The experience of the tribal life in Kerala has testified that the postcolonial state has not been a ‘revolutionary’ state, as it has been made out with a set of glorified achievements of land reforms, according to Dr Suresh Madhavan, faculty, School of Development Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Dr. Suresh was delivering a special lecture on “Postcolonial Predicament and Bureaucratic Rationality: The Tribal Question in Kerala” at the Web-Workshop as part of ‘Engaging Human Ecology’ series organised by the Inter University Centre for Social Science Research and Extension (IUCSSRE), Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala. He said that “the question of marginality of the tribes in Kerala has to be understood within this postcolonial governmentality.” Tribal communities were increasingly subjected to welfare programmes and their life-world itself remained under state ‘protection’ within this governmentality. Yet, the postcolonial state has not done anything to enable them to get landownership, he noted.
Dr. Suresh said that “the postcolonial governmentality had felt a need to move away from the colonial way of conceiving the ‘tribes.’ The ‘experts’ on tribal issues were an important group who marked this shift in conception. While they drew from very different perspectives, they were largely addressing the problems of ‘backwardness’ or ‘poverty’ of the tribes in the context of nation’s development. In spite of their claimed intent, the strategies and techniques they recommended for the improvement of the tribes created specific institutions, mostly mirroring colonial ones.” He said the practices of improvement continued to be within shades of protectionism with the task held by bureaucracy.
Dr. Suresh argued that the exclusion of tribes from landownership can be seen as an effect of the development process itself, rather than seeing it as mere ‘land alienation.’ The history of the tribal communities has shown that they were progressively alienated from the productive resources with their status being reduced to a governmental category associated with welfare. One can also see the colonial strategy of dealing with tribal habitats being replicated in the postcolonial governmentality in Kerala. Consequently, the bureaucratic procedures that aimed at redistributing landownership eventually excluded tribal communities. Moreover, within the mainstream framework of development, tribal practices like shifting cultivation were not considered ‘productive’ activities. Dr Suresh said that the terms like ‘backwardness’ and ‘poverty’ in tribal habitats cannot be discussed without a reference to the role played by governmentality in the postcolonial conditions.
Dr. Vineetha Menon, Dr. Mathew Kurian, Dr. Mathew A. Varghese, Mr. Herald John and scholars and experts from different institutions participated in the workshop session. Dr. K.M. Seethi, Director, IUCSSRE welcomed and Dr. Christopher Guna, faculty, Advanced Centre of Environmental Studies and Sustainable Development (ACESSD), Mahatma Gandhi University, chaired the session.
