Human Development Index (HDI) for 28 lakh PVTGs

Recently, the Union Minister for Tribal Affairs has announced that the government is going to ‘design a survey’ that can gauge the Human Development Index (HDI) specifically for about 28 lakh people of the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) living in over 22,000 villages across the country.

• The Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs): PVTGs are more vulnerable among the tribal groups and are determined by the given criteria:
• They have declining or stagnant populations,
• low levels of literacy,
• pre-agricultural levels of technology and
• Economically backward.

• Key features:
• The government is going to collect information about the changes in the lives of PVTGs and document it and make a database from it at the village-level.
• The authorities are planning to draw up an HDI for primitive tribal groups.
• It will also be able to quantify how government policies are changing their lives.
• The programme envisions connecting all 22,544 PVTG villages to basic government services like communications, electricity, public education, healthcare, water supply, and connectivity.
• In field of Education:
• The government had already solved teacher shortages at EMRSs by creating the National Education Society for Tribal Students (NESTS) to centrally monitor their administration and now recruit teachers as well.

Need of the initiative:

• Lack of baseline surveys: Base line surveys are done to precisely identify the PVTG families, their habitat and socio-economic status, so that development initiatives are implemented for these communities, based on the facts and figures.
• Unequal Benefits from welfare schemes: In some cases, a PVTG receives benefits only in a few blocks in a district, while the same group is deprived in adjacent blocks.
• Health Issues: PVTGs suffer from many health problems like anaemia, malaria; gastro-intestinal disorders; micro nutrient deficiency and skin diseases due to poverty, lack of safe drinking water, bad sanitation, and lack of health services, superstition and deforestation.
• Illiteracy: Though literacy rate among many PVTGs have increased over the past years, it still remains low at 30-40%. Further, poor female literacy is a major concern.

Related Government Interventions:

• Pradhan Mantri PVTG Development Mission:
  • In order to improve the socio-economic conditions of the particularly vulnerable tribal groups (PVTGs), the Finance Minister stated that the Pradhan Mantri PVTG Development Missionhas been launched.
  • This will saturate PVTG families and habitations with basic facilities such as safe housing, clean drinking water and sanitation, improved access to education, health and nutrition, road and telecom connectivity, and sustainable livelihood opportunities.