Plight Of The Denotified Tribes : Part III

“Where have you come from?”…Mansubya asked… “Pune”, was the honest answer. Mansubya Bhosale was lost in the past…very fair and was at least 6ft 7inches in height with sharp nose, a little beard on the sagging skin of his face, sharp & penetrating eyes. He dragged on the floor of his cave, came out and stood up with the support of a stick…he appeared at least two feet taller… Mansubya walked behind his cave with his legs shaking…he stopped near a bush..and started digging…his grandson Jaya started helping him…after digging a foot deep, he took out a box and opened it…it had 3-4 silver coins kept in a red cloth and another cloth had a very well carved silver grip of a broken sword… “This belonged to my grandfather… Samshirya”, Mansubya said while his eyes were lost in the past, “he had gone on war with the King of Pune…but Firangs (British) killed him by cannon.”… “What is your age?” I asked… Jaya answered, “10 over Hundred”…
The simple thought that Mansubya’s grandfather Samshirya (Samsher which means a sword in Urdu) might have fought against the British during the battle of 1857 along-with the Nanasaheb Peshwa brought shivers to me… and here were his descendants, hiding in a cave on the outskirts of Maharashtra near Tuljapur… how his family must have ran away and survived for the past 150 years was inconceivable. But the reality that they were striving to live in such a pathetic state was cruel and ungrateful for the entire nation.
After de-notifying these tribes, the government should have undertaken various methods of bringing them into the mainstream through various schemes of settlement, education, employment opportunities. These tribes possess such a huge knowledge of the nature, the herbs, the jungles and have so many skills that some vocational guidance should have been extended to them so as to enable them a dignified living with the help of their own knowledge & skills. But it did not happen and on the contrary, new unjust laws & rules were made to confine them to the hell they were living in. Even a caste-wise census also has not been made to understand their population & their whereabouts since 1931 and unless it is done, no scheme can be formed to extend justice to them. The law of the distribution of land exists but since these tribes do not have any identity proof (birth certificate/caste certificate/residence proof), even a willing bureaucrat can not help them. And this is not the only tribe, there are 193 more such facing similar situation.
The government did what it does when it doesn’t actually want to deliver…it formed commissions to look into the “Real” problem. As many as 9 commissions were specifically formed to “study” the problems of these tribes and to suggest remedies to address those problems. These 9 commissions were formed apart from the mandatory commissions formed after every ten years to study the same issues concerning SC & STs. But since none of the recommendations were implemented in the last 63 years, it implies that either the hundreds of the members of the so many commissions did not work properly or the government did not look at it seriously.
The latest of the reports is submitted by the Renke Commission. It has made an extensive and in-depth study of the possible population, their demographic presence, problems and remedies to bring them into the main stream. It has recommended distribution of land, setting up villages of the tribes, providing them education, vocational guidance, launching a nation wide campaign to make people and the administration aware of these people and to create a separate schedule for them for reservations and proper social/economical/political representations. And it is most important. The population is huge and is poor. Fortunately they are patriotic and not anti-national. So before the situation goes out of hands for all, it’s better to awake and offer them their rightful share in the development of the nation. Be better do it and do it fast !