Miscellaneous

Paharias are one of the primitive tribal groups in Santhal Parganas of Jharkhand. In Jharkhand, there are two types of Paharias:
– Mal Paharia people live in the southern hills of Damin-i-koh and in the south and east of Santhal Parganas. A few of them are also found in Odisha and West Bengal.
– Shauria Paharia (Maler Paharia) people are mostly found in Santhal Parganas.
# Pakur Honey produced by vulnerable Pahariya tribe was launched as a product by Ministry of Tribal Affairs.

The ‘Buldhana Pattern’ of water conservation has won national recognition and the NITI Aayog is in the process of formulating National Policy on water conversation based on it.
It refers to synchronization of national highway construction and water conservation that was achieved for the first time in Buldhana district, by using soil from the water bodies, nallas and rivers. This consequently led to the increase in capacity of water storage across the water-bodies in Buldana district and it came to be known as ‘Buldhana Pattern’.

Jal Jeevan Mission is envisioned to provide safe and adequate drinking water through individual household tap connections by 2024 to all households in rural India.
The components supported under JJM include:
–Development of in-village piped water supply infrastructure to provide tap water connection to every rural household
–Wherever necessary, bulk water transfer, treatment plants and distribution network to cater to every rural household
–Technological interventions for removal of contaminants where water quality is an issue
–Greywater management

The Yanomami are a relatively isolated tribe in South America. They live in the rainforests and mountains of northern Brazil and southern Venezuela. They are speakers of a Xirianá language, who live in the remote forest of the Orinoco River basin in southern Venezuela and the northernmost reaches of the Amazon River basin in northern Brazil.
# They have been threatened for several decades by illegal gold miners who invade their land and bring diseases. They recently sent a request to India to stop buying Yanomami ‘Blood Gold’.

The Tagin or Ghasi Miri tribe is one of the major tribes of Arunachal Pradesh, which is a member of the larger designation of Tani Tribes, the descendants of Abu Tani.
Mostly Tagins are in Upper Subansiri district but are also found to be dispersed among the adjoining districts especially in West Siang and Papum Pare.
The most important festival of the Tagins is the Si-Donyi Festival, involves the veneration of the earth (si) and the sun (donyi).

Kabartal Wetland, also known as Kanwar Jheel, covers 2,620 hectares of the Indo-Gangetic plains in the Bihar State. It has been designated as a wetland of International importance.
It is an important wetland of the Central Asian Flyway for the population of migratory birds and biodiversity. With the new addition, now India has 39 Ramsar sites.

The Lonar lake in Maharashtra and Sur Sarovar, also known as Keetham lake, in Agra, have been added to the list of recognised Ramsar sites recently.
Before that, Kabartal in Bihar’s Begusarai district was recognised as a wetland of international importance, the first such wetland in Bihar.
The Asan Conservation Reserve in Dehradun, the first wetland from Uttarakhand to be recognised by Ramsar convention, was added to the list in October 2020.

The Nordic Region consists of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland, as well as the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Åland.
Norden means literally ‘the North’ in the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish languages. The terms Scandinavia and Scandinavian are often used as synonyms for Norden and Nordic in English.
# India and Finland recently signed a MOU for developing cooperation between two countries in the field of Environment protection and biodiversity conservation.

The Bonda tribe of Odisha is believed to be part of the first wave of migration out of Africa about 60,000 years ago. Anthropologists say that they are members of a group of Austroasiatic tribes, who at some time in the ancient past migrated and settled in an area of about 130 sq km in the wild Jeypore hills.
The Bondas continue to speak in their language, Remo, which comes under the Austroasiatic language belonging to the Mundari group. They are one of the 13 Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) found in Odisha. A matriarchal society, the women prefer to marry men who are younger by at least 5-10 years, so that the men can earn for them when they grow old.

Statement 1 is correct. Tulu is a southern Dravidian language that’s spoken

by 1.85 million people in the districts of Dakshina Kannada (by 48.6% of the population as

per the 2011 Census) and Udupi (31.4%), and is also widely spoken in the Manjeshwaram

and Kasargod taluks (16.2% combined) of Kerala’s Kasargod district.

