Kanjar Care: September 2011

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Task Ahead

Some tribes are `criminal' because a `dated law' defines them to be so, although there might be other groups who may be more consistent in their criminal behaviour. The questions which must be addressed are:

1. Is their a need to redefine their social `identity' to erase the colonial legacy?
2. Are well-entrenched social and administrative prejudices acting as a bottleneck?
3. Can economic development alone prove to be the precursor to their mainstreaming?
4. Are there policy imperatives that can enhance the impact of development engagements?
5. What significant approaches have been adopted elsewhere in the work with criminal tribes?
6. Should not the legislation be revisited in light of the changing situation?

Could certain communities be allowed to live with a social stigma, generation after generation, in an independent country? Could there right for dignified existence not be restored?

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Innovative Initiative: To match a `thief'

WWF and the Madhya Pradesh forest department have embarked on a unique initiative to gentrify the `criminal' Pardhi tribe and stop large-scale tiger poaching. The project has two linked objectives - one, persuading the adults to change their ways and two, giving the community's children a shot at education and a subsequent normal life. Called `residential bridge course', the Pardhi children spend none months away from their families in such `borading schools' before crossing over to conventional schools. By now, nearly 250 children have gone through the bridge course in the last three years.

"Dissuading children who accompany their parents on dangerous hunts for wild boars, leopards and tigers haven't been easy,'' says S S Rajput, Chief Conservator of Forests, Bhopal. The challenge is to show Pardhi tribe that it is profitable to protect wildlife than poach it. The need is to co-opt them in the Indian state rather than fight them. . . .more

Hereditary criminal is an interesting catch phrase author Meena Radhakrishna has used in her book, that traces the notion of criminal and criminality through colonial and post-colonial period. Says she, `the Criminal Tribes Act arose out of policies of political control rather than social concern for escalating crime.' By continuing with the basic provisions of the Act albeit under a different name, the state has persisted with the British view that posed the problem in ways which would point towards an administrative resolution, and not locate the problem in the inherent weakness of the system.

Dishonoured by History: Criminal Tribes and British Colonial Policies by Meena Radhakrishna, 2001, Orient Longman, 192 pages, Rs 550

The Initiative

Started in Nov 2009, rehabilitating the Kanjar in Jhalawar district of Rajasthan is a joint initiative of IFFDC (http://www.iffdc.org.in) and Rajasthan Mission on Skills & Livelihoods (www.rajasthanlivelihoods.org) with support from UNDP. The project aims to not only develop a comprehensive understanding of the tribe's past but relate to it in devising inclusive livelihoods options for the stigmatised community. The specific objectives of the initiative are:

1. to sensitize and mobilize Kanjar families towards improvement in their living standards.

2. to strengthen the linkages of community groups with other agencies to improve their access to productive resources in Jhalarapatan and Gangdhar blocks of Jhalawar district.

3. to respond to contemporary poverty related issues, including health and primary education, of women and children.

4. to enhance state-civil society-community partnership towards policy advocacy.

Plotting Kundli as an idea to understand social dynamics

Kanjar offer a formidable challenge in ameliorating their plight. There are wide array of inter-related issues that impact their lives - from cultural isolation to social stigma, from resource poverty to low incomes and from official apathy to economic exclusion. Understanding inter-relationships between issues and the manner in which these influence an `intervention' is critical to designing livelihoods programs for them. `Kundli chart' as a `concept' is being piloted to understand how each of the variables impact the outcome and to get a sense of the combination of factors that need to be tweaked to create a tangible impact.

REPEAL THE HABITUAL OFFENDERS ACT

After reviewing India’s 15th-19th periodic reports, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), in its Concluding Observation, expressed concern and stated that “the so-called denotified and nomadic which are listed for their alleged ‘criminal tendencies’ under the former Criminal Tribes Act (1871), continue to be stigmatized under the Habitual Offenders Act (1852) (art. 2 (1) ©)”.

Earlier in February 2007, the Forum for Fact-finding Documentation and Advocacy (FFDA) raised the issues of discriminatory Indian law and treatment of the tribes on the basis of their origin and birth. This campaign, in association with the Resist Initiative International (IRI), included the submission of a shadow report, entitled “Branded ‘Born’ Criminals: Racial Abuse against Denotified and Nomadic Tribes in India”. The FFDA and IRI report stated that reforms are needed to protect the denotified and nomadic tribes from discrimination more

The `co-production' idea

Speaking of the Bhils, the Pindaris and the Thugs, Gandhiji had said: `...all are our own countrymen. To win them over is your and my work. So long as we fear our own brethern, we are unfit to reach the goal.'

In response to Gandhiji's remark, the idea of Co-production is being mooted to bring Kanjar into the mainstream. Co-production is a concept that gives responsibility to people who are regarded as `the problem', and makes them feel useful when they had been condemned as useless - and by so doing transforms their lives. It is not same as `participation' because co-production means `reciprocity'. The point is that practically everybody does have something to give and both they, and the community around them, are better for the giving.