News Excerpt:

The Union Cabinet has approved the Pradhan Mantri Janjati Adivasi Nyaya Maha Abhiyan (PM-JANMAN) to focus on 11 critical interventions through various ministries.

About Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs):

• PVTGs are defined by the government as tribal communities that show either a declining or stagnant population, use of pre-agrarian technology, economic backwardness, low literacy, etc. 
• They are found to be living in some of the remotest and most inaccessible areas in the country. 
• There are 75 such communities which are spread over 18 States and Union Territories.
• As per the Anthropological Survey of India, the highest number of PVTGs are found in Odisha (15), followed by Andhra Pradesh (12), Bihar and Jharkhand (9), Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh (7), Tamil Nadu (6) and Kerala and Gujarat (5 each). 
• The rest are scattered in Maharashtra and West Bengal (3 each), Karnataka, and Uttarakhand (2 each), and one each in Rajasthan, Tripura, and Manipur.
• The last available Census of 2001 that counted all 75 communities, put their total number around 27.6 lakhs.

About the PM-JANMAN Scheme:

• It would take basic facilities like roads, power, homes, mobile connectivity, etc. to the most backward among the Scheduled Tribes, the PVTGs.
• The budget for this package approved by the Union Cabinet stood at 24,104 crore, of which the central share would be 15,336 crore and the share for the individual state governments would be 8,768 crore.
• The program's implementation will be done through nine ministries, which will ensure that existing schemes are taken to these PVTG-inhabited villages. 
• The targets of the government are to build 4.9 lakh pucca homes, lay 8,000 km of connecting roads, link all households with piped water, set up 1,000 mobile medical units, construct 2,500 Anganwadi centers, 1,000 multipurpose centers and 500 hostels, install mobile towers in 3,000 villages, and so forth. 
• The plan intends to set up vocational and skill training centers in 60 aspirational PVTG blocks and build 500 Van Dhan Vikas Kendras to help people trade in forest produce.
• In addition, it will connect 1 lakh of these households to an off-grid solar power system and bring in solar street lights.
• Out of the entire ₹24,000 crore allocation, more than ₹19,000 crore is to just build the pucca homes under the PM-AWAS scheme and lay 8,000 km of connecting roads, which will be implemented by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways.

Challenges:

• Lack of current data on PVTG populations.
• Since 1951, there has been no separate Census for PVTG communities separately and no data has been submitted on their socio-economic indices.

Way Forward:

In 2013, a National Advisory Council (NAC) report on the state of PVTGs recommended that the Ministry of Tribal Affairs should design and conduct a Census specifically for the PVTG communities to not just enumerate but also find out the status of their education, health, and housing.