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Credit Requirements of Tribes

The document discusses credit requirements of tribes in India. It defines tribes as communities deemed scheduled under the Indian constitution. Tribes tend to live in isolated areas and rely on primitive agriculture, resulting in low levels of health, education, and income. There are over 100 million tribal people in India, accounting for 8% of the population, spread across many groups. The document uses the example of Smt. Poleramma, an illiterate tribal woman who was able to transform her life from poverty through successive microfinance loans, becoming a successful entrepreneur and supporting her family.

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59 views6 pages

Credit Requirements of Tribes

The document discusses credit requirements of tribes in India. It defines tribes as communities deemed scheduled under the Indian constitution. Tribes tend to live in isolated areas and rely on primitive agriculture, resulting in low levels of health, education, and income. There are over 100 million tribal people in India, accounting for 8% of the population, spread across many groups. The document uses the example of Smt. Poleramma, an illiterate tribal woman who was able to transform her life from poverty through successive microfinance loans, becoming a successful entrepreneur and supporting her family.

Uploaded by

Divesh Chandra
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Credit Requirements of Tribes

By Sapna Cathrine Anthony

Who are Tribes


The Constitution of India, Article 366 (25) defines

Scheduled Tribes as "such tribes or tribal communities or part of or groups within such tribes or tribal communities as are deemed under Article 342 to the scheduled Tribes (STs) for the purposes of this Constitution".
In Article 342, the procedure to be followed for

specification of a scheduled tribe is prescribed. However, it does not contain the criterion for the specification of any community as scheduled tribe. An often used criterion is based on attributes such as:-

Geographical isolation - they live in cloistered,

exclusive, remote and inhospitable areas such as hills and forests, Backwardness - their livelihood is based on primitive agriculture, a low-value closed economy with a low level of technology which leads to their poverty. They have low levels of literacy and health. Distinctive culture, language and religion communities have developed their own distinctive culture, language and religion. Shyness of contact they have a marginal degree of contact with other cultures and people

Tribal population in India


The 2001 census put the number of persons

belonging to Scheduled Tribes in India at 84.3 million which is 8.2% of the total population. There were about 60 major tribal groups accounting for about 80% of the total tribal population of India in 1991. There were over 100 medium tribal groups and 130 minor tribal groups. About 60 others were numerically insignificant.

Why Tribes Need Credit

Smt. Poleramma, an illiterate scheduled tribe woman earned her livelihood, since childhood, by selling iron scrap. Later, she married a man engaged in the same activity, but found it extremely difficult to support her family consisting of three sons and three daughters and resorted to begging for food and clothes. However, to make both ends meet, she began knitting/weaving bamboo baskets and selling them but found that the income was meager. On hearing about the MFI, she joined the group and took the first loan of Rs. 4,000 and started a scrap shop. She cleared the loan and availed of eight successive loans and utilized them as follows: the second loan of Rs. 10,000 for investment in business, the third loan of Rs. 15,000 for purchasing a kutccha house, the fourth loan of Rs. 50,000 to clear all outside debts, the fifth of Rs. 60,000 for investing in hair-selling business, the sixth loan of Rs. 70,000 to purchase 10 mobile carts, the seventh loan of Rs. 1,00,000 to again clear debts, the eighth loan of Rs. 3,50,000 to construct a pucca house and the ninth loan of Rs. 2,50,000 was utilised for iron scrap business. There was a complete metamorphosis in the life of Poleramma from almost a beggar to a woman of substance - an entrepreneur and busy woman engaged in multiple business activities. At the time of the study, as an entrepreneur, Poleramma headed her business activities and was also the leader of the group. Subsequently, she got all her six children married and got her three sons involved in her business activities. Polerammas case proved that MFI credit enabled a very poor woman living a hand to mouth existence to become an entrepreneur, leading a highly successful life

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