should go to state forest departments, leaving out tribals. The government says the suggestion to give money to local communities isn’t practical.

“A lot of things are easier said than done. The governments anyway try and spend the money in such a way that the local communities get the maximum benefit,” said a government official.

Under a 1980 law, when forest land is diverted for industrial use, the project developer has to pay for compensatory afforestation and the Net Present Value (NPV) of the forest, to make up for the loss in ecosystem.

At present, the government charges Rs 4.38 lakh to Rs 10.43 lakh per hectares (ha) NPV, depending on the type and density of forest. These rates were fixed in 2008 but the Supreme Court asked the government to revise rates of NPV every three years.

The 2013 report revised the rates to a range of Rs 5.54 lakh to RS 50.72 lakh per ha. The panel – comprising scientists from the Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM) and Forest Survey of India – said the previous 2008 numbers were “grossly underestimated”.

The environment ministry accepted the new figures and is sending them to the committee of secretaries (CoS) for its nod, documents reviewed by HT revealed.

Before accepting the recommendations, the ministry asked the IIFM to estimate the total NPV of India’s forests, an exercise never done before. The IIFM told the ministry the notional value of India’s forest would be Rs 115 trillion.

This will increase the money collected from industrialists. “The rate of accumulation of the compensatory afforestation fund will be more than double now with an overall hike of 117% in the NPV as compared to previous rates,” said an official.

But one crucial recommendation is missing from the environment ministry’s proposal to the CoS. The 2013 panel estimated 50% of the value of forest goods and services are created at the local level, 34% at the state level and 16% the national level and suggested the NPV money be accordingly distributed between local communities, state governments and the Centre, respectively.

Such a mechanism, the panel said, would ease land acquisition worries for big projects, which face the ire of forest-dwelling tribals who fear the loss of livelihood.

Another source of worry for local communities is a new law -- the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act, or Campa act, which was cleared by Parliament recently – that will govern the disbursal of these funds.

Campa act has tribal rights activists up in arms as the legislation says nothing about sharing the revenue with the traditional forest-dwelling communities. The money is set to go to state governments, which violates the spirit of the 2013 panel report and the 2006 forest rights act, activists say.

Activists have repeatedly alleged that the government disregards environmental norms and tribal rights in handing out permits to use forestland for industries.

The 2013 report recommended the increase in NPV based on the monetary value of several goods and services from the forests such as timber, bamboo, non-timber forest produce, fuelwood, fodder, carbon sequestration, water recharge, soil conservation, pollination and seed dispersal that were not valued earlier.

The new NPV rates will be part of the yet-to-be-framed rules under Campa act.

Waiting for a fair share:

• Under a 1980 law, when forest land is diverted, the project developer has to pay for compensatory afforestation and the Net Present Value of the forest

• At present, government charges Rs 4.38 lakh to Rs 10.43 lakh per hectares NPV. These rates were fixed in 2008

• In 2013, a panel recommended that rates be revised to a range of Rs 5.54 lakh to Rs 50.72 lakh per hectare and additional premium of 20% to 4 times of NPV be charged if the project is coming up in ecologically sensitive areas

• The Centre accepted the hiked rates but dropped a clause mandating half that money be used to compensate tribals for the loss of jungles

Source: Hindustan Times, 10-08-2016

The lost tribe of Odisha

Nineteen Juang tribal children have died in the last three months due to acute malnutrition-related diseases in inaccessible hamlets atop the Nagada hills, in Odisha’s Jajpur district. A public outcry has forced the State government to finally sit up and take notice, finds Prafulla Das

Kusumuli Pradhan cannot quite remember the date she lost her son. She recalls it was sometime in the third week of June and four-year-old Charan was running a high temperature. There were rashes on his small frame. Kusumuli gathered him in her arms and walked 27 km to the Tata Steel hospital. After watching 10 children die in her hamlet in the past few months, Kusumuli was in a hurry to knock on the hospital door.

