Globalisation and Tribal Rights:An Appraisal

In this paper an attempt is made to high light the various salient features of Tribal Rights in the context of Globalisation. There are 67.8 milhon scheduled tribal people, constituting 8.08% of Indian's population. There are 698 scheduled Tribes spread all over the country. 75 of them are identified as primitive Tribal Groups considering, they are more backward than others. They continue to live in a pre-agricultural stage of economy and have a very low literacy rates. Their populations are stagnant or even declining. The constitution through several Articles have Provided for the Socio-economic development and empower of scheduled Tribes. But there has been no national policy which could have helped to translate the constitutional provisions into a reality. For the first time after the country became Independent the Government of India has proposed the formulations of a national policy an scheduled Tribes in 2004, The policy seeks to bring scheduled Tribes into the mainstream of Society through a multipronged approach for their all-round development without disturbing their distinct disturbing their distinct culture. It also lists out measures to be taken to preserve and promote Tribals' cultural heritage. A lot of changes have taken place in the context of globalisation in the life styles of the Tribal people in the recent past. The scheduled Tribes and other traditional forest dwellers (Reorganisation Forest rights) Bill, 2005 adopted by Loksabha on Friday, December 15, 2006 is a land mark legislation that seek to empower traditional forest dwelling communities by giving them security of tenure, access to minor forest produce, and a big stake in preservation of natural spaces. Over the Years, the political consensus on the need for such a law has grown stronger because the perverse manner in which conservation of law, notably the forest conservation act 1980 are being implemented. The redrafted bill was adopted with several important amendments to the one tabled in 2005. The cutoff date, too, has been fixed as December 13, 2005 as against October 31, 1980 in the original Bill.The dwellers would have been residing in forest land for three Generations or 75 years for entitlement to land rights and the rights to collect and market the forest products to the dwellers . Now each family would be entitled to four hectares of forest land as against 2.5 hectares envisaged in the previous Bill. A detailed study of the Tribal rights in the context of Globalisation throws much light on their various Socio-Cultural life styles and the economic changes that have taken place in the recent past in India.