Critically discuss the recent welfare measures initiated by the Government for the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs). Comment why PVTGs were erroneously called Primitive Tribal Groups (PTGs).

Who PVTGs are

The category grew from the Dhebar Commission (1960–61) concern with the most isolated tribes, and from Verrier Elwin’s NEFA and central-Indian writing on groups that should not be rushed into the market. The Government of India later listed Primitive Tribal Groups (1975–76 onward, expanded in the 1980s). There are 75 PVTGs in 18 states and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Examples: Birhor, Asur, Birjia, Korwa, Hill Kharia in Jharkhand; Baiga, Sahariya in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan; Dongria Kondh, Bonda, Juang in Odisha; Toda, Kurumba in the Nilgiris; Jarawa, Onge, Great Andamanese, Sentinelese in the islands; Cholanaikkan in Kerala.

Criteria are administrative, not a separate racial stock. B. S. Guha’s older racial types and colonial “primitive” language should not be read into the list. Virginius Xaxa (2014) treated PVTGs as historically dispossessed communities, not as leftovers of evolution.

Recent welfare measures

The Conservation-cum-Development (CCD) plans under the Ministry of Tribal Affairs funded habitat, land, education and health for PVTGs. States run micro-projects (Odisha’s PVTG micro-projects are a known model). Forest Rights Act, 2006 section 3(1)(e) recognises community and habitation rights that matter especially for PVTGs. PESA Gram Sabhas, where notified, should consent to land acquisition.

PM-JANMAN (Pradhan Mantri Janjati Adivasi Nyaya Maha Abhiyan, 2023) is the largest recent package: housing, piped water, roads, mobile connectivity, anganwadis, hostels, sick-cell and TB care, and sustainable livelihoods, aimed at PVTG habitations mapped as left-out of ordinary schemes. PM-JANMAN sits beside DA-JGUA / PM-AJAY housing and the older Vanbandhu and Eklavya school architecture. Land titles, FRA claims and habitat rights remain the slower, more decisive layer.

Criticism of the measures

Targeting is right; delivery repeats older failures. Hamlets are missed in surveys. Contractors capture housing. Connectivity arrives without language-ready health staff. Island groups need protection from contact, not tourism or road-first development — a lesson from Andaman policy and from Elwin’s caution. Samata (1997) and Niyamgiri (2013) show that mining can erase a PVTG livelihood faster than a scheme can rebuild it. Cash and houses without jal, jungle, jameen are relief, not justice.

CCD plans were often utilisation-poor. Literacy hostels can detach children from language. Anthropological monitoring is still thin compared with the money now announced.

Why “Primitive Tribal Groups” was erroneous

Primitive is an evolutionist word. It implies that these communities are earlier humans, stuck on a ladder that Tylor and colonial census ethnography had drawn. Indian anthropology after S. C. Roy, N. K. Bose, D. N. Majumdar and Elwin had already shown that so-called primitives have complex kinship, ritual and ecological knowledge. G. S. Ghurye’s “backward Hindus” was a different error — forced assimilation — but it shared the ranking impulse.

• The groups are particularly vulnerable because of isolation plus dispossession: forest reservation, mining, dams, and demographic shock (Andaman). They are not primitive in mind or culture. The 2006 renaming to PVTG, used in Xaxa and in later ministry language, corrects the insult and the science. Vulnerability is a relation to the state and the market, not a stage of culture.

ILO Convention 107, which India ratified, still uses older “tribal and semi-tribal” integration language; Convention 169 (1989) speaks of peoples and rights. India’s PVTG policy is closer to welfare targeting than to 169’s consent standard — another reason names and rights must be held together.