The thirty-something Juang tribal woman, however, brought the child home after a day of observation in the hospital. Three days later, Charan died. There was no one to advise Kusumuli to get her child admitted to the hospital just as no health administrator had bothered to inform her about the importance of getting her children inoculated against life-threatening diseases. Kusumuli buried her son close to her hut as her neighbours had done before her. “We make do with whatever we grow near our home and sell our forest produce to buy rice,” says the grieving Kusumuli. The particular variety of root she plucks is used in brewing a traditional rice beer, Handia, which Kusumuli sells at the Chingudipal gram panchayat headquarters 20 km away from her hamlet.

The Juangs of Nagada go to the Tata Steel hospital in Kaliapani, set up to cater to the needs of its employees at the Sukinda chromite mine. The doctor on duty is attending to two girls — Manasi and Rebati, both acutely malnourished. Each day they are weighed. For Kusumuli this was the nearest she could rush her son to. The government-run public health centre is 36 km away in Kuhika. The community health centre at Sukinda is 46 km away and the district hospital is 110 km away.

Charan’s death had taken the toll of infants who had died in Nagada to 19 in three months. The Naveen Patnaik government woke up to the news after two local newspapers, Samaja and Sambad, broke the story and local television amplified it.

The administration wakes up

Tents were soon pitched and cots were taken up the hills for the officials to stay. Medicines, food material for new mini-makeshift Anganwadis and government staff, solar lights, water filters and saplings of nutritious fruits and vegetables were making their slow climb. Close to 50 officials are posted here and work on a rotation basis.

There is one permanent Anganwadi in the foothills of Nagada, under the charge of Satyabhama Dehuri. Her job is confined to supplying packets of nutritional chhatua, a mix of Bengal gram, wheat, peanut and sugar, to the villagers whenever they come down. The Anganwadi worker is not only required to weigh children but also administer nutritional food to them and ideally should have been located at the top of the Nagada hills.

Twenty-two undernourished children, all aged under six, from Nagada and Guhiasala villages were admitted to the Tata Steel hospital following the visit of the officials. Most of these children returned to their hamlets after medical treatment when medical teams started reaching the hamlets. The infants were kept in the hospital for a week — their condition closely monitored as most of them had malaria and chest congestion and were suffering from acute malnutrition. They survived.

Deaths on account of malnutrition are not an admission health officials like to make on record. The exact reasons for the young children’s deaths will never be known as the parents quickly buried their little ones. The two deaths registered in the Tata Steel hospital have been put down to “malaria and protein-energy malnutrition”, says Chief District Medical Officer of Jajpur Phanindra Kumar Panigrahi.

As photographs in newspapers and visuals on television channels kept the focus on Nagada, the opposition Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party and others started visiting Nagada; the government responded by setting a field-level task force and a State-level monitoring committee to keep a close watch.

Sources: Sample Registration System Statistical Report 2013; National Family Health Survey-3 whicbh came out in 2005-06

To any visitor, including this reporter, the children and adults in the hamlets appear in feeble health. Their one-room huts empty barring a few pieces of clothing, few kilos of ration rice and some maize they grew near their home.

Although officials remain tight-lipped about the prevalence of acute malnutrition among children under five years of age, an official survey by the State Women and Child Development Department found that 44 children in the age group of six months to five years were suffering from malnutrition in the seven hamlets atop the hills, and nine more such children had been identified in Ashokjhar, another Juang hamlet situated in the foothills. As many as 24 of these 53 children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition (SAM) and the remaining are suffering from moderate acute malnutrition (MAM). The SAM and MAM status of children are known by measurement of upper arm muscles along with body weight. These undernourished children are now being provided nutritious food and treatment at their homes by the doctors camping there and being monitored.

