(GIST OF KURUKSHETRA) Nourishing the Roots: Nutritional Justice for Adivasi Communities

(OCTOBER-2025)

Nourishing the Roots: Nutritional Justice for Adivasi Communities

Context:

India’s tribal or Adivasi communities have long sustained themselves on diets rooted in forest biodiversity, traditional crops, and locally available wild foods. Their food systems were not merely about sustenance, but about culture, ecological balance, ancestral land rights, and intergenerational knowledge transfer. Yet, over the past few decades, structural economic changes, conservation policies, weak implementation of land rights, climate pressures, and health burdens have altered their diets and inflicted deep nutritional harm.

Conservation and Forest Governance Pressures:

Legal restrictions on forest access, whether through tiger reserve/wildlife protection laws, wildlife conservation policies, or regulation of forest produce, have diminished Adivasis’ ability to forage or hunt. There are widespread instances of forest laws restricting access to forests, which in turn have impacted the food habits of tribal communities.

Economic Commercialisation and Monocultures:

Hybrid seed programmes, cash crops, chemical inputs, and state-promoted commercial agriculture have replaced climate-resilient indigenous crops. Wild foods and varieties are diminishing.

Food subsidies and Public Distribution System (PDS) dependence:

Staple rice or wheat rations from PDS, often cheaper and more easily processed, have displaced millets and more nutritious multi- dietfood choices and other multi-source tribal foods.

Migration and Remittances:

As forest degradation, land loss, and lack of employment push Adivasis into seasonal or longer-term migration, remittance incomes, market dependencies, and more processed or convenience foods become part of diets.

Cultural Change and Generational Loss:

Younger people often do not learn the traditional crop recipes or the foraging knowledge. Elders report declining appetite for wild plants among youth, loss of processing skills (for millets, etc.), and perception of millets as "poor man’s grain."

Weak Implementation of Legal Rights to Land and Forests:

The Forest Rights Act (FRA) 2006 promises rights over minor forest produce and habitat, yet in many areas, Adivasis’ ownership over ancestral lands or access to forest resources remains contested or constrained. Without secure land, they cannot maintain the cultivation of traditional crops or foraging rights.

Climate Change: Disproportionate Impact on Adivasi Food Security

Forest Degradation:

Mining, plantations of non-native trees (e.g. eucalyptus), dams, unsustainable agricultural expansion, all reduce biodiversity, forest cover, and hence wild food options.
In Thuamul Rampur, Odisha, forests once rich in tubers, berries, and leaves are being degraded by dam projects, eucalyptus plantations, and monocultures.
These climate pressures amplify the damage from the loss of traditional food systems, lifting stress on already vulnerable populations, the Adivasi children, pregnant/ lactating women in particular.

Protein, Anaemia, Sickle Cell Disease, and Malnutrition: The Health Burden

Traditionally, many Adivasi economies have included hunting, small livestock, poultry, fishing, and gathering insects, among other activities. These provided good-quality protein, essential amino acids, and micronutrients, such as vitamin B12 and haeme- iron.
As access to forests or wild fauna is reduced, and as diets shift to plant staples (millets, pulses, rice), the quality of protein often drops. Pulses are helpful but usually consumed in limited quantities, and complementary feeding (mixing pulses, millets, wild foods) declines.
Millets, though more nutritious, are sometimes processed or de-husked in ways that reduce nutrient content. Additionally, market pulses may be expensive and therefore inaccessible, despite their nutritional quality, to many Adivasi communities.

Measures need to be taken by the Government:

Strengthen Implementation of FRA: Ensure that Adivasi claims over forests and lands are recognised in timely and non-adversarial ways; protect minor forest produce and customary rights to hunting/ foraging. Without land and forest, traditional diets cannot be restored.
Promote Millets, Wild Foods and local Varieties of Crops: Several states have announced millet for this purpose. Seed banks, community seed centres, and long-term programmatic support for agroecological farming practices, as well as the integration of local foods into Anganwadi, PDS, and maternity & child health programmes, will facilitate better acceptance by communities and improve nutritional outcomes.
Intersectoral Approaches: Nutrition is not only about health. Agriculture, forestry, land rights, conservation, education, and women’s empowerment all matter. Policies, and more importantly, the implementation of these policies at the district and panchayat levels, must be coordinated across various departments, including Tribal Affairs, Health & Family Welfare, Agriculture, Environment & Forests, Rural Development & Panchayati Raj, etc.
Invest in ECD Services tailored to tribal settings, including creches that utilise culturally relevant feeding practices and incorporate local foods. Support parents, particularly mothers, in active community participation, and provide flexible service delivery to address remoteness. Additionally, integrate ECD into Anganwadi, maternal health, and child growth monitoring.
Conservation with Justice: Tiger reserve, wildlife sanctuary and reserve forests policies need to balance ecological protection with human nutritional needs. They need to ensure participatory conservation, include benefit sharing of such conservation with local communities and must prioritise the rootedness of communities within their own areas.
Monitoring, Data & Research to Fill Gaps — More context-specific data in tribal areas (especially in southern India, Northeast), evaluation of interventions, tracking of nutritional outcomes, malnutrition, anaemia, and SCD outcomes.

Conclusion:

The nutrition and tribal life, sustainable and nutritious food systems must be rooted in justice, equity, and participation. Government policies, civil society efforts, and researchers must treat early childhood nutrition among Adivasis not merely as public health issues, but as matters of social justice and nation-building.