Demographic Profile Of Scheduled Tribes Of Odisha (1961-2011)

Abstract

Odisha occupies a unique position in the ethnographic map of India for having the largest variety of tribal communities. Being one of the fascinating ethnographic States of the country, it has been the homeland of 62 different tribal communities including 13 Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs). As per the 2011 census, the Scheduled Tribe (ST) population stands at 95,90,756 accounting for 22.85 percent of the total population of the state and 9.17 percent of the total tribal population of the country. In terms of both ST communities and PVTGs, Odisha has the highest number amongst all the States, in the entire Country. The tribes of Odisha are at various stages of socio-economic development. At one extreme are the groups which lead a relatively secluded and archaic mode of life keeping their core culture intact while at the other extreme there are groups which are indistinguishable from the general peasant communities. Ever since Independence, Government of Odisha, with the support of the Union Government has been trying to improve the overall quality of life of the tribal people and to bring them to the mainstream. Although there has been noticeable improvement in the quality of life of the tribals due to the developmental interventions, the pace of development has been rather slow. Therefore,it is extremely essential to know the development status of the population of different ST communities for formulating effective plans &programs. Although lot of activities are going on for the tribal communities in the state and lot of empirical studies have been carried out by various individuals and agencies, yet there is no systematic documentation done so far in a single volume incorporating basic demographic and other information community wise. This is the reason researchers, academicians and planners are referring to many reference materials seeking information on the tribal communities of the state. This is also becoming an impediment for the planners to come up with a fitting plan for the tribal pockets because of absence of data at a single reference point. Keeping this in view, SCSTRTI has made sincere effort to bring out this volume to give demographic and other socio-economic data and community wise information of the ST population of the State for last six decades. The data has been compiled mainly from the census starting from 1961 Census to 2011 census. Besides, brief description on each tribal community indicating their distribution, language spoken, socio-cultural features and selected socio-economic and demographic data have been presented. What is special about the volume is a separate chapter on the PVTGs of the State and the available demographic and other important information that are available from the survey made by SCSTRTI and census data. To be precise, this is a kind of specially compiled book where basic community specific data of all the 62 ST Communities and 13 PVTGs have been made available.