Shifting human-nature interactions in the Maikal Hills of Madhya Pradesh (central India), by Venkat Ramanujam Ramani Ph.D. Scholar, ATREE

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Abstract:

Adivasi communities, regarded as indigenous peoples and formally categorised as Scheduled Tribes in India, rank among the country’s most marginalised social groups with high rates of land displacement, poor human development indicators, and peripheral political representation. Their subjugation is discursive as much as it is material: Adivasi disenfranchisement is rooted in the constitution of ‘tribe’ as a distinct sociological category since colonial rule, resulting in the persisting conceptual incarceration of ‘tribal’ peoples in a primitivist understanding. Given this context, the study asks: how far have the Adivasis, given their history of disenfranchisement, been able to challenge the conditions of their subordination? Using an analytical lens drawing on the theoretical contributions of Pierre Bourdieu and Sherry Ortner, I examine livelihood transformations in a forest-dwelling community of Baiga and Gond Adivasis in the Maikal Hills of central India. In this setting marked by forest decline and agrarian change, I analyse the ways in which the Adivasis engage with the power asymmetries in which they are enmeshed. Beginning with a perusal of historical material, I carried out nineteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, supplemented by quantitative analyses of data on India’s rural employment guarantee programme and twenty-year remotely-sensed forest cover and forest fire data.

My findings show that although historically-produced power relations and resource endowments continue to influence livelihood transitions, Baigas and Gonds attempt to pursue their desires and aspirations in the face of constraining – but sometimes enabling – power structures. Scholarship on subaltern politics has frequently focussed on domination and resistance, and strategic self-portrayal of an essentialist (indigenous) identity. However, Maikal Hill Adivasis strive to enhance the conditions of their existence using composite strategies simultaneously in different livelihood arenas. These range from assertion in the forest, negotiation in the village assembly, and creative adaptation on the farm. At the same time, livelihood transformations reflect enculturation of wider cultural hierarchies that influence notions of social respectability and mould youth aspirations, but, paradoxically, deepen Adivasi subordination. Meanwhile, Maikal Hill Adivasis articulate a conservation ethic that, far from being traditional or tactical, reflects an intersection of environmental change, emergence of local democratic space, and religious practices in transition. Overall, livelihood shifts reflect: (i) reduced forest-dependence, (ii) smallholder innovation, (iii) integration of social protection, especially rural employment guarantee, into livelihood decisions, and (iv) a rising trend of cyclical migration.

The study is significant because in recognising Adivasis as complex, socially situated actors capable of inventiveness despite their state of subjugation, it enhances scholarly understanding of how or why marginal communities may or may not come to develop a critique of unjust dominant structures. The dissertation highlights the importance of democratic space, and a conjuncture of dynamic social values and knowledge, in nurturing social actors’ capacity for reflexive thinking. Further, even as it adds to the evidence contesting powerful stereotypes casting ‘tribals’ as change-resistant and inherently conservationist in their disposition, the study provides an appreciation of how social values and local knowledge can be amenable to the emergence of a conscious environmental ethic that is also socially inclusive. Meanwhile, the dissertation is among the first systematic attempts to analyse the consolidated impact of recent social protection legislation in India. Theoretically, it develops a framework to discern how marginal communities generate and apply knowledge for decision-making through a reflexive process. The framework is eminently replicable, imparts dignity to marginal communities by remaining sensitive to their own cognitive categories, and marks a contribution to a wider project of democratising epistemology.