The specifications required for a community to be declared as a Scheduled Tribe are
1. indications of primitive traits
2. distinctive culture
3. shyness of contact with the community at large
4. backw

Question

The specifications required for a community to be declared as a Scheduled Tribe are
1. indications of primitive traits
2. distinctive culture
3. shyness of contact with the community at large
4. backwardness and geographical isolation
Which of the above are correct?

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — D, All of the above. Every item on the list is one of the accepted criteria, so nothing can be dropped. The National Commission for Scheduled Tribes sets them out in exactly this form: "The following essential characteristics for a community to be identified as a Scheduled Tribe were accepted: Primitive way of life and habitation in remote and less easily accessible areas, Distinctive culture, Shyness of contact with the community at large, Geographical isolation, and General backwardness in all respects." Line the exam's four items against that official five and they map without a gap — item 1 is the primitive-traits criterion, item 2 is distinctive culture word for word, item 3 is shyness of contact word for word, and item 4 is a compound that carries the remaining two, general backwardness and geographical isolation. Four items, five criteria, complete coverage, so (d). Two things are worth being precise about, because they are what a careful candidate doubts. First, these criteria are not in the Constitution. The Constitution defines Scheduled Tribes only circularly — Article 366(25) says they are such tribes or tribal communities as are deemed under Article 342 to be Scheduled Tribes — and Article 342 supplies only a procedure: the President, after consulting the Governor where it is a State, specifies the tribes by public notification, and thereafter only Parliament by law may add to or remove from the list. The NCST states the position plainly: "the Constitution is silent about the criteria for specification of a community as a Scheduled Tribe." Second, the criteria have a traceable origin rather than being folklore. An Advisory Committee on the Revision of the Lists of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, chaired by B. N. Lokur, was set up in 1965; the draft Bill that followed went to a Joint Select Committee of Parliament on the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Order (Amendment) Bill, 1967, known as the Chanda Committee; and it was through that process that the five essential characteristics were accepted. The lists were then comprehensively revised by the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1976 (Act No. 108 of 1976). So the five criteria are settled administrative policy resting on a parliamentary process, and the exam's four items are drawn from them without alteration.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Keeps the two criteria that sound most anthropological and throws away the two that decide most real cases. Shyness of contact with the community at large is on the official list in precisely those words, and geographical isolation together with general backwardness are the two criteria the Registrar General of India and the State Government actually test when a claim for inclusion is examined. Dropping items 3 and 4 removes three of the five criteria.  (b) Drops item 1 alone, which is what a candidate does on the reasonable instinct that "primitive traits" is too pejorative to be a live official test. The instinct is about the language, not the law. The criterion is still on the record — the Commission's formulation is "Primitive way of life and habitation in remote and less easily accessible areas", and its own shorter restatement of the same list opens with "Primitiveness". It has not been withdrawn, so item 1 stands.  (c) Drops distinctive culture, which is the single criterion the official list states in exactly the exam's two words and the one that does the most work in distinguishing a Scheduled Tribe from a merely poor or remote community. Poverty and isolation alone do not make a community a Scheduled Tribe; a distinct culture — language, custom, kinship, religious practice — is what separates the tribal category from the general backward-class category.

Concept: Scheduling a community is a procedure, not a definition. Article 366(25) defines Scheduled Tribes only by reference to Article 342, and Article 342 sets out machinery: the President, after consulting the Governor in the case of a State, specifies by public notification the tribes or tribal communities — or parts of, or groups within, them — that are Scheduled Tribes in relation to that State or Union Territory; thereafter Parliament by law may include or exclude a community, and the notification cannot be varied by any later notification. Because a list is made in relation to a State, it is State-specific: a community scheduled in one State need not be scheduled in the next, and Scheduled Tribes have been specified for every State and Union Territory except Haryana, Punjab, Chandigarh, Delhi and Puducherry. Over 700 tribes stand notified under Article 342, the largest number of main tribal communities — 62 — in relation to Odisha. Since June 1999 a claim for inclusion moves only if the State Government, the Registrar General of India and the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes all agree, after which it goes to the Cabinet and then to Parliament as a Bill. Census 2011 counted about 10.42 crore Scheduled Tribes, 8.6 per cent of India's population and 11.3 per cent of its rural population, with a sex ratio of 990 females per 1,000 males against 978 in 2001.

State PCS 2023 Q103 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2023 Q103 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer