New Delhi: The government of India has launched a 15,000 crore development fund for the tribal and marginalised section, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced in her Budget 2023 speech on Wednesday. The amount is at least five times more than the sum announced in the last year's Budget.
“Pradhan Mantri PVTG (particularly vulnerable tribal groups) Development Mission is being launched to improve the socio-economic condition of the vulnerable groups. A total of Rs 15,000 crore will be made available to implement the scheme in the next three years,” the FM announced in her Union Budget 2023 speech.
The mission aims to help tribal families with basic facilities such as housing, clean drinking water & sanitation, and livelihood opportunities among others. Apart from this, the Finance Minister also announced the recruitment of 38800 teachers and staff for the existing 740 Eklavya Model Residential Schools (EMRS), meant for tribal students across the country.
The EMRS was launched in 1997, to provide upper primary, secondary and senior secondary level education to students in tribal-dominated areas. In all, 288 schools were sanctioned then, today there are 740 of them. At present, there are around 3.5 lakh tribal students enrolled in these schools.
Sitharaman also announced PM’s 'Vishwakarma Kaushal Vikash Scheme', a special assistance package meant for the artisans. The FM said the scheme would assist especially those artisans who are from the SC, ST, OBC communities and the weaker sections. The special focus on tribals does not come as a surprise as the government wants to capitalize on the same ahead of polls in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Odisha and Jharkhand this year, and more so in the 2024 General Elections.
In the 2022-23 Union Budget, the government allocated Rs 2945.53 crore for 16 centrally-run schemes and programmes across states for tribals. Of this, Rs 2,000 crore was allocated to the Eklavya Model Residential Schools, for tribal students who want to pursue higher studies. As per the 2011 Census, the Schedule Tribes account for 10.42 million representing 8.6% of the country’s population.
Tribes are a group of people having a distinct language, culture, lifestyle and socio-economic condition and living in a specific geographical area. The tribes reside in interior forests, remote and inaccessible areas or in the outskirts of forests and hilly regions. There are a total of 75 PVTGs out of 705 Scheduled Tribes, spread over 17 States and Union Territory. The PVTG of Sahariyas has the highest population of 4,50,217 and the state of Odisha has the highest number of PVTGs.
The Ministry of Tribal Affairs is the nodal Ministry for overall policy, planning and coordination of programmes for the development of the STs. The Ministry was set up in 1999 after the bifurcation of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment with the objective of providing a more focused approach to the integrated socio-economic development of the STs.
