case study on tribal development

Rural Livelihood and Women: Glimpses from an Indian Tribal Village

• First Online: 01 January 2022

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• Purva Yadav 5 ,
• Shreya Akarshna 5 &
• Anuradha Shankar 6  

Part of the book series: Sustainable Development Goals Series ((SDGS))

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In the twenty-first century, livelihoods will be needed by perhaps two or three times the present human population, and it is therefore necessary to understand the changing dynamics of it. A livelihood comprises people, their capabilities, and their means of living. Livelihood is environmentally sustainable when it maintains or develops the local and global assets on which means of livelihood depend. The livelihood framework is also applicable in the context of rural areas. This covers capital both natural and social. Indian villages (both tribal and non-tribal) are unique in their own way, and very intriguing if you try to understand it from the emerging interrelationship between resource and livelihood from the women perspective. This chapter draws on insights from a small tribal village called Audali located in Sitarganj Tehsil of Udham Singh Nagar district in Uttarakhand. Tharu tribe, who has migrated from the state of Rajasthan centuries back to this area, dominates Audali village. It is interesting to see how development process has transformed their means of livelihood and how role of women became paramount at the household and community level with the changing socio-economic profile of the household and the village. The study throws light on the experiences of the group of motivated Tharu women in a more informal and fluid personal-cum-work space, such as home-based small-scale activities like handicraft, and capture the shifts and continuum in social relations, particularly in the context of means of livelihood and gendered division of work.

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Acknowledgements

We are thankful to Mrs. Sunita and other Tharuwomen of Audali village for being the inspiration behind this work. Further we would like to extend our gratitude to Prof. Deepak Mishra and Prof. Sachidanand Sinha from the Centre for the Study of Regional Development (CSRD), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) for their useful comments and suggestions. We would also like to thank Professor Baleshwar Thakur from Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, for his consistent encouragement and helpful comments on the chapter. Last but not the least, we would like to acknowledge Ms. Sudeshna Mitra from CSRD, JNU, for preparing the map of the study area.

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Centre for the Study of Regional Development, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

Purva Yadav & Shreya Akarshna

Department of Geography, Shyama Prasad Mukherji College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India

Anuradha Shankar

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Correspondence to Purva Yadav .

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Department of Geography, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, New Delhi, Delhi, India

Baleshwar Thakur

Department of Geosciences, Missouri State University, West Plains, MO, USA

Rajiv R. Thakur

Resources Analysis Division, National Centre for Earth Science Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India

Srikumar Chattopadhyay

Department of Geography, Dyal Singh College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, Delhi, India

Rajesh K. Abhay

Annexure 1: An overview of the occupational structure of Udham Singh Nagar and Sitarganj

Figures 21.4a–d and 21.5a–d present a brief snapshot of the occupational structure of the Udham Singh Nagar and Sitarganj. Figure 4a reveals that the share of rural population to total population is higher than the urban for Udham Singh Nagar and Sitarganj. The figure presents a comparative picture of the workforce profile. Figure 4b shows that the percent share of non-workers is greater as compared to the total workforce in both district and tehsil. The gender composition indicates that at both the spatial units, females predominantly constitute the non-worker category with about 80%. Similarly, Figure 4d reveals the gendered division of main and marginal workers. It is quite clear that the females participate mainly as marginal workers in the labor market than as main workers. This is in line with the stereotypical pattern of the gender composition of the workforce at various spatial scales.

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Yadav, P., Akarshna, S., Shankar, A. (2021). Rural Livelihood and Women: Glimpses from an Indian Tribal Village. In: Thakur, B., Thakur, R.R., Chattopadhyay, S., Abhay, R.K. (eds) Resource Management, Sustainable Development and Governance. Sustainable Development Goals Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85839-1_21

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U.S. Government Accountability Office

Tribal Economic Development: Action is Needed to Better Understand the Extent of Federal Support

Historically, tribal communities have had higher rates of unemployment and poverty than other communities. The federal government administers multiple programs that can support economic development in these communities.

We identified 22 programs at 7 agencies that provide economic development assistance—e.g., grants or loans—to tribal governments and businesses. But these programs might be hard to identify or access, leaving tribal entities to miss out on valuable support.

Also, federal assistance totals for tribal entities are unknown because agencies don't analyze or report data for some programs.

Our recommendations address these issues.

