TRYST WITH THE TRIBES (HB)

The story of how a young IAS
officer fell in love with India’s tribal heartlands, and how these
experiences changed him forever. 
Pravir Krishna first came face-to-face with the stark realities of the
exploitation of tribal people when he was posted as the collector and
district magistrate of Sarguja, a tribal district in Madhya Pradesh, in 1994.
It affected him so deeply that he embarked on a journey towards bettering the
lives of tribal people. Ever since, he has helped create an atmosphere where
tribals traded freely and earned more. In fact, his market reforms were
listed by the UNO-FAO as among 32 global best practices. Pravir’s close
association with the tribes began in Sarguja, it then continued in Bastar, and
now as managing director of TRIFED it has become even more important.  Two decades later, his efforts have
culminated in the Pradhan Mantri Jan Jatiya Vikas Mission, an initiative for
enterprise-centric approach to tribal development, vis-à-vis the traditional
welfare-centric approach. The book also discusses critical topics like the
pros and cons of providing a fair deal to tribes for their forest produces;
and what needs to be done to quadruple the incomes of tribes using this as
the engine.  The author offers various
hands-on suggestions for transforming symbolic legislation for the tribes to
a more robust approach to tribal development that is based on strengthening
self-help; use of local resources and the traditional and sound skills and
knowledge-bank of the tribes; and the need to develop enterprises based on
these resources.  This is the
remarkable story of a bureaucrat whose destiny is forever entwined with that
of many of India’s tribal communities.