A history of neglect

Odisha has 62 tribes, the highest number among all States and Union Territories in the country, accounting for 22.85 per cent of the total population as per 2011 census. As many as 13 of these tribes have been identified as Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs), living in over 500 habitations of the State but mostly in hamlets inside the forested hills across Odisha. The Juang tribe is one of the PVTGs that belong to the Munda ethnic group and live in Keonjhar, Dhenkanal, Angul and Jajpur districts of Odisha and speak the Juang language, which is accepted as a branch of the greater Austroasiatic language family. Those who come down the hills at regular intervals have picked up Odia.

It was to bring the Juangs into the mainstream that the Juang Development Agency (JDA) was established in 1975, with its headquarters in Gonasika Hills in Keonjhar district. Even after four decades have elapsed, the agency has not been able to go beyond the Juangs of Keonjhar, operating in 35 villages in six gram panchayats of Banspal block of Keonjhar. In fact, around 20 more villages in that block are yet to be covered. Many other Juang-dominated villages in Harichandanpur block of Keonjhar, Kankadahad block of Dhenkanal have remained outside the purview of the JDA all these decades. As do the hamlets on the Nagada hills. They are inaccessible by road — there is only one way to get there, and that is by foot.

The tragedy at Nagada involving the Juang tribe exposes the government’s apathy towards the PVTGs, but this is not for the first time that malnutrition-related deaths have stalked the tribal children. In 2013, several malnourished Paudi Bhuyan tribal children had allegedly died of diseases caused by acute malnutrition in Lahunipara block of Sundargarh district, over 200 km away from Nagada. Though the exact number of deaths is not available in the official records, a food rights activist claims that about 15 deaths were reported from different villages in Lahunipara. Many deaths of undernourished children in hilltop tribal hamlets in the interiors go unreported as they remain inaccessible. Following media reports about acute malnutrition among Paudi Bhuyan children, the State Women and Child Development Department, in consultation with Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes, health and family welfare, rural development and panchayati raj departments, had prepared a guideline for a convergent health and nutrition plan to address the health and nutritional needs of PVTGs in the State. An official survey that time detected that as many as 195 children belonging to Paudi Bhuyan tribe were suffering from severe malnutrition in Lahunipara.

Last-mile connectivity issues

The Nagada deaths raise questions on the efficiency of plans and schemes launched for the welfare of tribals living in inaccessible areas, including the Nutrition Operational Plan that was drawn up in 2009 to accelerate the pace of underweight reduction in Odisha. About 38 per cent of children in the State are stunted, its prevalence highest at about 46 per cent among tribal children.

As nutrition needs of the PVTGs remain unaddressed with the failure to ensure road connectivity to their habitations, the government has also failed to bring them under the ambit of the National Food Security Act. Though ration cards had been issued to a majority of these tribals, Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) cards elude many of them despite a standing order of the Supreme Court that “ that all households belonging to six priority groups, one of them PVTGs, would be entitled to AAY cards”.

“It is not geographical isolation alone, but exclusion of the tribals from many government programmes that has made hundreds of children suffer from acute undernourishment in Odisha. A coordinated approach by different government departments is the need of the hour to bring all PVTGs living atop forested hills in the State under the welfare programmes,” says Rajkishor Mishra, State Adviser to the Commissioners of the Supreme Court.

It has taken 19 deaths for officials to now admit that the Juang people in the hamlets atop Nagada hills — Tala Nagada, Majhi Nagada, Upara Nagada, Tumuni, Naliadaba, Guhiasala and Taladiha — were deprived of basic facilities such as drinking water, primary health care, electricity, and primary education available under various Central and State schemes due to lack of road connectivity. There is not a single well in these hamlets and they depend on forest streams for water throughout the year.

Tala Nagada hamlet, the biggest of the seven hamlets with a population of 162, alone reported as many as 15 child deaths. Many residents in these hamlets do not have even voter IDs and job cards under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. None of the families have been given land rights under the Forest Rights Act.

The able men and women of these hamlets climb down the hills and walk down 20 km at least once a month to buy ration rice from the gram panchayat office at Chingudipal or anything from the weekly haat (market) near Kaliapani. Rice and salt is their staple. Since the quantum of ration rice is never sufficient for their families, they eat boiled wild tuber that they collect from the forest as dinner.

