CULTURAL HERITAGE: IMPLICATIONS FOR DEVELOPMENT BY S.N. Chaudhary

More than 90 percent of the tribes in central India live in villages, and their lives revolve around their culture. The state is still far away from the lives of most of them in a functional sense. This book is an attempt to highlight some of the core elements of tribal culture, with particular reference to the Bhils and Gonds of Madhya Pradesh, who constitute about 74 percent of the tribal population in the state. These core elements have survived due to their indispensable socio-economic and environmental functions since time immemorial.

Efforts made by concerned change agents for tribal development have either failed to provide relief or improve their quality of life, or have taken the cultural cost of development. Their environmental base is also at a crossroads. This is partly because we try to achieve socialist goals through a capitalistic path and partly due to the complete neglect of their cultural heritage in development projects. Hence, the broad purpose of this book is to help change agents prepare culture-coded prescriptions for tribal development. There is a need to understand these communities and their culture closely, so that feasible coping strategies within their culture can be identified, making development more inclusive, participatory, and productive. The book will be useful to research scholars, teachers, and policymakers working with tribal communities. It will also be of interest to change agents and tribal representatives.