MP Elections: Tribals’ exclusion from govt schemes may prove costly

Sardarpur: “We keep voting but the troubles never end,” laments Amrati Bai, a resident of Mehgaon village in Dhar district. The 62-year-old widow, who makes ends meet by working on a farm, says she has been chasing the schemes that the BJP is publicising this election term.

“I keep getting rejected for the Ladli Behna Yojana and PM Awas Yojana,” she says.

Exclusion is at the heart of all the troubles in the little tribal settlement in Madhya Pradesh’s Dhar district — Amrati’s neighbour Jagdish and, another resident Girdhari allege they’ve been excluded from the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi and free ration schemes, respectively.

Six MP districts have a tribal population of over 50 per cent— Barwani, Alirajpur, Jhabua, Dhar, Dindori, and Mandla. The tribal population in MP is 21.1 per cent of the total, and they hold sway over 47 seats. Krishnamani Bhagabati, Assistant Professor at the Indira Gandhi National Tribal University says tribals will play a “decisive” role. “Tribals have unique demands. Parties must address them to attract voters. Most indigenous people are poor and need education and health care. Forest rights are important, too,” says Bhagabati.

In 2018, the Congress won 31 of the 47 ST-reserved seats. This term they have promised to implement the Sixth Schedule in districts with over 50% tribals, enact the Panchayat, Extension to Scheduled Areas Act, and raise tendu patta prices from Rs 3,000 to Rs 4,000 per bag.

In response, the BJP said its government has implemented the Fifth Schedule in 89 tribal-dominated blocks. But PM Modi on Wednesday at Chattisgarh’s Ulihatu village — Birsa Munda’s birthplace — announced the BJP’s greatest poll offering for tribals, i.e., Rs 24,000 crore for the PM Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups.

Rohit Kumawat, a student activist from Indore’s College of Agriculture, says ownership of land is a key issue among tribals. Ram Chander Gamad of adjoining Badweli village says he cannot rebuild his childhood home without land ownership. “This area lacks potable water too, so I pedal 15 km daily,” he says.

“Jankari ka bhau hai (knowledge is precious here). People of some castes do not want the development to come to them,” he adds.

In Dhar’s Manawar seat, the BJP has fielded 27-year-old engineer Shivram Kannauj, who entered politics after his father’s death and was elected a member of the Dhar zila panchayat in a landslide victory in 2022. He says that the Congress only used the tribals as a votebank. 

"Last term, the community voted for them but we got nothing. It is the BJP that has actually brought in tribal development," he says. 

Congress spokesperson Charan Singh Sapra says that the tribal areas are rich in resources such as bauxite and iron ore. “The government is slowly selling off their land to industrialists and taking these resources; why else are they scared to call tribals ‘aadivasi’ and prefer the term ‘vanvaasi’,” Sapra says.  

Umesh Kumawat, who hails from a village called Kharmo that has prohibited the sale of the land of tribal people in order to save an endangered bird (lesser pelican) known by the same name, says that no political party has done enough. “Either party has only left us in the same state,” he says.