Mapping Marginalisation

The Government of India’s plan to conduct the first-ever Individual Entitlement Survey for Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) is a major administrative step, but beneath its technocratic surface lies a far deeper sociological story.
This is not just a survey—it is an encounter between the modern state and the most historically marginalised communities of India. It reflects how society imagines “primitive” groups, how state power penetrates remote regions, and how policy frameworks often reproduce hierarchies while seeking to address them.

To unpack these complexities, we must examine this initiative through the insights of classical sociologists, anthropologists, critical thinkers, tribal studies scholars, and decolonial theorists.

PVTGs: A Category Born Out of Social Perception, Not Just Policy

PVTGs are described as “primitive,” isolated, backward, and technologically simple. These terms reflect deep social attitudes, not merely developmental indicators.

• G.S. Ghurye’s Viewpoint: Tribes as Backward Hindus

Ghurye argued that Indian tribes are not isolated cultures but “backward Hindus” gradually absorbed into caste society.
The PVTG category contradicts this by treating tribes as static, isolated entities—yet the state’s categories often freeze communities into administrative boxes.

• Verrier Elwin’s Alternative: Tribes as Distinct Civilisations

Elwin argued PVTGs should be protected from excessive state intervention to preserve their cultural worlds.
The Entitlement Survey represents the opposite impulse: deep integration through data, apps, and entitlement cards.

This tension—assimilation vs. cultural autonomy—has shaped tribal policy for decades.

The Survey as a Tool of State Visibility: James C. Scott’s “Seeing Like a State”

James C. Scott famously argued that states seek to make populations legible—counted, measured, classified—so they can govern them.
The Individual Entitlement Survey, with its mobile-app data collection and universal entitlement cards, is a perfect example.

Scott’s viewpoint applied:
Remote PVTG communities, historically outside state visibility, will now be:

• mapped
• enumerated
• categorised
• integrated into welfare databases

This can empower them—but it also expands state authority into spaces once governed by customary norms. State visibility can both uplift and discipline.

Distribution of Schemes and Inequality: Bourdieu’s “Forms of Capital”

The survey tracks access to 39 schemes—from MGNREGA to pensions to scholarships.
But tribes are often excluded not because schemes don’t exist but because they lack:

• cultural capital (literacy, documents)
• social capital (networks to access programs)
• economic capital (resources to navigate bureaucracy)
• symbolic capital (recognition within administration)

Bourdieu’s viewpoint applied:
The entitlement card may reduce bureaucratic arbitrariness, but structural barriers rooted in power relations still determine who benefits.

The survey acknowledges the gap—but does not automatically correct the social inequalities underneath.

Administrative Expansion into Tribal Life: Weber’s “Rational-Bureaucratic Authority”

Max Weber argued that modern states extend control through rational, rule-bound bureaucracy.
The Entitlement Survey epitomises this:

• app-based data entry
• uniform entitlement cards
• central tracking across 18 ministries
• integration into a national welfare grid

Weber’s viewpoint applied:
This is the bureaucratisation of tribal life—bringing rational legality to societies that often operate on informal, customary structures.

For PVTGs, who rely on oral traditions and community-based decision-making, the bureaucratic mode may feel alien.

Cultural Survival vs. Development: Marshall Sahlins’ “Original Affluent Society”

Sahlins showed that small, hunting-gathering communities often live with more leisure, stability, and ecological harmony than modern industrial populations.

Sahlins’ viewpoint applied:
PVTGs are often described as “poor,” but anthropologically they possess:

• ecological knowledge
• low material needs
• strong kin networks
• sustainable subsistence patterns

Development schemes may disrupt these systems.
The entitlement survey measures poverty in modern terms but ignores cultural forms of richness.

State Power in the Name of Welfare: Foucault’s “Governmentality”

Michel Foucault argued that modern states exercise power not through force but through welfare, surveillance, and classification.
The entitlement card is not just a benefit—it is also a governance mechanism.

Foucault’s viewpoint applied:
By tracking entitlements, the state begins to regulate and shape tribal life:

• defining their needs
• deciding their development path
• formalising their identity
• monitoring compliance

This is disciplinary power wrapped in benevolence.

Tribal Identity, Resistance, and Modernity: The Indian Sociological Lens

• M.N. Srinivas: “Dominant Caste” Theory

In tribal regions, dominant caste groups often control land, markets, and political offices.
Srinivas reminds us that village power structures may block PVTG benefits even if the survey identifies entitlements.

• B.R. Ambedkar: “Graded Inequality”

Ambedkar’s idea of hierarchical social oppression applies to PVTGs too—they face layered marginalisation from other STs, castes, and state institutions.

• Nirmal Kumar Bose: Acculturation

Bose argued that tribes live in “contact zones.”
The Entitlement Survey accelerates these contact zones digitally and administratively, altering traditional life.

The Universal Entitlement Card: Polanyi’s “Disembedded Economy”

Karl Polanyi argued that markets and state systems often “disembed” individuals from social relations.
The entitlement card individualises benefits rather than community-based rights.

Polanyi’s viewpoint applied:
Traditional tribal resource sharing—land, food, labour—is communal.
The entitlement card individualises welfare, weakening the collective ethos.

Scope and Scale: A Durkheimian View of Social Integration

Durkheim believed societies must integrate marginal groups into the collective conscience.
The survey—covering 10 lakh households across 48 lakh PVTGs—attempts this integration.

But Durkheim warned that forced integration without respecting cultural rhythms can produce anomie.

The challenge is to integrate without erasing distinctiveness.

Tribal Development Missions: Postcolonial and Subaltern Perspectives

Gail Omvedt’s View: Adivasi resistance is a political struggle, not a welfare issue.

Development missions often treat PVTGs as passive recipients rather than political agents.

Ranajit Guha: Subalternity

Tribal voices remain unheard in policymaking.
Surveys gather data on tribes, not from tribes.

Amartya Sen: Capability Expansion

Schemes should enhance capabilities—education, health, agency—not just distribute goods.

What a Sociologically Sensitive Policy Must Consider

• Protect cultural autonomy (Elwin, Sahlins)

Development should not homogenise.

• Address structural inequalities (Ambedkar, Bourdieu)

More than entitlements, PVTGs need power.

• Prevent bureaucratic domination (Weber, Scott)

Simplify processes; reduce documentation burdens.

• Promote participatory governance (Subaltern Studies)

Tribes must co-design development, not merely be surveyed.

Conclusion: Beyond Enumeration, Toward Justice

The Individual Entitlement Survey is a landmark step—but it is also a moment to reflect.
Enumerating PVTGs, issuing entitlement cards, and integrating them into state systems can empower—but can also assimilate, discipline, and transform.

This initiative marks a shift from tribal invisibility to administrative visibility, but sociology warns us that visibility brings both rights and control.

A truly just tribal policy must blend ,the state’s welfare responsibility.the tribe’s cultural autonomy and  the community’s voice in governance.Only then can India avoid turning welfare into another instrument of domination and truly uplift PVTGs as equal partners in development.