From the Margins to the Mainstream: Legal Protections for Tribal Employment in India

The indigenous people in India, collectively categorised as Scheduled Tribes (STs) or Adivasis, have inhabited the structural margins of the economic world for millennia. While geologically secluded and discriminated against economically, they are also systematically demarcated from their traditional life intertwined with forests and therefore, heavily multidimensionally marginalised. The question of placing tribal people into the modern economy of India not only demands a distribution of Welfare benefits but, more critically, state intervention in the form of strong legal and constitutional measures. The creation of structure-building efforts to move tribal people from being marginalised to structurally included can occur only if it is reliant upon public employment. In what follows, the blog is presented in parts, critically analysing constitutional provisions, legislation, and judicial decisions which constitute the structure of legal safeguards available to tribal people.