On Thursday 27 Sep 2007 1:44 pm, Ingrid wrote: > It's not just disparities that are widening, however. There are large > groups of people - mostly rural and tribal - who have no way of engaging > with the sectors of the economy that are growing, not even as beneficiaries > of such trickle down benefits as exist. > > As terms of trade for their output worsen and/or demand for their skills > disappears while costs of the goods/services they need to acquire from the > industrial/service sectors increase, they are absolutely, not just > relatively, worse off.
This answers a question I was going to ask. But is there anything at all that can save these people? And what does "saving them" mean? Somewhere in my voluminous e-archives I have the turn of the 20th century autobiography of a great uncle of my wife. He was a Madhwa Brahmin. He says that the economic changes (taxes/levies etc) brought in by British rule more or less killed the village Brahmins' (and presumably others) way of life. That prompted many young Brahmin boys to leave home and get an education. Perhaps they were privileged (in having parents educated in Sanskrit and a mother tongue) but they were pioneers (in their area) in acquiring an English education that led to jobs. But it also led to conflicts with the traditional way of life that had to be discarded. Poverty of course was extreme and the suffering and deaths from plague and childbirth were rampant and are described in great detail. However they led a settled non-nomadic life before all this, unlike tribals whose life and economy are less settled and are essentially those of hunter-gatherers I would guess. Politically, an attempt has been made to compare the situation of tribals to those of Australian aboriginals. But I see that as a dead end attempt in the Indian context. But would the "solutions" applied to Australian Aborigines and Red Indians in the US be appropriate in the context of Indian tribals? And, to ask a non PC question - are tribal customs so entrenched with their identity that they are beyond hope when it comes to integrating them with the world today, while the "world today" inexorably swallows up their habitat. Are they destined for the evolutionary Davy Jones' locker? shiv
