A Study on Socio-Economic Condition of BAIGA Tribal Community

The tribe Baigas are found in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand states of India with an approximate population of 2,50,000. But in Baiga-chuk in Mandla district and Balaghat district of Madhya Pradesh, Baigas are found in quite large numbers. Bijhwar, Narotia, Bharotiya, Nahar, RaiBhaina, and KadhBhaina.are the subcastes in the tribe. Many of this tribe people embraced Hinduism and their population came down due to this shifting of many people in this tribe. This tribe shows their link with the primitives of the Dravidian tribe who lived in the north-east India and later shifted to Jharkhand. The Baiga tribes prefer to go for shifting cultivation in the deep forest areas. They have the belief of not to plough the earth. It is mother earth, and if we plough it we are hurting our mother. And they do not want to hurt the mother earth, so they are against plough the earth. And if we repeat so, again and again they will commit the sin again to against the mother earth and put pressure on Mother earth to produce food from the same piece of land again, she will lose her fertility and become weakened. The food of this tribe is quite coarse and does not reflect any modern taste at all. An oral Interview Schedule method was designed to collect required data, since the majority of them are illiterate’s interview schedule found to be more useful. Both Interview method and observation method have been used covering the various aspects of the study. Simple Random Sampling method has been used in this study