{"id":71216,"date":"2020-11-28T18:17:51","date_gmt":"2020-11-28T12:47:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=71216"},"modified":"2021-05-10T17:16:23","modified_gmt":"2021-05-10T11:46:23","slug":"impact-of-covid-19-on-tribal-communities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/impact-of-covid-19-on-tribal-communities\/","title":{"rendered":"Impact of COVID-19 on tribal communities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Context\u00a0\u2013\u00a0<\/strong>The<a href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/impact-of-covid-19-on-tribal-communities\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> impact of COVID-19<\/a> pandemic on forest community and their spirited efforts to tackle it.<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>What are the problems faced by forest community during COVID-19?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Losses of livelihood and shelter<\/strong>-Due\u00a0to sudden\u00a0lockdown, the forest-dwelling communities\u202fwho got stuck in the cities without any support system, shelter, food or water.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>The lockdown measures have badly affected wage employment for\u202ftribal communities.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ol start=\"2\">\n<li><strong>Lack of health infrastructure<\/strong>\u2013\u00a0The absence of healthcare facilities in tribal areas\u00a0posing a serious threat to the tribal population.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Problems accessing the PDS-<\/strong>poor access to public distribution system among tribal people and other traditional forest dwellers during the lockdown.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Loss of forest products collection season<\/strong>\u2013\u00a0The other major challenge faced by tribal communities during the lockdown was the collection, use and sale of minor forest produce (MFP) with April-June being a peak season for generating their income.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>According to the Ministry\u00a0of\u00a0Tribal\u00a0Affairs, around 100 million forest dwellers depend on MFP for food, shelter, medicines and having cash with them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ol start=\"5\">\n<li>Tribals\u00a0were not able to get direct cash benefits as they did not have bank accounts or banks were located in remote locations.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><strong>What are the government interventions to resolve the situation?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Revision in MSP\u00a0<\/strong>\u2013\u00a0The Centre recently revised the minimum support price for 49 MFPs to provide relief to tribal groups amid the lockdown. It urged states to speed up procurement operations for MFP<\/li>\n<li>FRA title holders are entitled to an additional 50 days of work under employment guarantee schemes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>How forest dwelling communities are braving the pandemic?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Examples indicate that these communities have coped with the crisis with remarkable resilience.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Case studies documented<\/strong>\u2013 Local communities and gram\u00a0sabhas\u00a0better understand the local complexities than local administrations while dealing with a crisis as presented by COVID-19.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In each village, the Community Forest Rights Management Committees (CFRMCs) members identified families that were starving due to no income and provided ration to them.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Holistic COVID-19 governance plan<\/strong>\u2013\u00a0Gram\u00a0sabhas\u00a0encouraged local and forest-based food security, thereby preventing crowding in market places.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Use of local knowledge<\/strong>\u2013 Many\u00a0communities were\u00a0able to survive on a diverse range of forest foods during the lockdown as they had been regenerating their natural forests for over four decades.<\/li>\n<li>Women played the leading role in the gram\u00a0sabhas,\u00a0organising\u00a0systems to work with social distancing.<\/li>\n<li>In many tribal\u00a0communities, they made\u00a0face masks of leaves to cover their faces due to non-availability of protective masks in the areas.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Way forward<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The above examples\u00a0lead\u00a0to an understanding that community empowerment, particularly by ensuring tenure security and devolving natural resource governance and management power, can restore ecosystems, create sustainable economies and community resilience to cope with the natural and human-induced calamities such as the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/li>\n<li>Government need to\u00a0learn\u00a0from these stories of resilience and works towards effective implementation of the FRA.<\/li>\n<li>The Centre should provide state governments with adequate financial resources to ensure tribal communities and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers receive cash entitlements.<br \/>\n<hr \/>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"EV3eZqUm7T\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/tribals-news-and-updates\/\">Tribals : news and updates<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);\" title=\"&#8220;Tribals : news and updates&#8221; &#8212; Free UPSC IAS Preparation For Aspirants\" src=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/tribals-news-and-updates\/embed\/#?secret=tKNmT8bsRE#?secret=EV3eZqUm7T\" data-secret=\"EV3eZqUm7T\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Context\u00a0\u2013\u00a0The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on forest community and their spirited efforts to tackle it.\u00a0 What are the problems faced by forest community during COVID-19? Losses of livelihood and shelter-Due\u00a0to sudden\u00a0lockdown, the forest-dwelling communities\u202fwho got stuck in the cities without any support system, shelter, food or water. The lockdown measures have badly affected wage employment&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/impact-of-covid-19-on-tribal-communities\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Impact of COVID-19 on tribal communities<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230],"tags":[1289,1456,1399,1438],"class_list":["post-71216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","tag-soc_0","tag-soc_01","tag-soc_7","tag-tribals1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":73,"cached_at":""},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}