A tribal woman with her child waits for ration
Credit: iStock Photo
At first glance, the expansion of welfare schemes, roads, schools and hospitals in India’s Fifth Schedule areas suggests progress. States such as Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh routinely point to investments in health, education, housing and infrastructure targeted at Adivasi populations. Non-governmental organisations, corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives and state-backed development agencies are visible on the ground. On the surface, the constitutional promise of protection for Scheduled Tribes appears to be bearing fruit. Yet beneath this façade lies a deeper governance crisis: decades of institutional expansion has not translated into meaningful self-rule or autonomy. Tribal communities remain politically and administratively marginalised, especially in decisions concerning land, forests and minerals.
The Fifth Schedule of the Constitution was intended to recognise the distinctive conditions of Scheduled Areas and safeguard tribal interests. It provides for Tribes Advisory Councils (TACs), vests special responsibilities in Governors, and establishes procedural protections against land alienation. Over the decades, these mechanisms have expanded in form, and welfare schemes have multiplied. But this institutional proliferation has not altered the underlying logic of governance. TACs remain advisory bodies without binding authority; Governors rarely act independently of elected state governments; and final control over development projects, resource allocation and lawmaking rests firmly with the state. Consultation is mandatory, consent is not. Tribal objections to mining, dams or industrial corridors can — and routinely do — get overridden. In practice, the Fifth Schedule has delivered administrative management rather than self-governance.
This gap between constitutional promise and lived reality is not accidental. Jaipal Singh Munda, the principal Adivasi voice in the Constituent Assembly, warned that the Fifth Schedule had been “emasculated” through negotiations that confined tribal institutions to advisory roles. The design ensured that the closest bodies to tribal self-rule lacked decisive power, leaving authority concentrated with the state. Judicial interpretation has reinforced this marginalisation. In Jilubhai Nanbhai Khachar v State of Gujarat (1995), the Supreme Court upheld compulsory acquisition of tribal land, treating property in Scheduled Areas as a statutory entitlement rather than the basis of collective tribal sovereignty. Courts have consistently subordinated tribal rights to development imperatives, administrative convenience and state sovereignty.
Even seemingly progressive judgments have proved fragile. The court's decision in Samatha v State of Andhra Pradesh (1997) momentarily recognised the inalienability of tribal land and restricted mining leases in Scheduled Areas. Yet its scope was later narrowed, and its spirit circumvented through state-owned corporations and legislative manoeuvres. The net effect has been to preserve the appearance of constitutional protection while steadily enabling dispossession through legal and bureaucratic means.
This constitutional and judicial architecture produces a paradox: the Fifth Schedule appears protective while functioning as a facilitator of extraction. Large-scale mining, dams, highways and industrial corridors routinely proceed in Scheduled Areas under the rubric of public purpose or national development. Monetary compensation may be offered, but it reduces dispossession to a transaction, ignoring the social, cultural and spiritual relationship between Adivasis and their territories. Collective claims over land and forests are fragmented into individual entitlements, and resistance is delegitimised as obstruction to development.
When communities resist, governance shifts rapidly from welfare to coercion. Operations such as Green Hunt in central India and the Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh illustrate how tribal assertion of autonomy is recast as Maoist insurgency or internal security threat. Paramilitary deployment, mass displacement, and the criminalisation of activists, journalists and lawyers under laws like the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) reveal how constitutional protections coexist with legal and extralegal mechanisms to suppress dissent. Communities invoking constitutional entitlements are rendered vulnerable to militarised occupation and prolonged incarceration, exposing the stark gap between formal rights and lived realities.
Marginalising local institutions
Governance failure in Fifth Schedule areas is not limited to dispossession; it also lies in the systematic marginalisation of local institutions. TACs meet irregularly, and their recommendations are frequently ignored. Budgetary priorities are set by line departments accountable upward to state bureaucracies rather than downward to tribal constituencies. The Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act-enabled Gram Sabhas and Panchayats are reduced to procedural rituals. Participation exists, but it is procedural rather than substantive. Representation in elected bodies does not translate into real influence over development decisions, policing or resource allocation. Governance in these regions combines oversight and containment: visible institutions channel welfare and maintain order, while substantive power remains concentrated with the state.
The growing role of non-state actors further complicates this landscape. NGOs, corporate entities, CSR arms and, at times, private security actors increasingly shape welfare delivery, political mobilisation and development narratives. In areas where state presence is uneven — strong in policing and extraction, weak in everyday justice — these actors fill the gaps. While some provide tangible services, their accountability flows upward to donors, corporations, or government departments, not downward to local communities. Development becomes charity rather than entitlement, and participation becomes compliance.
In mineral-rich districts such as Bastar or West Singhbhum, CSR initiatives often function as legitimacy devices, offering health camps or schools while neutralising resistance to extraction. Cultural and religious organisations also play a growing role, reshaping identities and political loyalties while displacing material questions of land and resource control. What emerges is a depoliticised form of inclusion: Adivasis are visible as beneficiaries, but invisible as decision-makers.
At the heart of this governance crisis lies the unresolved question of control over land, forests, and minerals. Fifth Schedule areas contain a substantial share of India’s coal, iron ore, bauxite and forest cover — resources central to both national accumulation and tribal livelihoods. Yet, constitutional mechanisms convert collective territorial rights into administratively manageable procedures. Consultation substitutes for consent; compensation substitutes for autonomy. The Fifth Schedule proceduralises dispossession rather than preventing it.
Patterns of control
The post-insurgency landscape adds another layer of uncertainty. As armed movements recede in some regions, the state’s administrative and security apparatus expands, filling the vacuum. In principle, this could deepen self-rule by extending accountability and governance. In practice, it often reproduces existing patterns of control. Roads built in the name of development double as corridors for extraction and security deployment. Surveillance expands, while political organising is tightly policed. Insurgency is replaced not by democratic autonomy but by bureaucratic and corporate domination.
Some analysts argue that this outcome reflects a structural flaw embedded in the Fifth Schedule itself, which was adopted from the colonial Government of India Act, 1935. By design, authority rests with Governors and state machinery, rendering tribal institutions largely symbolic. Judicial deference to executive discretion transforms constitutional protections into procedural formalities. Welfare and infrastructure function as a political smokescreen, masking the containment of tribal agency.
Fifth Schedule areas today stand at a crossroads. Governance could be reimagined by granting binding authority to tribal institutions, enforcing PESA in substance rather than form, and recognising consent — not merely consultation — in matters of land, forests and resources. Such a shift would require accountability not only of the state but also of non-state actors who increasingly shape these regions.
Absent such reforms, visible gains in welfare and infrastructure will remain illusory. They may improve services in the short term, but they cannot compensate for the structural disempowerment that leaves tribal communities marginalised in decision-making and vulnerable to dispossession. The constitutional promise of the Fifth Schedule will continue to function less as a guarantee of self-determination and more as an instrument of managed governance — development without power, inclusion without autonomy.
(Anand Teltumbde is an academic, scholar and human rights activist)