Model answer & approach
- Discuss the impact of democratic institutions on the tribal populations of India. (Answer in 250 words)
Introduction
Electoral democracy gave tribal India representation it had never had, and in the same movement weakened the self-governing institutions the Constitution had promised to protect.
Body
1. Representation and a political class: Articles 330 and 332 reserve seats in the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies, and Article 338A created the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes. Tribal parties — the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, the Mizo National Front, the Naga People's Front, and more recently the Bharat Adivasi Party — turned numbers into bargaining power, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh into states, and produced in Droupadi Murmu the first Adivasi President.
2. Local self-government and customary authority: the 73rd Amendment and PESA in 1996 vested the gram sabha in Fifth Schedule areas with powers over minor forest produce, minor minerals, land alienation and consultation before acquisition, while the Sixth Schedule councils govern much of the North-East. Where the statutory panchayat was laid over the parha panchayat, the Naga village council or the Khasi durbar, customary authority was displaced rather than incorporated, and in several states PESA rules were framed a decade late or not at all.
3. Effects on tribal society: party alignment has cut new factions across clan and village; a small educated elite captures reservation and contracts; consensus decision-making gives way to patronage. Against this, one-third reservation has brought women into local office where customary councils excluded them, and identity assertion has become organised and articulate.
4. The balance: voice gained, self-government eroded.
Conclusion
Democracy has been more successful at representing tribal people than at devolving power to them. PESA implemented in substance, rather than more schemes, is what would change that.
Open this in the study app →