The only initiative to provide informal education to children had begun in Nagada in November last year when Aspire, a non-governmental organisation, started a non-residential bridge course for 100 children, with financial support from Tata Steel Rural Development Society.

CSR funds from the mining companies operating in nearby areas in the district since long, however, had not been utilised for the benefit of people of Nagada who live just few miles away. Some of these companies are supporting the Aahar outlets being run by the State government in district headquarters, towns and cities.

The last time a block development officer (BDO) of Sukinda visited Nagada to convince the tribals to leave the hills to be rehabilitated on the plains was in 2013, says Dharmendra Kumar Sahoo, the local gram panchayat extension officer camping at Nagada. Mr. Sahoo, who claims that he accompanied the then BDO that time, says that the residents were in no mood to leave their habitat.

On the road to hope

After Odisha Women and Child Development Minister Usha Devi’s comment that the Juangs lack awareness attracted criticism from the public and the Opposition, the State administration is working overtime to build roads to Nagada using Integrated Action Plan funds by involving the Forest and Rural Development departments. Senior bureaucrats are drawing up plans to build roads from the Jajpur as well as Dhenkanal sides.

In the meanwhile, officers and employees of almost all departments of the government have reached Nagada by climbing with great difficulty. Efforts are on to provide health care and sanitation facilities, and supply free food to children at four newly-set-up mini Anganwadis. Officials have even created two WhatsApp groups among themselves to monitor the delivery of services at Nagada on a regular basis.

Further, an initiative has been taken to identify all inaccessible tribal hamlets across the State by assimilating information being collected from the district administrations and using remote sensing data from Odisha Space Applications Centre.

Virtually admitting to the lapses on the part of his government after opposition parties sharpened their attack and sought Governor S.C. Jamir’s intervention in the matter, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has assured that such tragic incidents would not recur in future. That responsibility has been entrusted with Development Commissioner R. Balakrishnan, who first visited the Nagada hills as Sub-Collector of the then Jajpur subdivision way back in November 1986. As a young officer then, Balakrishnan had walked up the hills and distributed clothes to the Juang tribals. The situation has not changed even today. “The crux of the matter is connectivity. The topography poses a big challenge. But efforts are being made on a war footing to overcome the difficulties and ensure service delivery,” he says.

“No politician or anyone from the government has visited our village in recent years,” says Binod Pradhan, 50, one of the Nagada elders. Pradhan requests for Bidhaba Bhatta (widow pension); his wife had died five years ago after she developed high fever. Little does he know that the scheme is meant for women. For that matter, most on the hills know very little of the bouquet of welfare programmes they are entitled to. Perhaps they will, the day the ascent to and descent from Nagada hills isn’t a precarious matter of watching your step.

Keywords: Odisha tribe, lost tribe of Odisha, tribal hamlets, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, malnutrition-related diseases

Source: The Hindu, 6-08-2016

Andaman tribes may've a new human ancestor

Subodh Varma





Indian-Spanish Study Says Jarawas, Onges Evolved From 3rd Branch Other Than Neanderthals & Denisovans

