TRIBAL DEVELOPMENT 59 utilization of these resources. However, haste must be avoided. The pace and intensity of utilization of resources must be in a manner which produces the least adverse effects on the tribal societies. Secondly, measures to insulate these societies are not going to work for long. Capitalism represents too strong a force to be contained by legislative devices. Getting themselves integrated into the larger economic order appears, therefore, to be the only way out even in the interest of the tribals themselves. What should be emphasized in the development strategy for hill tribal areas is softening the impact of the changeover and preparing the tribals to accept the challenge with greater ability and vigour. Some of the indigenous institutions will become irrelevant; they will die down. Some will be adjusted to the new economic order and some retained as they are. The strategy of tribal development also requires defining in clear terms the contents of development for the tribals. These are bound to be different from the national contents. Economic development for the tribals, and also for the north-eastern region, as I have defined elsewhere,11 is a persistent rise in per capita income in real terms emanating from increased domestic factor productivity without accentuating economic disparities. This must be achieved while mininizing the adverse effects on future resource availability and ecology and without jeopardizing, ethnic identity. ^ Development, whether tribal or otherwise, is a value loaded term as it signifies a process of change in the desired direction. It is an indivisible whole, although for the sake of convenience it is decomposed into economic, political, cultural, educational, spiritual and the like. It is a harmonious, balanced progress in different spheres of individual and societal life. Lop-sided progress in one sphere is often at the expense of progress in another pothers). When this happens, overall development, which we want to maximize, becomes a casualty. ATUL GOSWAMI Department of Economics, Dibrugarh University, Dibrugarh. 1 Jaganath Pathy, "An Outline of Modes of Production in Tribal India", in Bud-dhadeb Chaudhury (ed), Tribal Development in India., Delhi, Inter-India, p 25. 2 Annada G Bhagabati "Emergent Tribal Identity in North-East India", in ibid, p 25. 3 D N Majumdar, "An Appraisal of the Tribal Situation in North East India", in Pankaj Thakur (ed), India's North East, Tinsukia, Prakash Publishing House, 1982, p 126- 4 Jaganath Pathy, op cit, p 26. 5 National Council of Applied Economic Research expressed this view. See, Report on Socio-Economic Conditions of Primitive Tribes in Madhya Pradesh, New Delhi, 1978, p IX. 6 L P Vidyarthi, "Problems and Prospects of Tribal Devlopment in India", in Buddhadeb Chaudhury (ed), op cit, p 375. 7 B D Sharma, Tribal Develpment: The Concept and the Frame, New Delhi, Prachi