Ethnographic Profile of the Hill Korwas: A Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTGs) of Chhattisgarh

The Indian Constitution assigns special status to the Scheduled Tribes (STs). Traditionally referred to as adivasi, vanbasis, tribes, or tribal"s, STs constitute about 8.6% of the Indian population. There are 705 Scheduled Tribes living in different parts of the country, which are quite isolated from the mainstream stream and are economically backward. Further the Government of India created a sub category and named it “Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups.” The features of such a group include a very low population growth rate. They exist in small communities, practice pre-agricultural level of technology that is practice of hunting & gathering, and have a low level of literacy in comparison to other tribal groups. Hill Korwa a sub group of Korwa tribe was identified as particular vulnerable tribal group (PVTGs) during the fifth five year plan. The history of this tribe reveals that they moved westward into the Khudia Jamindari (Present Sanna and Bagicha revenue circles) of Jashpur district from Chhotanagpur region. They are distributed in Sarguja, Jashpur, Balraampur, Shankargarh and Korba district. According to anthropological description of family, they belong to Austro-Asiatic family. The Hill Korwa community as a whole sustains two different subsistence activities, which include shifting cultivation on the hill slopes and paddy cultivation on the low land. The objective of the paper is to explore the ethnographic profile of the Hill Korwa tribe. The paper also highlights various typical customs and practices that are prevalent in the Hill Korwa tribe. The present paper uses both primary and secondary data. Case study method was also adopted for the study. The primary data were collected with ethnographic approach, where as secondary data is collected from the Census of India, Annual Reports of Ministry of Tribal welfare, Tribal Health Bulletin, etc. The study will ultimately help in understand the typical nature of their tribal society.