National
conference on “Livelihoods of Vulnerable Groups: Empirical and Theoretical
Dimensions”, 26-27 SEPTEMBER, 2019, Department of Anthropology, University of
Hyderabad, with IGRMS, Bhopal and Anthropological Survey of India, Kolkata.
Paper
title: LIVELIHOOD OF VULNERABLE GROUPS IN MANIPUR
Vijay
Prakash Sharma , Former Director, Institute for Human Development, ERC, Ranchi.
Introduction
In
India and especially in Manipur tribal, the vulnerable groups inhabit the hills
and forest surrounding Manipur valley. The total area covered by the state is
22.327 sq. kilometers. This has two distinct physical region i.e. narrow valley
and rugged hills. Valley is inhabited by Meitei (Hindu) community whereas hills
are inhabited by vulnerable tribal groups. The tribal communities distinctively
divided into two major steams 1) NAGAS and 2) KUKI-CHIN ZO. For this
presentation, I will concentrate on the second one and its subdivision
popularly known as HMAR with a population of 49081 as per 2011 census. They inhabit
Churachandpur district of Manipur state covering 35 villages. They are one of
the highly educated tribal communities of Christians now. There was only one
mettle road when I conducted my first study in 1987 and the Hmars were fully
traditional folks. This was published as a book in 1992 entitled “THE HMARS OF
MANIPUR: AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL EXPLORATION”.
The
changing livelihoods of HMARS:
Forest
is the cornucopia and they get grains, ripe corn, fruits and vegetables from
this store house. The forest provide them not only food grains, but building materials such as thatch and cane,
bamboo etc. It provides them immense s cope for hunting and trapping wild
animals. It also made them available large land area for Jhoom (slash and burn)
cultivation which is now restricted by the government forest rules. They uses
to grow cotton in their Jhoom fields to weave wonderful cloths (PUON) on the
back strap loom at their homes but now changing to mill cloths. They also use
to weave baskets for their daily use from canes obtained from forest. Even
after modern changes in their livelihood, their basic livelihood still
dependent on agriculture. If we look at the data from field from 1983 to 1990
we find that the livelihood dependency of Hmars on forest was 93% which reduced
to 80% in 1991-2002 i.e. a sharp reduction of 13% in five years which further
reduced to 75% now. The rate of
employment rose to 18% against 4% earlier.
Little change in business
percentage from 3% to 7 %. Hmar people still live below poverty line even after
government interventions to raise their livelihoods. The traditional art and
craft has drastically declined. On the whole, Agriculture remained the main
occupation of the Hmars. Their main livelihoods were food production and almost
all socio-cultural life was connected with it.
Due
to the government intervention, Churachandpur district appear to be very
developed in terms of income, health , employment, education and literacy. It
is also an area where level of aspirations, peace, security and happiness are
very low but many of them feels that valley people are best preferred and hill
people are neglected that they consider discriminatory. These hill tribes often
come into conflict with valley people and government.
Introduction
of money as medium of exchange totally changed their old barter system of
exchange. Indebtedness is increasing due to this in their society.
The
traditional subsistence economy of Hmars gradually integrated with market
economy. There is a great shift from traditional way of 1987 to modern system
in 2010. Government programmes like IRDP, JRY,AND EAS introduced new
agricultural and other occupational practices which is changing Hmar standard
of life and livelihoods by bringing about economically better and higher standard
of living. Development of communication enabled better education and exposure
to the outside world. The Hmar youths are going to outside cities like Delhi,
Banglore, Mumbai etc. for higher education in addition to their own towns like
Churachandpur, Silchar, Aizwal. The Hmar community has lion’s share in
government jobs now.
The
Concern-
1. Conflict
between groups is a major concern to be looked into.
2. Social
honor like Thangshuo and other old
traditional values though still continue but changing gradually.
3. More
political and material consciousness entered into Hmar society and changing their
value system.
4. They
feel that though they have money now but not happy as they uses to be. Now they
only go to their jhoom fields to appreciate the crop or complain if they are
not good. Now they calculate how much they will earn from it. Community
collaboration in agriculture like olden days disappeared.
5. One
thing, growing dependency on other and corruption also entered into Hmar
society which was totally absent in olden days.
6. In comparing from my early study in 1987,
there is a great shift from tradition to modernity and Hmar society is growing
at par with other mainstream communities but loosing self confidence as they
feel they are victims of growing dependency.
7. Hmar
villages with strong traditional institutions find it easier to internalize new
approaches and technologies, as well as upgrade their knowledge.
8. In
order to obtain greater impact, the intensity of government projects needs to
be provided based on the local institutional capacity available at village
level, rather than being predetermined and delivered in an equal manner across
all villages.
9. The
design of future development projects should be more realistic about the formal
extent of community involvement.
10. The
sustainability of community institutions must be viewed in terms of a much
longer time-scale than simply the five /seven years of project duration for
empowerment and community participation.
References-
Sharma . V. P,
1992 The Hmars of Manipur : An Anthropological Exploration, Anmol
Publications Pvt. Ltd. New Delhi.
Vatse. I.Z. 2010 Impact of Development on The Hmars
of Tipaimukh in Churachandpur District, Manipur . Unpublished PH.D thesis,
Department of Anthropology, NEHU, Shillong.
