Suchergebnisse

Scheduling a community as a Tribe in India is a complex process. Controversies generated by such processes have given rise to a number of ethnic-identity movements across the country. The latest is in the State of Manipur. What is the history of scheduling, who can be and cannot be a Scheduled Tribe in India, what are the legal procedures for applying for such a status, what are the critical cases that have come to the Supreme Court of India and what decisions have been made by the said court pertaining to claims and counterclaims. This article engages with these questions both from a historical and political perspective.

The progress of Indigenous people or the Scheduled Tribes (STs) on developmental indicators is much poor than expected, especially their status of health. They report the highest mortality and malnutrition, low level of obstetric care, and are also among the poorest users of healthcare services in the country. This study examines the prevalence of acute and chronic morbidities and treatment-seeking behaviour among the ST in India. Second wave of India Human Development Survey (IHDS-2) data, 2011–2012, has been used in the study. Considering that culture and religion shape the demographic and health outcomes of people, this article has tried to seek a deeper understanding on morbidity and health-seeking behaviour by categorising the ST into four tribo-religious groups: namely, Hindu ST, Christian ST, Indigenous ST and the rest along ethnicity and religion lines. The study found evidence of an early epidemiologic transition in tribal areas and associated increase in the incidence of chronic and lifestyle diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, asthma. Other emerging concerns are prevalence of high untreated morbidity, dependence on private healthcare providers and increasing dependence on pharmacists among the ST.

It needs to be very clearly emphasized that discrimination on the basis of caste is an age-old phenomenon; indeed so predictable a phenomenon that it often occurs implicitly. If the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes have continued to suffer under the undue burden of a stigmatized identity and abiding discrimination in present-day India despite the ponderous safety net of statutory safeguards, the onus must lie with a deliberate form of marginalization or disparagement that aims to secure the exclusion of individuals on the basis of their membership of a particular group—through hate speech. This prejudice-driven crime has gone on to determine the way the dominant social class has been and continues, consciously and unconsciously, aiding and abetting the maintenance of status quo through their private utterances. This practice of unconscious and unpunished speech occurring casually in unsuspecting familial settings perhaps stands out in its greatest potential to damage, disrupt, cause a permanent mind change and ingrain and invigorate social apartheid.