Revision summary
Missions schooled a Central Indian ST layer and changed rite and marriage. Elwin and Ghurye criticised cultural loss and national split. NGOs now file FRA and health; some become new brokers. Transformation is uneven beside mining displacement. Panchsheel remains the test of whether genius and land survive.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
NGOs and missionaries have been schoolmasters, healers, and political brokers in Central Indian tribal belts. Transformation through them is literacy and a new split of faith and faction.
Body
Missionaries
- Mission schools in Chotanagpur and neighbouring Gond–Bhil country produced clerks and a Christian ST middle class.
- Elwin feared cultural loss; Ghurye feared a nation split. Both named a real transformation of marriage, drink, and festival.
- Missions also documented language and opposed some bonded labour, a reform role.
NGOs
- Post-1980 NGOs run FRA files, health, and sometimes anti-mine legal aid in Fifth Schedule Jharkhand, Odisha, and Chhattisgarh.
- They can strengthen the gram sabha or replace it as a new patron, the interference charge of 2015 still alive.
Critical balance
- Transformation is partial: a schooled layer, converted hamlets, and a majority still on the mine’s edge.
- Vidyarthi’s cosmos may be translated into church or NGO project, not always destroyed.
- The fair test remains Panchsheel: own genius and land, not the donor’s log-frame.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD M[Missions] --> S[School new faith] N[NGOs] --> F[FRA health] T[Transformation] --> X[Split layer vs land loss]
Conclusion
Missionaries and NGOs transformed Central Indian STs through school, creed, and paralegal help. They also created new dependence. Land law, not the mission compound, must remain the core of change.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Critically compare 'Affirmative Action' of USA and 'Protective Discrimination' for Scheduled Tribes in India
Next question on this syllabus topic (2015 · Q4(c)). View answer →
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Did missionaries only convert?
They also ran literacy and some labour protest. Conversion was still a social split.
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Should NGOs leave tribal areas?
Where they replace the gram sabha, yes. Where they only file FRA, they fill a state gap.
Same topic · past papers
UPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2021 · Q8(a) · Anthropology GS 2 · 20 marks
Examine how structural transformation in economy is affecting traditional social relationships in agrarian society -
2016 · Q7(c) · Anthropology GS 2 · 15 marks
Describe how various tribal development programmes and plans have impacted the process of social transformation among tribes -
2026 · Q7(c) · Anthropology GS 2 · 15 marks
Write an account on Development Action Plan for Scheduled Tribes (DAPST) -
2021 · Q4(c) · Anthropology GS 2 · 15 marks
Elucidate the problems and challenges in educational attainment of the Scheduled Tribes -
2016 · Q6(c) · Anthropology GS 2 · 15 marks
Explain the difficulties experienced by scheduled tribes with regard to implementation of the 'Recognition of Forest Rights Act, 2006'
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