However, there have never been reports of such incidents of suicides among tribal communities, although facing similar kind of hardship due to their same agrarian base. Legal or illegal exploitation of their natural habitat has even threatened their very existence, and many of the tribes are facing extinction [last one got extinct in February 2010 when the only surviving woman of Andaman tribe died]. Even in the midst of such hardship, suicides are unheard of evils among them. They always tend to face hardship by taking the bull by the horns but seldom fall victim of suicides. Why? That’s the question, the answer of which can enlighten even best of the developed communities of the world. There is much more to learn from them than to compel them to follow our own way of living and thinking. They lead a more meaningful and self-satisfying life than all of us even sometimes in the midst of threat to their existence.

How they manage to survive in the modern world? This can be answered only through examples. Let us take some.
This writer was in Jharkhand in the beginning of this year,s monsoon season in June and happened to meet a tribal man just 30 kilometres away from the state’s capital city Ranchi. He had got broken his right hand just above his wrist and wearing not a plaster but bamboo strips tied over it.

Why was he not got his hand plastered by a qualified medical doctor? “Because it was too costly for him”, he answered. “I went to several doctors both in government and private hospitals but they were asking around Rs 2500 for the plaster. I did not have that much money and not much time to arrange for it. There was only one option left for me to go to the local indigenous people knowing remedies of illness through locally available herbs or through massage modern world know it as physiotherapy. Thus I got it bandages in less than hundred rupees, and I have seen many people recovered in this way. It takes only 21 days.”

This is just the beginning of the monsoon and you will need to work on the field. What will you do with this broken hand? “Nothing to worry sir”, he replied. “I can still manage to work with the left hand. Moreover, in our community, we just invite our brethren to help in the field and they come and do all the things needed – like tilling the land, sowing the seeds and planting the saplings, weaning etc. All is done through help, and we do not need to make payment of wages for that. We just arrange food and drinks for the persons who come to help us. That is all.”

Have you children to help you out? “Yes sir”, but they can’t help. “They go to school. Had there been monsoon vacation, they might be of some help. But they get only summer vacation which in not so hard in our area that a child cannot bear. We are poor and need to work in the field. Children could have helped in this regard, had they got monsoon vacation, and the whole family could sustain in a far better way with only a little respectful help from the government. But, Alas! Government help comes with humiliation and loss of self-respect. Children get mid-day meal in the school at the cost of learning. Teachers and students, all seemed to be busy mainly on account of preparation of mean and getting it for their stomach. In the process, the quality of food for brain is deteriorating day by day. And if our children lose self-respect they might turn to be slave of non-tribals.”
Do you think there is no help from the government and non-tribals? “No sir”, many of them, both the non-tribals and officials, are trying to help in their own fashion without caring for our sensibility, tradition and actual need. They act in their perceived notion of tribal development which is just mismatched with ours understanding of development.

The conversation interrupted by a sudden appearance of an official and the tribal man kept mum afterwards. He only listened to the official and in a few minutes just disappeared from the scene.

This short conversation was mind-boggling. For me, there was the answer of as to why we failed in tribal development despite spending billions of rupees in the name of tribal development.

It was clear from the conversation that tribals are not getting health facilities needed, mainly because they cannot afford to. Health is most important thing to survive, and only a healthy person can contribute to national growth. Our health missions have miserably failed. People, in general, are not getting even bulk drugs from government hospitals, but the registers show the drugs distributed. It’s mainly due to corruption. How can the tribal man with broken hand believe that the health services are working for him? Our leaders try to make us believe that it is working. We can believe, but the tribals depend more on traditional way of therapy. A majority of the tribal population lives in remote areas without any all-weather road, and by the time they could reach the modern medical hospitals or doctors, it is usually too late. Moreover, most of them are not able to afford the cost. Our doctors seldom reach their habitats.

Their livelihoods are at stake due to destruction of forests which is being carried out mostly in the name of development. Illegal felling of trees is also rampant, and in most of the cases, non-tribals engage tribals to do that work for a wage. Such activities, and many more, are being carried on. The ultimate victims are tribals themselves. They lack education. They don’t understand all the tricks played on them. And when they understand, they fight tooth and nail. They are generally losers even in this fight – they are losing lands, forests, culture, language, and even their best of sensibilities. In the process they are losing their simplicity and self-respect and increasingly depending on help from government and NGO’s. Many of them, especially in Andaman, they have been reduced to a beggarly existence. They have been cornered by even the so called activities of tribal development and are forced to suffer in this way.

We fail to understand the simple fact that the tribal life can be successful only through its natural selection that determines the type of social organization that may work best for a particular tribe. Generalizations are dangerous which we have been trying to implement in our own fashion – one programme for all tribes. We fail to understand that enforcing them into the mainstream make them cut off from their roots which make their survival difficult and unpleasant.

They have their own survival mechanism and that may wonderfully work only if we do not interfere. We need only to allow their gradual social evolution. We need not be skeptic that the tribal life in not viable. Their simplicity is far better than our complexity, their hope is far better than our frustration and their social helpfulness is far better than our aloofness. Their life is rather more meaningful and self-satisfying, and hence there are almost no incidents of suicides. We damage them more with our rules, morals and attitudes towards everything, including development. They don’t overrun and lay waste to the earth, environment and ecology, like us. They are seldom depressed and suicidal. They always strive for better with hope without losing the purpose of life.

Our model of development clearly is mismatched. It is our model of development that takes the food out of the mouths of others including human beings. We must understand – such a model cannot continue, and we must respect and adopt the tribal model of development along with survival of the earth, environment and ecology.
Tribal development is clearly in our incapable hands. Modern education, modern occupations, and other modern facilities are to be shared with the tribals, but without damaging their sensibilities. Bringing them into the mainstream should not mean losing their soul for the so called prosperity, which they have been resisting all along.

They need means for survival, but we frighten them with our own rules, morals, and thought about development. Bringing them into mainstream immorality, complexity and corruption is a dangerous trend that has been witnessed for sometime now.