Tribal Development Planning, Policies and Strategies

Development is a continuous and multidimensional process that involves reorganization and reorientation of the entire economic and social system. UNESCO's concept of development is based on the realization that communities define themselves in terms of cultural identities and development cannot be effective unless it is centred around that image. Thus, when one tries to examine the field and scope of tribal development, it becomes important to understand the concept of tribe, which is of course, contextual to their image.

A large number of governmental and non-governmental agencies are involved in tribal development. While the problem of tribal development in India is primarily linked with the backwardness of tribal areas, poverty of the tribal people and the issue of integration of tribals with the rest of the population, the concept of development in tribal situations pose a number of difficulties. Even a good definition of tribal development may undergo scrutiny. Sociologists and Policy Makers view the tribal development as (a) a movement emphasizing building upon organizational structures, (b) a programme emphasizing on activities, (c) as a method of emphasizing certain achievable ends, (d) as a process of emphasizing upon what happens to people not only economically and socially but also psychologically, and (e) institutionalization of newly discovered skills and procedures leading to social change without completely breaking away from the past.

However, many studies point out that the integrated developments of the tribals have brought out the inadequacies of these programmes. Though the efforts have been in the direction for the development of tribal particularly with the creation of special multi-purpose tribal blocks during the second plan period, however, a major breakthrough took place in the Fifth Five Year Plan in which a new strategy of tribal sub-plan for preparing micro plans for relatively valuably tribal groups requiring special attention was enunciated. In this context, the present study tries to retrospect the impact and implications of tribal welfare and developmental programmes in Erstwhile Warangal District of Telangana State.