tribe in caste census

New Delhi, April 23: The National Advisory Council will ask the Centre to focus the ongoing socio-economic caste census on enumerating and classifying denotified, nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes, or DNTs.

The plan is to give these groups priority while issuing unique identity cards and introducing laws that will grant them explicit recognition on the lines of the 1992 statute on minorities.

The NAC said special directives must be issued to the housing and urban poverty alleviation and rural development ministries to ask states to refer to the provisional lists of DNTs prepared by the National Commission on Denotified and Nomadic Tribes.

The council called for making flexible the conventional definitions of “residence” and “address” so that peripatetic and geographically isolated communities were not left out of the census ambit.

The council, which met on Friday under the chairmanship of Sonia Gandhi, noted that there had been no census of the DNTs who were notified as “criminal tribes” in pre-Independent India regardless of their profession: itinerant merchants who service far-flung villages, musicians, dancers, story-tellers, pastoral communities, artisans or religious mendicants.

Although the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 was repealed after Independence and the communities were “denotified”, the NAC members noted that their status remained ambiguous.

In many states they had been classified as OBCs, in some as Dalits and tribes and in others as nothing. The result was, in the absence of proper caste certificates, they had been unable to access the legal rights and benefits given to the underprivileged.

A special working group, set up by Sonia with Planning Commission and NAC member Narendra Jadhav as convener, proposed introducing a law like the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, to deal with the different kinds of offences and atrocities against the DNTs.

It called for abolishing the Habitual Offenders’ Act, 1959, that it noted was “similar to the spirit” of the colonial Criminal Tribes Act.

Among the other legislative actions the NAC suggested were to re-examine the Prevention of Begging Act, 1959, the Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, 1959, the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1986, the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, and excise laws.

The council’s case was these laws were used as a ruse to target DNT communities engaged in street entertainment, collecting forest produce, hunting small game for sustenance and growing staple food through shifting cultivation. The excise laws, it noted, prevented brewing and selling of traditional liquor.

Along with a legislative agenda, the NAC outlined other back-up mechanisms and structures such as a special package and sub-plan for these groups and designing new programmes and schemes to enable improved livelihoods.

Emphasising the need to bring to the mainstream marginalised communities, the council said existing programmes such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and the National Rural Livelihoods Mission must include the DNTs and relax the rule demanding a permanent address. It also said MPs and MLAs must set aside 10 per cent of their constituency funds for these communities.

Another NAC sub-group dealing with social protection presented its recommendations to strengthen the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill, 2011, prepared by a central committee.

The council felt that the definition of disability should shift clearly to a social model as envisaged by the UN Convention of Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the right to education of challenged children must be safeguarded.

It said there should be incentives so that they studied in inclusive schools and that families with disabled persons should be recognised as poor and food insecure and, therefore, given high weightage in targeted social security and poverty redress programmes.