Short Note: Tribal Ministry’s Plan to Create Online Database on Tribals
What is the proposed plan of Tribal Ministry to create an Online Database of Tribals? What this database will be like?
With 10 crore Scheduled Tribes comprising of 8.6% of India’s population, the tribal population forms a part of the unique culture and history of India. Their contribution whether to economic prosperity of India or towards India’s freedom struggle cannot be ignored. But these contributions are hardly given any recognition and their unique lifestyles are hardly known to most of the Indian population itself, let alone in foreign countries. So, in an attempt to bring out this unique lifestyle and culture of India, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs has come out with the plan of preparing an online database on the lives of the tribal populations of India.
The database
The database is to contain the following details of the tribal populations of India:
- Evolution and the place they occupy in India’s history
- Contribution in the freedom struggle
- Lifestyle and eating habits and the way in which these have changed
- Architecture which includes the pattern of the huts or the semi-pucca houses
- Tribal art like their special forms of painting or handicraft and folk dances or other forms of art
- Social features like level of education, mortality rate etc.
- Distinguishing features of different tribal groups
- Other anthropological details.
The documents uploaded will include videos and photographs that shall be collected from the various Tribal Research Institutes (TRIs) running in different states. Attempts are also being made to prepare a virtual tour within the lives of different tribal groups. This project forms an integral part of the project on tribal development which will also include museums to be dedicated to these tribes.
