December 2020 Monthly Magazine on E-Book Anthropology Curious December 2020 Table of Contents

C U R I O U S DECEMBER 2020 MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON E-BOOK ANTHROPOLOGY CURIOUS DECEMBER 2020 TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Crisis and Opportunity—A Look at 2020 2. Climate Change May Have Been a Major Driver of Ancient Hominin Extinctions 3. Were Neanderthals More Than Cousins to Homo Sapiens? 4. It’s Official: Neanderthals Created Art 5. Who First Buried the Dead? 6. New Hominin Shakes the Family Tree—Again 7. How Did Belief Evolve? 8. India’s attitude to arranged marriage is changing. But some say not fast enough 9. Why Endogamous Marriages Could Make Us An Unhealthy Population 10. Trifed Signs MoU with Akhil Bhartiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram for Setting up of TRIFOOD Parks in Madhya Pradesh 12. TRIFED to Collaborate with Various Ministries and Departments for GI Tagging of tribal Products 13. Shri Arjun Munda Inaugurates New Office of National Education Society (NEST) for Tribal Students & Other Renovated Offices of Ministry of Tribal Affairs 14. TRIFED Signs MoU with MOFPI For Upliftment of Tribal Lives Through the Implementation of The PM- FME Scheme 15. Giant Rock Bee Honey, a Unique Variant of Honey Sourced From Malayali Tribes of Tamil Nadu Added to Tribes India Collection 16. Trifed Signs MoU with Day-NRLM M/O Rural Development to Foster Tribal Livelihood Development Through Synergies 17. In India, Manual Scavenging Goes Beyond An ‘Occupation’: It’s A Human Rights Issue 18. Legal discrimination of religious minorities 19. ASI identifies 5 Adhichanallur sites for museum 20. Robert Bruce Foote: The father of India’s prehistory 21. Christian families 'threatened', asked to leave villages in Chhattisgarh 22.How Buddhism waxed and waned in India 23. Unlawful Religious Conversion Bills – Part 1 24. Why are Christians being attacked in Adivasi villages in Chhattisgarh? 25. Expansion of Scheme of Minimum Support Price(MSP) for Minor Forest Produce(MFP) and Upward Revision of MSP of Existing Items during 2020 26. Ministry of Tribal Affairs launches ‘Goal’ programme for Digital Skilling of Tribal Youth across India in partnership with Facebook (15th May, 2020) 27. Ministry of Tribal Affairs Launches Tribal Health & Nutrition Portal – ‘Swasthya’ (17th August, 2020) 28 Online Performance Dashboard named “Empowering Tribals, Transforming India” launched 29. Ministry of Tribal Affairs signs MoU with IIPA for Setting up National Institute of Tribal Research (NITR) at IIPA Campus, New Delhi (4th September, 2020) 30. Shri Arjun Munda Launches ‘Capacity Building Programme for Scheduled Tribes PRI Representatives’ and ‘1000 Springs Initiatives’ in Bhubaneswar (27th February, 2020) 31. EMRS/EMDBS holidays re-scheduled in view of contingent health situation due to COVID-19 (26th March, 2020) 32. Shri Arjun Munda wrote to Chief Ministers to advise State Nodal Agencies for undertaking procurement of minor forest produce at MSP in right earnest (8th April, 2020) 33. Shri Arjun Munda launches ‘Goal’ programme of M/o Tribal Affairs for Digital Skilling of Tribal Youth across India in partnership with Facebook(15th May, 2020) 34. M/o Tribal Affairs receives SKOCH Gold Award for its “Empowerment of Tribals through IT enabled Scholarship Schemes” (31st July, 2020) 35. M/o Tribal Affairs Setting up Tribal Freedom Fighters’ Museums to give due Recognition to Sacrifices and Contribution to Country’s Freedom Struggle by Tribal People (11th August, 2020) 36. Joint Communique Signed between M/O Tribal Affairs and M/O Food Processing Industries Defining Convergence Mechanism in Implementation of PMFME Scheme for Micro Food Processing Industries (18th December, 2020) 37. Success Story of Ice Stupa: Unique Initiative under Centre of Excellence Project 38. TRIFED Launches transformational “Tech For Tribals” program in partnership with Institutes of National Importance (INIs) to develop Tribal entrepreneurship - (20 March, 2020) 39. TRIFED takes a giant leap towards digitisation of Tribal Commerce- (25 June, 2020) 40. Trifed Launches its Own Virtual Office Network to Spearhead Tribal Socio-Economic Development on its 33rd Foundation day- (07 AUG 2020) 41. Team Trifed Wins Virtual Edition of National Awards for Excellence in PSU for Investment in Start-Ups – (14 OCT 2020) 42. Trifed, M/o Tribal Affairs to Expand Convergence Model in a big way to step up Tribal Incomes, Skills and Entrepreneurship..200 Projects to be taken up under Trifood/SFURTI Model-(26 November, 2020)

CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION

1. Crisis and Opportunity—A Look at 2020 THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC 2020 will be remembered as the year that COVID-19 swept the globe. This highly contagious virus moves from person to person, so its spread depends on human behavior. When and why we gather, and how often we wash our hands or wear masks can all make a difference. Social scientists have created virtual networks to apply their knowledge of human behavior to aid public health efforts.