Two tribal communities of the Andaman Is lands, Jarawas and Onges, may have evolved from an as yet unknown human ancestor, according to latest genetic analysis done by a joint team of Indian and Spanish scientists. This claim, although not yet backed by any fossil evidence, is sensational for it will add a new, unknown branch to human ancestry.Scientists at the National Institute of Bio-Medical Genetics (NIBMG), Kalyani, West Bengal, working with those from the Pompeu Fabra University , Barcelona, Spain made this discovery after analysing ten genetic samples derived from Jarawas and Onges in the Andamans along with 60 samples drawn from different ethnic groups across India. The study has been published in the scientific jo urnal Nature Genetics.
Why is this claim of a new ancestor startling? From what is known of human evolution, an ancestor of modern humans arose in Africa and migrated west towards Europe and east towards China and India about 400,000 years ago.Those that went west evolved into the Neanderthals while those that migrated east formed the Denisovans.
Meanwhile, ancestral humans continued to evolve in Africa and about 50,000 years ago modern humans too started spreading out of Africa. As they spread to all corners of the world, they encountered earlier species like Neanderthals and Denisovans and interbred with them. All this shuffled up the genomes considerably but modern technology can tease out the intermingling. This is what the research team has done.
“In addition to the Neanderthal and the Denisovan, an extinct hominid also contributed to the ancestry of the Jarawas and the Onges,“ Partha Majumder, NIBMG director and a co-author of the research told TOI.
Earlier research by different scientists has shown that most people outside Africa ha ve 1-4% of their genetic material derived from Neanderthals, except in communities in Pacific Islands and Australian aborigines, which instead have up to 6% genetic contribution from Denisovans.
But the new discovery is being questioned by other genetic historians. Harvard professor David Reich, one of the lea ding scientists in the field who has also researched Indian genomes, told TOI that the new ancestor theory of Majumder and his team is “unlikely to be correct“, attributing the error to statistical methods. “When we and others have computed similar statistics, we obtained results that are statistically inconsistent with Mondal (the lead author) and colleagues, and that do not require the surprising hypothesis of new archaic admixture,“ he said.
But there are other aspects of the NIBMG's research that are new and free of controversy. They have established that the Andamanese are closer to Indians in their genetic makeup and likely came in the same wave of migration from Africa as others in the region.They also found that the short stature of the Jarawas and Onges is likely due to natural selection and not just because their founders were short.

Source: Times of India, 27-07-2016

Schools for Tribal Kids or for Horror?





The death of nearly 900 children, between 2010 and 2015, in state-run residential schools for tribal children is a matter of deep sorrow and shame. Their parents sent these children, belonging to the most marginalised segment of Indian society , to these schools in the hope that education would liberate them from poverty and want. Instead, lack of basic facilities -drinking water, sanitation, healthcare, poor nutrition -and an excess of administrative callousness killed that hope. Those responsible must be punished. More to the point, institutions must be put in place to prevent recurrence of such tragedy .Accountability is clearly missing. The residential schools in question, the Eklavya Model Residential Schools, patterned on the Navodaya Vidyalayas catering to children in class VI to XII, and ashram schools set up as part of a centrally spon sored scheme under the tribal sub-plan, are under the ministry of tribal affairs, unlike other state-run schools, which are overseen by the ministry of human reso urce development and state education departments. The tribal affairs ministry and its outposts in the states are ill-equipped to run these schools properly . As a result, tribal residential schools are monitored and held to account far less effectively than other state-run schools. Improved administrative oversight must be complemented with increased community participation through school committees comprising parents, district officials and school administrators. Community participation in states like Nagaland has resulted in substantial reduction in teacher absenteeism.
There are no easy answers to how and how fast tribal communities join the mainstream. Taking their brightest children out of their homes and away from their culture, only to maim or kill them, is certainly not one of them.

Source: Economic Times, 19-04-2016

Adivasis & Health: When new lifestyle diseases 

compound ‘old’ problems 

Twenty-five years ago, when the Gandhian doctor-activist couple Abhay and Rani Bang started working in the forest areas of Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district, they found malaria to pose the biggest health concern for its predominantly tribal population. So, regular medical treatment apart, they also sought to impress upon the local adivasis the importance of using insecticide-treated mosquito nets. But malaria being deeply ingrained in the tribal psyche as retribution from “invisible super-natural forces,” not only were the medicines viewed as futile, even the nets soaked in insecticides were seen more useful to catch fish.

25 years later, malaria remains only somewhat less rampant and mosquito nets, too, are used but inadequately. Acceptance of medicines, however, has become widespread indicating a positive change of mindset. But, with many new socio-cultural and economic influences — basically market forces — making inroads, some fresh health problems have crept up. According to the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau, 24 per cent of adivasi adults across India today suffer from hypertension.

