All Social Justice & Tribal Welfare Content
28 published pieces
After the Gate Opens: Released Prisoners and the Reintegration Gap in Odisha
The gate opens. He walks out. He has a small bag with the personal effects that were held for him, and he has a release document that certifies he has served his sentence. He has no job arranged. He may or may not have family waiting outside. He does not have a current ration car...
Criminalised by Law, Forgotten by Welfare: De-Notified Tribes in Odisha
In 1871, the British colonial government passed the Criminal Tribes Act — legislation that designated entire communities as "criminal tribes," meaning that every member of these communities, by birth, was presumed to be a criminal. The designated communities were required to regi...
The Person Nobody Programmes For: Caregivers of Persons with Severe Disabilities in Odisha
She wakes before 5 AM. She helps her son — 24 years old, with severe cerebral palsy — with his morning hygiene. She prepares his food, managing the texture and consistency that his swallowing difficulty requires. She attends to him throughout the morning, sometimes through the af...
The Long Road Back: Returnee Migrant Workers in Odisha and the Systems That Greet Them
Odisha sends more labour migrants to other states than almost any other state in India. The corridors are well-worn and well-known: Bolangir to Hyderabad for brick kilns; Ganjam to Surat for textiles; Koraput and Nabarangpur to Tamil Nadu for construction; Kalahandi and Bargarh t...
The Invisible Workforce: Domestic Workers in Odisha and the Welfare Schemes They Cannot Access
She arrives before the household wakes. She sweeps, swabs, washes dishes, does laundry, sometimes cooks and sometimes minds the children. She leaves after the afternoon vessels are done, sometimes before dark, sometimes after. She will do this in two or three homes each day. She....
PM Jan Dhan Yojana — Every Unbanked Adult's Gateway to the Formal Economy
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The FRA + TRIFED + CAMPA + VB-G RAM G Convergence — Building Community Forest Economies in Odisha
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National Social Assistance Programme — Pensions and Assistance for India's Oldest, Widowed, and Most Disabled
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Central and State Scholarships for SC/ST Students — Keeping Marginalised Students in School and College
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PESA Act — The Constitutional Promise of Tribal Self-Governance That Odisha Has Yet to Fulfil
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PMJUGA — India's Next Tribal Development Frontier After PM-JANMAN
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PMAY-Gramin — A Permanent Home for Every Rural Family Without One
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DDU-GKY and Skilled in Odisha — The Tribal Youth Skill-to-Employment Pipeline
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PM-JANMAN — India's Most Ambitious Mission for Its Most Vulnerable Tribal Communities
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PRIA — The Organisation That Taught India to Ask Who Governs
Participation is one of the most overused words in development. Every government scheme has a "community participation" component. Every project design includes "stakeholder consultation." The word appears so frequently that it has stopped meaning very much.
ActionAid India — 15 Million People, 362 Districts, One Rights-Based Argument
In Bhubaneswar in 2024, ActionAid India convened a National Consultation on Tribal Empowerment. Voices from tribal communities across Odisha and neighbouring states filled the room. The consultation laid down an agenda — not ActionAid's agenda, but an agenda that communities them...
Jan Sahas — People's Courage Against India's Most Invisible Violence
There is a form of labour in India that is technically illegal but practically ubiquitous — work performed in exchange for debt, under threat, without the possibility of refusal. Bonded labour. The Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act was passed in 1976. Fifty years later, the go...
CYSD — The Organisation That Odisha's Civil Society Calls When It Needs to Know Something
In 1982, a group of young people in Bhubaneswar founded CYSD — the Centre for Youth and Social Development — on a relatively simple premise: that the poverty and marginalisation of Odisha's tribal communities was not a problem to be managed from outside but a problem to be unders...
Vasundhara — The Organisation That Has Done More for Forest Rights in Odisha Than Any Other
Pramila Pradhan, 51, is the treasurer of Kodalpalli's forest protection committee in Nayagarh district. For forty years, her community has patrolled their forest in rotating shifts under the thengapalli system — the-nga means stick, palli means rotation, and the stick passes from...
SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act — Supporting Survivors Through the Justice System
The law is strong in intention and structurally compromised in practice. Working with this reality — not pretending the justice system functions well while helping survivors navigate it as it actually is — is the NGO's most honest and most useful posture.
PESA Implementation — What Gram Sabhas Can Actually Do
PESA — the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act 1996 — extends the constitutional framework of panchayati raj to India's Fifth Schedule tribal areas with critical modifications that give gram sabhas powers that gram sabhas in non-tribal areas do not hold.
Mining Displacement in Odisha — Rights, Rehabilitation, and What NGOs Can Do
Odisha is India's most mineral-rich state. It holds 34% of India's iron ore reserves, 24% of coal reserves, the world's largest deposits of chrome ore, significant bauxite reserves in the Eastern Ghats (the traditional territory of the Dongria Kondh, Kutia Kondh, and other PVTG c...
FRA Habitat Rights for PVTGs — Odisha's Landmark Achievement and the Work Ahead
This is a genuine achievement by the Odisha government and a landmark moment for PVTG rights in India. It is also, as the Indispend investigation published in November 2024 found, a moment whose significance "is yet to reach many members of the community." The Mankidia elder Souv...
Disability Inclusion in PVTG Communities — Designing from Scratch
Persons with disabilities in PVTG communities in Odisha face exclusion operating at multiple levels simultaneously:
Community-Based GBV Response in Remote Tribal Contexts
Before designing a response, understand the landscape. In Odisha, the official crime rate against women stands at 103.3 per 100,000 — above the national average of 66.4. NFHS-5 data shows 29.3% of married women in Odisha have experienced spousal violence. During COVID-19 lockdown...
Entitlements Mapping — Helping Tribal Communities Access What They Are Owed
A 2023 Health Economics study of Odisha's Mamata conditional cash transfer scheme found that the poorest households — those in the bottom wealth quintile — were significantly less likely to receive benefits than wealthier eligible women. The programme reduced child wasting by 7 p...
Community Forest Rights — From Title to Livelihood
Before you can support a gram sabha to use its CFR rights, everyone involved needs to understand what those rights actually include. In practice, many FRC (Forest Rights Committee) members and gram sabha members receive their title without clearly understanding its contents — par...
Social Justice & Tribal Welfare in Odisha: The Rights That Exist on Paper and the Distance to the Ground
In Kodalpalli village in Nayagarh district, women have been taking turns patrolling the forest since before their grandmothers were born. The system is called thengapalli — thenga means stick, palli means rotation. Every day, a different group of women walks the perimeter. Illega...