Tulu has a rich oral tradition, reviving folk song forms like paḍdana, stories, and popular

theater (naṭaka), including yakṣagana.

Statement 2 is incorrect. Tulu language i not included in Eighth Schedule of the

Constitution.

The Eight Schedule consists of the 22 languages namely Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati,

Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi,

Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu Bodo, Santhali, Maithili and Dogri.

Of these languages,14 were initially included in the Constitution. Sindhi language was

added by the 21st Constitution Amendment Act of 1967.

Konkani, Manipuri, and Nepali were included by the 71st Constitution Amendment Act of

1992.

Bodo, Dogri, Maithili, and Santhali were added by the 92nd Constitution Amendment Act of 2003.

Twenty-three years after ethnic clashes in Mizoram forced 37,000 people of the Bru (or Reang) community to flee their homes to neighbouring Tripura, an agreement has been signed to allow them to remain permanently in the latter state.

The agreement among the Bru leaders and the governments of India, Tripura, and Mizoram, signed in New Delhi on January 16, gives the Bru the choice of living in either state. In several ways, the agreement has redefined the way in which internal displacement is treated in India.

Bonda tribe, classified as one of India’s Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) is one of the most primitive tribal community of Odisha. The ‘Bonda’ are known among themselves as ‘Remo’ (men).

The Bonda Hills area has been designated according to the name of the indigenous tribe the ‘Bonda’. Geographically the Bonda hills are bounded in the northwest by the Malkangiri plains and in the south-east by the Machhkund valley.

With slash and burn cultivation they also practice paddy cultivation on terraced-fields in the valleys during rainy season. Their language belongs to the Munda branch of the Austroasiatic language family.

The Brus, also known as Reangs, are spread across Tripura, Mizoram and southern Assam states in India.

Their clashes with the majority Mizos in 1995 led to the demand for the removal of the Brus (perceived to be non-indigenous) from Mizoram’s electoral rolls. This led to an armed movement by a Bru outfit, The retaliatory ethnic violence saw more than 40,000 Brus fleeing to adjoining Tripura where they took shelter in relief camps.

The Centre and the two State governments involved made several attempts to resettle the Brus in Mizoram and Tripura.

75 tribal groups have been categorized by Ministry of Home Affairs as Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTG). PVTGs reside in 18 States and UT of A&N Islands.

The Ministry of Tribal Affairs implements the Scheme of “Development of Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs)” exclusively for Conservation-cum-Development of PVTGs.

The five PVTGS residing in Andamans are Great Andamanese, Jarwas, Onges, Shompens and North Sentinelese.

Koraga is a PVTG in Kerala.

Global commons have been traditionally defined as those parts of the planet

that fall outside national jurisdictions and to which all nations have access.

International law identifies four global commons, namely the High Seas, the Atmosphere,

the Antarctica and the Outer Space. These resource domains are guided by the principle

of the common heritage of mankind.

The international conventions and treaties to govern global commons include:

– United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) of 1982 and instruments

governed by the International Maritime Organization and UNEP’s Regional Seas

Conventions to govern the high seas;

– Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) ensuring the protection of the Antarctica fauna and flora;

– A multitude of international environmental treaties that administer and protect the

atmosphere and deal with the air pollution and atmospheric depletion, like the UNFCCC

and the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer;

– The Treaty on Principles governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of

Outer Space.

Population growth in different parts of the world can be compared. The

growth of population is low in developed countries as compared to developing countries.

There is negative correlation between economic development and population growth.

The transhumant system is prevalent in the Himalayas, where there are

several nomadic tribes, such as the Gujars, Bakarwals, Gaddis and Changpas, who rear

sheep and goats under this system.

• The animals are moved to subalpine and alpine pastures during summer, while

during winter they are grazed on adjoining plains.

• The scale of this enterprise is widespread and is practised by a variety of farmers,

including landless and marginal farmers, who have adopted this profession for

earning a livelihood.

• Sale of wool and live animals for meat is their only source of income. The

transhumant system is practised in order to locate the best herbage resources

from pastures and grasslands.

• There are also well recognized pastoral tribes who practise a complete

transhumance, moving from one place to another on traditional migratory routes.

