Review of Draft National Tribal Policy

The response, comments or suggestions is called for in the draft national Tribal policy is transmitted herewith as follows:

1 Provisions of PESA should prevail over all other laws that have to be amended, in case any law or act comes into contradiction with the provisions and the designs of the same.
2 Shifting Cultivation should be recognized and incorporated in the agricultural system rather than a part of mere forestry.
3 The principle of Least Displacement and Public Purpose needs to be spelt out.
4 Measurable indicators need to be set to see a steady growth in HDI
5 Policy paper needs to redefine who the Tribes are. Three words i.e. Tribal/Adivasis and Indigenous should be simultaneously used.
6 Protection, patenting and the copyrights of the indigenous knowledge system on agriculture, irrigation, water conservation and harvesting and meteorological needs to be emphasized.
7 A separate mode of representation in the administrative machinery needs to be amended for the scheduled areas which should be unlike the general areas and also over staffing of outsider development workers should be reduced to the minimum.
8 There is a need to fix a minimum number of liquor sellers per area with proper license and quality control measure rather than just self consumption.
9 The vacancies reserved for the tribes should not be given to others under the guise of unavailability of suitable candidates
10 Sub-categorization can be thought of on economic lines rather than descheduling those who are advanced and fall beyond the criteria set for tribal.
11 The report of the review and the evaluation of the implementation of National Tribal Policy need to be shared with the larger community.