Women-centric development schemes and its impact on the livelihood of the women of the Lodha tribe in a “Model Village” of Paschim Medinipur District, West Bengal, India

Abstract

The paper explores the women-centric development schemes and programs launched by the government for the tribal people in India in general and the female members of the Lodha community in particular, and the impact of the development schemes on the livelihood of these women. This microstudy was carried out on the Lodha, a particularly vulnerable tribal group for their extreme backwardness among the tribal communities of India, living in a village named Goaldihi in Paschim Medinipur district of West Bengal. The women in this community seem to carry a triple burden of backwardness, firstly for being women, secondly as Scheduled Tribe and thirdly as PVTG, and to remove which the government has planned certain schemes for their development. The realization of the aims of development from the perspectives of millennium development goals reveals a dismal picture. This paper examines the dominant paradigms of development and the state’s role in it to understand the trajectory of development practices among a denotified (earlier branded as criminal tribe), traditionally foraging tribe in contemporary India.