• The dates of migration have traditionally been fixed. Even grazing rights rest with

the migratory graziers by traditional usage, though they do not hold proprietary

rights over the land.

• The transhumant system is prevalent in the Himalayan region. However, this

system still exists in some states situated in the plains, such as Rajasthan,

Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh.

Primitive subsistence agriculture or shifting cultivation is widely practised by

many tribes in the tropics, especially in Africa, south and Central America and south East

Asia.

The vegetation is usually cleared by fire, and the ashes add to the fertility of the soil.

Shifting cultivation is thus, also called slash and burn agriculture.

It is prevalent in tropical region in different names, e.g. Jhuming in North eastern states

of India, Milpa in Central America and Mexico and Ladang in Indonesia and Malaysia.

In Iceland, people commemorated the loss of the glacier Okjokull.

• The glacier was officially declared dead in 2014 at the age of 700, when it was no

longer thick enough to move. It has been reduced to a small patch of ice atop a

volcano.

• The people walked up the volcano northeast of the capital Reykjavik to lay a plaque

which carries a letter to the future.

• The plaque reads “Okjokull is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as glacier.

Demographic transition theory can be used to describe and predict the future population of any area.

 The theory tells us that population of any region changes from high births and high deaths to low births and low deaths as society progresses from rural agrarian and illiterate to urban industrial and literate society. These changes occur in stages which are collectively known as the demographic cycle.

 The first stage has high fertility and high mortality because people reproduce more to compensate for the deaths due to epidemics and variable food supply.

 Fertility remains high in the beginning of second stage but it declines with time. This is accompanied by reduced mortality rate. Improvements in sanitation and health conditions lead to decline in mortality. Because of this gap the net addition to population is high.

 In the last stage, both fertility and mortality decline considerably. The population is either stable or grows slowly. The population becomes urbanized, literate and has high technical knowhow and deliberately controls the family size.

All the major river basins and some among the medium river basins are of inter-state nature.

As the development of projects by one State on an inter-state river may affect the interests of other basin States, inter-state differences arise with regard to use, distribution and control of waters of inter-state river basins.

• Subject of ‘water’ is a matter at Entry 17 of List –II, i.e. State List.

 This Entry is subject to the provisions of Entry 56 of List –I, the Union List.

 Entry – 56 of Union list: Regulation and development of inter-State rivers and river valleys to the extent to which such regulation and development under the control of the Union are declared by Parliament by law to be expedient in the public interest.

 Entry – 17: Water that is to say, water supplies, irrigation and canals, drainage and embankments, water storage and water power subject to the provisions of Entry 56 of List – I.

Arunachal Pradesh has the highest concentration of scheduled tribes in India. Additionally, this region is probably one of the last remaining outposts in the country where tribes still live a primitive existence, seeking out a living from the land and maintaining a harmonious relation with nature.

 The word ‘Nyishi’ literally translates to a ‘civilised human being’. The Nyishis are the most populous tribe of Arunachal Pradesh and inhabit the Papum Pare, Kurung Kumey, East Kameng, and the Lower and Upper Subansiri districts of Arunachal Pradesh. They are mainly involved in shifting cultivation and produce rice, millet, cucumber, etc.

• The Apatanis have a distinct culture with systematic land use techniques and rich traditional ecological knowledge. Their sustainable development ways, and natural resources’ management and conservation, that has been acquired over the centuries through informal experimentation, is simply exemplary.

 UNESCO has proposed that the Apatani valley be listed as a World Heritage Site for its ‘extremely high productivity’ and ‘unique’ way of preserving ecology.

 The tribe, mainly found in the Ziro Valley in the Lower Subansiri district, is known for its wetland paddy cultivation, which produces high yields even without the use of farm animals and agricultural machines.

 The Adi tribe celebrates a number of festivals but the most important ones are Aran, Solung and Etor. Solung is a harvest festival that is observed in the first week of September for about five days.

 It is marked by songs, dances, display of weaponry, etc. Etor is celebrated in the month of May and men perform various war dances (collectively called Tapu) during the ceremonies. Aran is observed in the month of March.