Ministry of Tribal Affairs

The Ministry of Tribal Affairs, a branch of Government of India, looks after the affairs of the tribal communities in India.

Ministry of Tribal Affairs
Agency overview
JurisdictionRepublic of India
HeadquartersMinistry of Tribal Affairs
Shastri Bhawan
Dr. Rajendra Prasad Road
New Delhi,110011
New Delhi
Annual budget6,000 crore (US$840 million) (2018-19 est.)[1]
Ministers responsible
Agency executive
Websitetribal.nic.in

History

The ministry was set up in 1999 after the bifurcation of Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (India) to have a more focused approach on the integrated socio-economic development of the Scheduled Tribes (STs), the most underprivileged of the Indian Society.[2] Before the formation of the ministry the tribal Affairs was being handled by different ministries which were:

  1. As a Division of the Ministry of Home Affairs known as Tribal Division since after independence up to September 1985.
  2. Ministry of Welfare: From September 1985 to May 1998.
  3. Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment from May 1998 to September 1999.

Functions of the Ministry

  1. Tribal Welfare-Planning, Policy formulation, Research and Training.
  2. Tribal development including scholarships to STs.
  3. Promotion of voluntary efforts in development of STs.
  4. Administrative Ministry with respect to matters concerning Scheduled Areas.

The Ministry of Tribal Affairs is the Nodal Ministry for overall policy, planning and coordination of programmes of development for Scheduled Tribes.

Organisations

Ministry has one Commission, One Public Sector Undertaking and one Co-operative Society under its administrative control, namely :

  1. National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST)
  2. National Scheduled Tribes Finance and Development Corporation (NSTFDC)
  3. Tribal Co-operative Marketing Federation of India (TRIFED)

Ministers

The Minister of Tribal Affairs is the head of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs and one of the cabinet ministers of the Government of India.[3]

Ministers of Tribal Affairs
Name Portrait Term of office Political Party Prime Minister Ref.
Jual Oram 13 October 1999 22 May 2004 Bharatiya Janata Party
(National Democratic Alliance)
Atal Bihari Vajpayee [4][5]
Paty Ripple Kyndiah 24 May 2004 22 May 2009 Indian National Congress
(United Progressive Alliance)
Manmohan Singh [6]
Kantilal Bhuria 28 May 2009 12 July 2011 [7]
Kishore Chandra Deo 12 July 2011 26 May 2014 [8]
Jual Oram 27 May 2014 30 May 2019 Bhartiya Janata Party
(National Democratic Alliance)
Narendra Modi [9][4]
Arjun Munda 30 May 2019 Incumbent

Initiatives

Van Dhan Samajik Doori Jagrookta Abhiyaan

Amidst the COVID-19 crisis in May 2020 the TRIFED, a cooperative body under Ministry of Tribal Affairs registered under Multi-State Co-operative Societies Act launched this scheme in order to educate the tribals in COVID related safety measures.Nationwide and state specific webinars were organised in order to bring awareness on the issue. The Ministry also revised Minimum Support Price (MSP) for Minor forest products (MFP) to be procured from the tribals under MSP for MFP scheme meanwhile promoting door to door procurement and sale through mobile vans.The program was launched in association with UNICEF. [10]

Swasthya portal

Ministry of tribal affairs launched the Swasthya portal, which will act as one stop solution for matters related to health and nutrition status of the Scheduled Tribes.The Ministry's centre of excellence for knowledge management in health and nutrition will manage the portal and it will be hosted on National Informatics Centre cloud.[11]

Going online as leaders program (GOAL)

The Ministry had partnered with Facebook to launch "GOAL" program which aims at training 5000 tribal youths through digital education in order to make them emerge as the village level digital young leaders of their community.The scheme includes distribution of mobile phones for the promotion of digital literacy and to narrow the digital divide among various section of population.[11]

ALEKH

It is an e-newsletter launched by the Ministry in order to showcase the efforts of various stakeholders which are involved in improving the health and wellbeing of tribal population.It will be launched on quarterly basis.[11]

Ministers of State

See also

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.