PVTGs UPSC NOTE

Who are the PVTGs?

Initially known as Primitive Tribal Groups.
The PVTGs are defined by the government as tribal communities that show either a declining or stagnant population, use of pre-agrarian technology, economic backwardness, low literacy etc.
They are found to be living in some of the remotest and most inaccessible areas in the country.
There are 75 such communities which are spread over 18 States and Union Territories.

A book, The Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups in India: Privileges and Predicaments, published by the Anthropological Survey of India in 2016 and edited by K.K. Misra and others, says the highest number of PVTGs are found in

All the four tribal groups in the Andaman, and one in Nicobar Islands, are recognised as PVTGs.
The last available Census that counted all 75 communities was from 2001, which put their total number around 27.6 lakh.

What does the PM-JANMAN aim to do?

The Cabinet recently approved the ₹24,000 crore Pradhan Mantri-Janjati Adivasi Nyaya Maha Abhiyan after the Prime Minister announced the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups Development Mission early this year that would take basic facilities likes roads, power, homes, mobile connectivity, etc.

Scheme aims to the most backward among the Scheduled Tribes, the PVTGs.
The first announcement of this package came early this year during the Budget Session.
PM-PVTG Development Mission would be launched, for which the Government was planning a ₹15,000 crore expenditure, to be spent over a period of three years.
Officials said the package has seen a massive contribution from the office of President Droupadi Murmu, who took a special interest in overseeing the plans.

How will it work?

This package stood at ₹24,104 crore out of which the central share would be ₹15,336 crore and the share for the respective State governments would stand at ₹8,768 crore.
The government has said that as for the launch of the package, there were a little over 22,000 villages where PVTGs reside and where this will be implemented.
The implementation of the programme will be done through nine ministries, which will ensure that existing schemes are taken to these PVTG-inhabited villages.

The targets that the government has set for itself are to build 4.9 lakh pucca homes, lay 8,000 km of connecting roads, link all households with piped water, set up 1,000 mobile medical units, construct 2,500 anganwadi centres, 1,000 multipurpose centres and 500 hostels, install mobile towers in 3,000 villages, and so forth.
The plan also intends to set up vocational and skill training centres in 60 aspirational PVTG blocks and build 500 Van Dhan Vikas Kendras to help people trade in forest produce, in addition to connecting 1 lakh of these households to an off-grid solar power system and bringing in solar street lights.

The PM-AWAS scheme and lay 8,000 km of connecting roads, which will be implemented by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways.
The monies for these efforts will go into the Scheduled Tribe Component (STC) of these respective ministries from where it will be allocated for the development of these groups,” an official explained.
The Tribal Affairs Ministry’s Budget Estimates for 2023-24 showed just ₹256.14 crore allocated for the development of PVTGs.

What are the challenges?

Ever since the announcement of the package, officials of the Tribal Affairs Ministry have been making contact with the 22,000 PVTG villages, in order to understand the needs of each of them.
Many of the officers were sent on tours to assess the villages’ needs, following which a detailed proposal was placed before the Cabinet, which cleared the initial estimates for the package in November.
Even as the government proceeds to implement the project, the principal challenge facing it is the lack of current data, which has already been flagged by the Parliamentary Standing Committee.

While the Ministry of Tribal Affairs has said that it had started conducting baseline surveys to measure the progress of the campaign, it is yet to compile an accurate and current dataset of their populations.
Even as per the population data submitted to the House panel last year, which was based on the 2011 Census, the government was unable to tabulate the population of PVTGs in Maharashtra, Manipur and Rajasthan.
In 2013, a National Advisory Council (NAC) report on the state of PVTGs had recommended that as a first, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs should

design and conduct a design and conduct a Census specifically for the PVTG communities to not just enumerate but also find out the status of education, health, and housing.