Revision summary
ITDPs are Tribal Sub-Plan area projects, often called ITDAs. Objectives were integrated poverty reduction, services, and resource protection. Schools, roads, and clinics expanded in many blocks. Xaxa recorded leakage and weak control over land and mining. FRA and PESA had to carry the resource objective that projects missed.
Model answer
Introduction
Integrated Tribal Development Projects are area programmes under the Tribal Sub-Plan that bundle welfare, infrastructure, and livelihoods in tribal blocks. The objective was to replace scattered schemes with one local command.
Body
Stated objectives
- After the Dhebar and later Shilu Ao reviews, the Tribal Sub-Plan (1970s) created ITDPs (often run as ITDAs) for blocks with high Scheduled Tribe shares.
- Objectives include reducing poverty, raising literacy and health, protecting land and forest access, and funding agriculture, irrigation, and roads in one pocket.
- Integration meant one project officer instead of leaking line departments. Fifth Schedule land rules and later PESA were supposed to sit beside the project, not against it.
What has been achieved
- Roads, schools, and primary health centres did expand in many ITDP blocks. Literacy and some farm schemes are visible.
- A local office gave Adivasi areas a bureaucratic address that the 1950s Community Development block often lacked, a gap S. C. Dube had already shown in village programmes.
Shortfalls
- The Xaxa Committee found leakage, contractor capture, and weak ST employment inside the project itself.
- Land alienation and mining continued in the same blocks. FRA, 2006 and Samata had to do land work that ITDP budgets did not.
- Integration on paper remained departmental in practice. Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups often stayed at the edge of the same project.
- Displacement from dams and mines reversed years of ITDP investment in the same catchment.
Reading
- ITDPs achieved infrastructure better than they achieved control over resources. That is half the original aim.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD TSP[Tribal Sub-Plan] --> I[ITDP ITDA] I --> S[Schools roads health] I --> F[Leakage land loss] FRA[FRA PESA] --> L[Resource rights]
Conclusion
ITDPs aimed at one-window tribal area development under the Sub-Plan. They built some services and failed to secure land, forest, and leakage-free livelihoods.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Discuss the impact of the Forest Rights Act (2006) on the livelihood and culture of tribal people in India
Next question on this syllabus topic (2021 · Q6(a)). View answer →
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Is an ITDP the same as a Fifth Schedule area?
No. ITDPs are development units. Scheduled Areas are a constitutional geography. They overlap but are not identical.
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Did ITDPs replace PESA?
No. PESA is Gram Sabha law. ITDP is a project office. They can clash when the office ignores the sabha.
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