Introduction:
Due to industrialisation and economic development, coupled with politicoadministrative factors like growth and establishment of state, district and subdivisional headquarters, urbanisation has reached tribal areas. Of course, they vary in the extent of urbanisation.
- (a) The earliest areas to be urbanised were the tribal pockets of Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa and to some extent, Madhya Pradesh. As already mentioned, industrial and river valley projects brought in huge townships which further contributed to urbanisation.
- (b) In the North-East, urbanisation in the tribal states of Nagaland, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh is more or less confined to state capitals, district and sub-divisional headquarters excluding a few areas where cement factories and power projects are located.
- (c) In the rest of the country, urbanisation in tribal areas is due to some industrialisation, extension of rail and road network and administrative factors like location of district headquarters, etc.
Impact:
The impact of urbanisation on tribals has been studied in detail. We can discuss the effects of urbanisation on tribal in the following way. Here, it should be noted that the impact of urbanisation should be seen together with that of industrialisation.
- (a) The First impact of urbanisation in tribal areas is a change in the dwelling pattern. The tribes who are employed in government offices, banks and industries, either live in the quarters provided by their employers or in rented houses which are very much different from their traditional houses in the villages. Those who are in the bottom rung of the economic hierarchy live in the urban fringe or slums or bastis where mud houses with thatched roofs or houses made up of bamboo with thin asbestos or zinc or junk iron sheets are roofs, is a common sight. The tribes in urban areas are no longer in their natural habitat. However, for the second, third and succeeding generation of the tribes living in urban areas the change may not be very traumatic
- (b) Tribals undergo a change in their life style as a result of urbanisation. Their food habits, dress, pattern of leisure time activities is all affected considerably due to the combined forces of culture contact with nontribals, mass media, films and other urban ways of entertainment. In urban areas, the tribes are forced to shift to non-traditional economic activities like unskilled, semi-skilled labour and white-collar profession. This change in occupation itself may be a major source of cultural change. For example, a tribe working in a bank tends to wear the kind of dress that his non-tribal colleagues are wearing. In any case, in industries, he will have to wear the prescribed uniform. Even if there is no prescribed uniform, the tendency to conform to others’ life styles will always be acting on him.
- (c) One area of concern is the gradual decline of tribal languages in urban areas. This problem is not noticed in the North East, where the state government have declared the local tribal languages as official languages. However, in Central and Southern India, the tribals who come into contact with non-tribals in urban areas or tribals who live in urban areas, gradually tend to switch over to the language spoken by the majority of non-tribal for example Telugu, Hindu, Tamil, Malayalam, etc. Tribal children who go to schools in urban areas are taught that only in the languages of the non-tribals with result that they may also soon forget their own native tongue. In fact, a slow decline of tribal languages has been widely reported in North Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh where Gondi and Kolam that used to be spoken widely by some tribes is now fast disappearing. In fact, adoption of other languages may have an impact on other aspects culture like religious beliefs.
- (d) One impact of urbanisation that has not been studied much is, the extent of politicisation and political mobilisation of tribes. In this respect, there is not much difference between tribes and non-tribes. Since in urban areas people can be mobilised easily it is convenient for politicians and political parties to contact them, spreading their message. In fact, in Bihar and in the North-East, in addition to political parties like the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (Bihar) All party Hill Leaders Conference, (Meghalaya). Tribal Students Association like those of the All Jharkhand Students Union in the Jharkhand areas of Bihar, and Khasi students Union in Khasi Hill areas of Meghalaya have sprung up and are very active. What happens is that secondary groups not based exclusively on kinship and territory develop in urban areas. Most of these student unions in tribal areas have taken up political roles, their common agenda being protection of tribal interests, and in the North East expulsion of outsiders and curbing the inflow of non-tribals.
- (e) Another impact of urbanisation that has assumed serious dimension in the North East especially, is the change in demographic composition of urban areas in tribal states and Tribes is inevitable. Most of them are employees in central and state government officer banks and industries. Some of them are traders and businessmen who came long back. Since the tribal areas themselves could not offer all the skills required for running urban services and industries the inflow of non-tribes into these skills was inevitable. It happens everywhere. In the case of tribal areas, particularly in the North-East, in view of their general feeling of insecurity and fear of being reduced in numbers by the combined. Population of refugees and non-tribal Indians from other states, the situation has reached explosive proportions. The student organisation regularly issues quit notices on non-tribals which often leads to ethnic and communal violence. In fact, in Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland, there seems to be a general reluctance on the part of the native people including the local political elite to open their areas for exploitation of mineral resources, railway lines and for other developmental project for the fear of non-tribal invasion.
- (f) One adverse impact of urbanisation is the high rate of visible unemployment among young educated tribes. For these youngsters their traditional occupation has lost its attraction. They would like to be absorbed in wage employment. Not all of them can be employed as it is the case in the rest of the country. The unemployed tribal youth while away their time in gambling and drinking or even take to drug addiction for example in Manipur and which is slowly catching up in other parts of the Northeast.
However, not everything is negative about urbanisation. Urbanisation has brought some improvement in living standards for many tribals. Reasonably decent infra-structure in health and educational structure has been created which the tribals make use of. Also, urban areas have thrown up a new non-traditional tribal elite who have an All India out-look.