Whither Adivasi Livelihoods? A Longitudinal Study of a Bhil Village in Gujarat

H. S. Shylendra ()
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H. S. Shylendra: Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA)

Chapter Chapter 7 in Reimagining Prosperity, 2023, pp 97-132 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Development policies across the decades have resulted in the displacement and destitution of India’s indigenous or Adivasi people. This paper draws upon an inter-temporal micro-level case study carried out in a Bhil Adivasi village in Gujarat to demonstrate that over a period of two and a half decades beginning from 1994, there was only a very limited improvement in the living conditions and livelihoods of the Adivasis. The study began at around the time of economic liberalisation in India which was supposed to address the problem of poverty. Yet, the study showed that the macroeconomic changes of this period only increased the vulnerability of the Adivasis to capitalist forces. Distress circulatory migration to urban pockets entailing poor working and living conditions has become the common feature hastening the process of proletarianisation. For this population to break out of poverty, the paper suggests increasing their local resource base through water harvesting and forest-land regeneration, collectivisation of agriculture to increase their bargaining power, and a focus on human development through health, education and skill development.

Keywords: Adivasi land rights; Livelihoods; Subsistence Agriculture; Marginal Peasants; Seasonal Migration; Circular Migration; Unemployment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-981-19-7177-8_7

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DOI: 10.1007/978-981-19-7177-8_7

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