Health and Nutritional Status of the Indian Tribes of Tripura and Effects on Education

1. INTRODUCTION

Tribal communities in India mainly consist of forest dwellers who have accumulated a rich knowledge on the uses of various forests and forest products over the centuries. According to Article 342 of the Indian Constitution, the Scheduled Tribes are the tribes or tribal communities or part of or groups within these tribes and tribal communities which have been declared as such by the President through a public notification. India possesses a total of 427 tribal communities, of these more than 130 major tribal communities live in North East India, which is comprised of the 8 states Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur, Tripura, Sikkim, Assam, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh. The major tribal communities of the North East India have been categorized into sub-tribes and if these sub-tribes are taken into account the total number of tribal groups reach up to 300.

Tribal groups constitute about 8.2 % of the total population in India (Indian Government Census, 2001). According to government statistics, tribes can be found in approximately 461 communities with almost 92 % of them residing in rural areas, mostly in remote underserved forest regions with little or no basic civic amenities like transport, roads, markets, health care, safe drinking water or sanitation. Tribal communities therefore lag behind other communities with respect to attainment of income, education, health and other requisites for good community nutrition. Of the 86 million tribals who are 8.2 percent of the population, 80 percent live in the Middle India belt of Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Northern Maharashtra and Southern Gujarat. Around 12 percent or 10.2 millions live in the Northeast. The rest are spread over the remaining States. Scheduled tribes are distributed throughout the country except Pondicherry, Haryana, Punjab, Chandigarh, and Delhi.

Table 1 & 2 will represent in brief the Demographic statistics of Tribals of NE India and under the areas of Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC).

After the first influx of refugees came as the Hindu Bangladeshi immigrants, the State of Tripura enacted the Tripura Land and Land Revenue Act 1960 that stipulated that only registered land would be recognized. Most tribals being illiterate did not register the community land they were living on for a thousand years according to their customary law. So they were declared encroachers on the land that was their habitat for hundreds of years.

The land that was alienated from them was used to resettle the Hindu East Pakistani immigrants whose influx continues till today. Because of the influx, its tribal proportion has come down from 58 percent in 1951 to 31 percent in 2001. The tribes have lost more than 60 percent of their land to the immigrants. That is at the basis of the tribal insurgency in the State.

The population of Tripura is characterized by social diversity. People of the Scheduled Tribes (ST) comprise about one-third of the population. Nineteen tribes are represented in the population of Tripura, the two largest being the Tripuri and Reang, which together accounted for 71 per cent of the tribal population in 2001. There is also a plurality of languages and dialects; the two official languages of the State are Bengali and Kokborok. The overwhelming majority of tribal people (97.4 per cent) live in rural areas.

The burden of infant mortality, maternal and child mortality are being borne disproportionately by the schedule caste and tribes as compared to other caste groups. (IIPS: 2000) The NFHS data show that 53 percent of children in rural areas are underweight in India and this varies across states. In some states this figure is as high as 60 percent who are underweight especially among the schedule tribes in the poorer states. This paper will discuss about the health and nutritional status of the tribal peoples and its effect on their higher studies, with special reference to the state of Tripura. The paper also highlights certain areas like the health status of the tribals of Tripura in relation to sex ratio, birth and mortality rate, life expectancy, nutritional status, maternal and child health care practices, sexually transmitted diseases, genetic disorders, etc. 

2. Health Status of tribes of Tripura

Lack of personal hygiene, poor sanitation, poor mother--child health services health servicesManaged care The benefits covered under a health contract , absence of health education, lack of national preventive programmes, and lack of health services are responsible for the poor health of the tribals. Problems like in-sanitary food supplies, water contamination, and poor food in-take reflect on the health status of tribals. The tropical disease like malaria is still widespread in the tribal areas. Hence, better nutrition and good environmental health are the important aspects of village health services.

2.1 Birth and mortality rate

The tribal population has a much lower Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) as compared to the scheduled castes but moderately higher than the other population.

Table 3, 4, and 5 will highlight the birth and mortality rate of the individuals in the state which is found to be varied in different assessment years.

Special estimates of IMR at the district level were prepared. These estimates show that the IMR in Tripura were 41 and 43 infant deaths per 1,000 live births for males and females respectively. The estimates show higher mortality than the latest SRS estimates (35 for males and 34 for females for 2000–02) for Tripura. District-level estimates indicate that Dhalai had the highest IMR, followed by South,North and West Districts. For girls, IMR was above 50 in Dhalai and South District. Even this was, however, below the all-India IMR of 60 (according to the SRS Bulletin of April 2005).