52 SOCIAL SCIENTIST march of the primary development of capitalism in the countryside. The Census of 1951 tells us that the proportion of agricultural labourers in the Adivasi talukas ofDhulia district was as follows: 1.17 percent in Akrani, 5.86 in Akkalkuwa, 18.13 in Nawapur, 25.61 in Nandurbar, 28.13 in Taloda and 33.5 in Shahada. The extent to which this march must have progressed during the far more momentous period of 1951-74 can be easily visualized. Victims of Dam Projects Agriculture in Adivasi areas is still extremely backward. The 'green revolution9 has produced comparatively few rich peasants and semi-capitalist landlords among the tribes. The reason underlying this retarded development is the tenacious hold of the Sahu usurer-merchants and semi-capitalist landlords. It is solely as helpless victims that the Adivasis come in contact with the various projects of irrigation. All these projects being located in mountainous areas, it is they who arc uprooted and dispersed. Ten thousand families in the talukas ofNawapur, Nandurbar, Akkalkuwa, Taloda and Shahada were displaced by the Ukai Project alone. As the compensation given is usually in the form of cash and not alternative lands, the displaced Adivasis go to swell the army of agricultural and other unskilled labourers. Due to the extremely backward agriculture and inhuman exploitation, Adivasi agricultural labourers and poor peasants get employment only for the duration of the agricultural season and that also on the most meagre wages. Each year at the end of the agricultural season the bulk of the rural proletariat abandons its hearth and home and migrates to Gujarat. Those who stay back subsist on selling head-loads of firewood and grass, securing irregular employment, and making illicit earnings on liquor and prostitution. Even these fail to quench the pangs of hunger. And then, right up to the ripening of corn in their garden plots or in the fields of Sahus they have recourse to wild roots and grains, the flowers of Mahawa, even leaves—back to the life of primitive foodgatherers! A few years ago the Gandhi Smarak Samiti conducted a sample survey of families belonging to Bhil, Warli, Thakur and Tadvi tribes of western Maharashtra. The Samiti found that during the lean months of the year more than three quarters of these families subsist on wild roots, while more than half are able to secure only one meal a day. The e Encroachers9 This inhuman life has taught the landless Adivasis and Sahus that it is only land that would enable them to live like human beings. The mass struggles for wasteland waged by the Adivasi Sewa Sangh and the Republican Party during the last two decades testify to this fact. Thus life itself impels landless Adivasis to cultivate forest wasteland. But the initial impulse to this 'encroachment9 comes from the officials of the Forest Department who wish to supplement their monthly salaries from the cash