What GAO Found

Federal efforts to support economic development among tribal entities (such as tribal governments and businesses) show evidence of fragmentation and some overlap. Programs are fragmented across seven agencies: the U.S. Departments of Agriculture (USDA), Commerce, Energy, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and the Interior, and the Small Business Administration (SBA). Tribal organizations GAO spoke with said many tribes have limited capacity to identify and access programs and may not be aware of the federal assistance available. The Secretary of Commerce is required by law to assist tribes and other eligible entities with identifying and taking advantage of business development opportunities; however, the department does not maintain information on federal economic development programs across agencies available to tribal entities. Without information on available programs, tribal entities may not access programs that could provide valuable benefits to tribal communities. GAO did not find evidence of duplication.

Fragmentation among Economic Development Programs Available to Tribal Entities, Fiscal Year 2021

GAO identified eight programs that are specifically for tribal entities and provided over $930 million in grants and loan guarantees in fiscal years 2017–2021. An additional 14 programs have a wider range of eligible recipients, such as small businesses or local governments, as well as tribal entities. The total amount of assistance provided by these 14 programs to tribal entities is unknown because two agencies—SBA's Office of Capital Access and USDA's Farm Service Agency—do not analyze data to estimate obligations provided to tribal entities. Estimating and reporting the amount of program obligations provided to tribal communities would allow federal agencies and decision makers, such as Congress, to better understand the reach of these programs and identify areas where tribal entities may need additional support.

GAO identified several tax incentives that can contribute to economic development in tribal communities. However, data to evaluate whether tribal entities use these incentives are limited. In the absence of more specific data, location data can be used to estimate the extent to which some tax incentives have reached tribal communities. For example, using location data for the New Markets Tax Credit, GAO estimated that from 2004 through 2019, tribal communities (defined as individuals and businesses on or near reservations, trust land, or Oklahoma Tribal and Alaska Native Village Statistical Areas) received between $734 million and $891 million of investment (1.3 to 1.6 percent of the total dollars invested via the credit).

Why GAO Did This Study

Historically, tribal communities have experienced higher rates of unemployment and poverty than nontribal communities. Tribal economic development may help address these challenges and also provides benefits to tribes and surrounding areas. The federal government administers programs to facilitate this development.

The Indian Community Economic Enhancement Act of 2020 includes a provision that GAO conduct a study on Indian economic development. This report examines economic development programs available to tribal entities and the extent of fragmentation, overlap, and duplication among these programs; analyzes available data on obligations to tribal entities for these programs; and describes selected tax incentives available to tribes and related data, among other objectives. GAO reviewed program information, analyzed obligations data, and interviewed tribal entities, agency officials, and Native Community Development Financial Institutions.

Recommendations

GAO is making five recommendations, including that Commerce maintain information on economic development programs available to tribal entities across the federal government and that SBA and USDA establish plans to periodically analyze and report the amount of economic development assistance provided to tribal entities. Commerce, SBA, and USDA agreed with our recommendations.

Recommendations for Executive Action

Full Report

Gao contacts.

Anna Maria Ortiz Director [email protected] (202) 512-3841

William B. Shear Director [email protected] (202) 512-8678

Office of Public Affairs

Sarah Kaczmarek Acting Managing Director [email protected] (202) 512-4800

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Political Economy of Tribal Development: A Case Study of Andhra Pradesh

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The study of Indian tribal society has assumed a greater attention among the scholars both in India and abroad. Transition of these societies all over the world carved an interesting area for the pursuit of social knowledge. This is particularly explicit in the third world societies where the development transition has acquired an uneven proportion in its direction. Given the context of uneven development, tribal societies in these countries present further backward underdeveloped characters, which are characterized as Fourth World Societies. In brief, the tribal studies in Post-Independence era have found a considerable place in the field of social science research, but the focus on certain fields of research like-clan, custom and primitiveness of the tribal society was more visible than any other area of the subject. The British Government has recognized the distinct pattern of the tribal life and has accorded a special status to them. Innumerable laws were enacted to protect the interests of the tribals. The tribes in many parts of the country were designated as Scheduled Tribes and this has been in accordance to the 1874 scheduled district Act that was promulgated by the British Indian government. Apart from the efforts of the persons like Ambedkar and CVF Haimendorf to uplift the scheduled tribes from their socioeconomic degradation, the political exigencies of liberal democracy forced tile successive governments to create favorable conditions for dignified life for the scheduled tribes population broadly described as the policy of protective discriminations, it adopted the protective discriminative policy.

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