56 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
relationships has been responsible for evolving inappropriate strategies for tribal development.
Another superficial approach to the problem of tribal development emanates from equating tribal areas with any other economically backward area and recommending identical packages of measures for their uplift. Tribals, as a class, are viewed as poor;5 they are described as constituting the matrix of Indian poverty.6 Quite apart from the fact that scantiness in some tribal societies, particularly those living in inaccessible regions, may just represent a mode of living in their natural setting, rather than being reflective of their poverty,7 the approach oversimplifies the complex problem of tribal development by making it a purely economic one. The problem is more basic and includes, apart from economic development, preservation of ethnic identity, ecology, language, culture, style of living, indigenous practices, etc. A mere plan of economic development would be utterly inadequate. Along with economic planning, there should be social and political planning in an integrated manner.8
Tribes in India are not only numerous, but also differ widely in their habitat, level of development, modes of production, exposure to the wider world, traditional values, customs, beliefs, etc. There are tribes living in inaccessible hill tops, having minimal contact with the world beyond them. There are tribes in the plains living with non-tribal population and obviously having a large degree of interdependence. There are tribes practising diverse modes of production, right from hunting, fishing, fruit-gathering to being engaged as industrial-urban workers. Some tribes have gone far ahead of others educationally. There are tribes with collective ownership of land and forest resources ensuring an egalitarian and unstructured social set-up and exhibiting a strong sense of solidarity. There are also tribes having individual ownership of property leading to a structured society akin to our own* While there are tribes which have been coming into the fold of the Hindu cultural pattern, there are those which are moving in the opposite direction.9 The movement from the tribal to the peasant has not been a unidirectional one.10 With such diversities, attempts to evolve a general scheme of tribal development, having universal application to all tribes in India, are bound to be abortive. Tribal development, because of the diverse situations, has to be area-specific.
Tribes in the North-East
Diversity is also a characteristic of the tribal population of the north-eastern region of India. However, tribes of this region may be divided broadly into hill-dwelling and valley-dwelling with distinct economic problems. The economic problems of the valley-dwelling tribes are not basically different from those of the Indian peasantry in general. Because of their long exposure to the national economy, polity and society, they have retained very little of their indigenous economic