As per the 2011 Census, India’s total tribal population stood at 10.43 crore. “That’s bigger than the entire populations of most countries. But while a lot has been written about tribal culture and history, little is known about their health status. We even don’t have data on tribal health separate from that on rural health,” says Abhay Bang.

Bang is chairing a 13-member expert committee set up by Union Health Ministry and the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, tasked with coming out with a nationwide status report on tribal health issues along with suggesting possible policy formulations. The panel is due to submit its report in March this year. The Bangs — both doctors and masters in public health — have pioneered the home-based neonatal care or HBNC model that involves training rural women in becoming village-level newborn care providers, who visit mothers and babies in their homes. The HBNC model of reaching the unreached and imparting care — including treatment for life-threatening illnesses — has not only helped reduce infant mortality rates in 39 intervention villages in Gadchiroli from 121 to 30 per 1,000 live births, but also been incorporated into the government’s healthcare programme since 2011. Today, there are over eight lakh accredited social health activists or ASHA community health workers, who have undergone multiple training sessions under National Rural Health Mission. “Till such time public healthcare can reach everybody, HBNC should remain our best bet to keep rural and tribal neonatal health problems under reasonable check,” says Bang, who along with his wife have founded SEARCH (Society for Education, Action and Research in Community Health), an NGO 18 km east of Gadchiroli town. While the “old” problems of malaria, malnutrition and mortality persist, Bang emphasises “new” health issues among tribals partly due to outside socio-cultural influences and steady inroads by market forces. “Take diarrhea. A possible reason why it has become rampant among adivasis is because they have quit their traditional, yet more hygienic, cleaning practice after defecation by tree leaves. While they have started using water, shamed by non-tribal taunts of panpusya Gond (leaf-wiping Gond), it is not followed by cleaning hands with soap, thereby spreading diarrhea,” he notes. But what explains the generally poor tribal health, despite their living in seemingly unpolluted natural ambience and with high-protein meats in their diets? Bang attributes this to two things. The first is the Indian Forests Act of 1865 that resulted in adivasis losing their unhindered access to natural resources, which now came under the government’s control. Even the water bodies from where they caught fish suddenly became out of bounds. The second has to do with large infrastructure and industrial projects, which, in the post-Independence period alone, have displaced an estimated two crore adivasis: Over 50 per cent of them in Maharashtra, for example, live outside the so-called Scheduled Areas. Bang suggests that even malnourishment may be a relatively recent addition to tribal health problems: “There are no definitive studies, but it is generally believed that tribal populations were strong and hefty when they had unhindered access to forest resources. An old study of Brazilian aboriginals by the CIBA Foundation does point to this”. The newer health problems are also a reflection of lifestyle changes taking their toll. Tribal women now list alcohol addiction among men as their biggest concern. The same goes with tobacco, with over 60 per cent of adults in Gadchiroli consuming it daily. These, alongside addition of salt in their foods (clearly courtesy outside influence) and stress, are contributing to increased incidence of hypertension, feels Bang. But addressing tribal health problems is also about having more primary health centres (PHCs) and sub-centres. “Tribal areas have one PHC for every 20,000 people, as against 30,000 in non-tribal areas. There is also only one sub-centre for every 3,000 people, whereas it is 1:5,000 in non-adivasi areas. Even an auxiliary nurse midwife is expected to visit 12-15 small and scattered villages, which is impossible. All this has rendered the formal public healthcare system virtually dysfunctional,” he points out. On top of these are problems of language barrier and lack of motivation among healthcare staff, besides vacancies and absenteeism when it comes to working in tribal areas. While the last two are often attributed to left-wing extremist activities, the fact is that “Naxals generally don’t come in the way of health and education work,” says Bang. - 

Source: Indian Express, 14-01-2016