Citizens First

This volume brings into the public domain some of the critical issues confronting a large, particularly vulnerable section of Indian society. The papers in this volume, put together, successfully straddle the historical along with the contemporary. They engage with nebulous issues of shifting identities as painstakingly as hard realities of adivasi lives in colonial or neo liberal times. The volume analyses the political reasons for the existence of various labels by which members of this vast constituency are known: tribals, scheduled tribes, indigenous people, adivasis, and so on. Rich scholarly papers document their past and contemporary migrations and absorption into informal economies; the multilayered aggression of 'development' policies impinging on the lives of those inhabiting mineral rich habitats; the violent interface between politicized forest dwellers and the Indian state; and the theory and practice behind state legislation, both enabling and disabling, affecting forest based communities. The volume engages with the communities' struggle to organize a wide based social movement, including the environment movement, to challenge ecologically destructive and non-inclusive economic policies. The papers in this volume deeply empathise with the communities' pain at their loss and dispossession, as well as with their triumphs as they fight their way to claiming an identity as Indian citizens.