Table 1

* Excludes 0 to 6 years are group

The source of data for this and the following tables is Government of India, planning Commission, Ninth Five Year Plan 1997-2002 Vol II, Thematic Issue and Sectoral Programmes.

Figures regarding the female literacy rates are still more alarming. Though the female literacy rate is lower than the literacy rate for both males and females taken together for the general population including the SCs and STs, the female literacy rate among the STs falls far short of the female literacy rate among the general population as shown in Table 2.

Table 2

In the same vein, figures regarding the dropout rates show clearly that the dropout rates of ST children at all levels of school education is higher than for the general population though the dropout level for both ST and general category children has been falling over time. It is indeed a sad reflection of facts that even after nearly 50 years of independence in 1990-91, the last year for which data are available, a dropout rate of 86 percent was observed for Class 1-10. It is also alarming to note that the gap between the dropout rates of the general population and the STs seems to be on the increase in the classes 1 to 8 and classes 1 to 10 level. The figures given in Table 3 bear out the truth of the statements that have been made in this paragraph.

Table 3

Dropout Rates for Students at Different Levels

(b) The Social Status of STs- One indicator of the social status against them. The percentage of crimes against STs in the total number of crimes in India has remained stationery at 0.09 percent in 1994, 1995 and 1996 although the figures available for 1996 are provisional.

(c) Health Status of the STs - Though hard data are not available to substantiate this point, it is often said that the health and nutritional status of STs continuos to be a matter of concern as these communities live mostly in areas which are neglected, remote and inaccessible where diseases like malaria, tuberculosis etc. are endemic.

(d) Economic Status of STs - The poor economic status of the ST population of India relative to that of the general population can be indicated on the basis of the percentage of the general and ST population living below the poverty line according to the data provided by the Planning Commission although the acceptability of these data have questioned. In the Planning Commission figures, the aggregate poverty ratio of the ST population has been worked out as the weighted average of the rural and urban poverty ratios using the 1981 Census population of the respective groups in rural and urban areas as weights. In a similar way the 1991 Census population figures are used to obtain the aggregate poverty ratio for these two groups in 1993-94.

Though the figures given in Table 4 are not uncontroversial, they point to the fact that the incidence of poverty among STs continues to be higher when compared to that for the general population mainly because 90.03 percent of the ST population are landless with no productive assests and are devoid of sustainable employment and minimum wages.