The virus has clearly affected some groups more than others; tracking these outcomes has illuminated disparities in suffering. Anthropologists have helped untangle how racism—not race—is a factor in the severity of COVID-19. They have also thrown a spotlight on how the pandemic has impacted older people, Indigenous peoples, migrants, refugees, undocumented essential workers, and pregnant women. Anthropologists are asking tough questions about whether the current attention given to inequality will prompt corrective action and whether this global challenge will help bind or further divide humanity.

Anthropologists are also well-placed to study the myriad social side effects of pandemic suppression policies, such as feelings of isolation and attempts to forge deeper online connections. Human behaviors have undergone a major shift this year, and ethnographers are on the front lines of describing and analyzing those changes: the desire to make music or bake bread in lockdown, how people turn to the magical (or develop false beliefs) to make sense of a chaotic world, the changing nature of sex work and dating, and the reawakening of spiritual understandings in a new, more distanced world.

SAPIENS alone published dozens of pieces relating to the many medical and social impacts of the pandemic as anthropologists put their ideas to work.

BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENT GAINS MOMENTUM

In May, police officers’ appalling killing of George Floyd, an African American man in Minneapolis, sent shockwaves through the world at large. Subsequent protests kindled urgent discussions of the long-standing problems of police violence and racism in the United States and elsewhere.

Anthropologists in Brazil, the country with the largest Afro-descendant population outside of Nigeria, have been examining horrific levels of police violence against Black men for decades, along with calls to defund police forces and redirect money into social support services. Other anthropologists have focused on police violence in the United States (including a significant book about police torture; see Bookshelf below) and shone a light on how the pandemic interacts with these incidents. Poetry provides another means for anthropologists to respond to anti-Black violence, as various cultures grapple with the legacy of European colonialism, slavery, and persistent White supremacy. DIVERSIFYING ANTHROPOLOGY

In the midst of Black Lives Matter protests, 2020 became a moment of reckoning for the field of anthropology—a discipline whose academic roots problematically lie in White colonial-era researchers pursuing false ideas of a biologically determined racial hierarchy.

While those pseudoscientific notions have largely faded, biases still remain. Anthropology and archaeology remain fields predominantly comprised of White people, with consequences for what is studied and what questions are asked. Organizations such as the Association of Black Anthropologists, Society of Black Archaeologists, and Society for Cultural Anthropology, among others, are working to make changes. Meanwhile, scholars are debating how to make anthropology more self-critical or whether practitioners should “let it burn” and start the discipline anew.

SAPIENS magazine took the opportunity to reassess our policy on the styling of racial terms, opting to begin capitalizing Black, White, and Brown; to build new partnerships; and to reaffirm our commitment to inviting marginalized voices to the center of conversations.

CLIMATE CHANGE RAGES ON

In January, it looked like 2020’s defining feature was set to be the climate. As Australia burned in the wake of dramatic droughts, activists looked toward the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in April as a chance to flag the planet’s plight. Then the pandemic arrived and overshadowed these plans.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION Nonetheless, climate change continued to be one of the most pressing issues of the year as temperatures hit record highs, storms raged, and fires came to the western U.S. Anthropologists continued to work hard to put the climate challenge into perspective, examine which cultures have proven most resilient to environmental challenges and disasters in the past, and highlight how some—including Indigenous groups—are leading the charge for climate action.

Many people found a silver lining in the early days of the pandemic by noticing a decline in carbon emissions and demand for fossil fuels. But as previous health crises on Earth have shown, outbreaks aren’t exactly good for the environment; disaster capitalism leads many people to exploit such times for profit at the expense of the planet. The collapse of ecotourism, too, may have perilous impacts on vulnerable economies and ecosystems.

MUMMIES UNVEILED

From September through November, archaeologists discovered a cache of more than 100 wooden sarcophagi in Saqqara, the UNESCO World Heritage Site hosting the burial grounds for Egypt’s ancient political center of Memphis. Officials publicized the finds dramatically with a live unsealing of a sarcophagus to reveal the 2,600-year-old mummy inside: an event that prompted many jokes about the wisdom of cracking open a coffin in what many have called a cursed year. Plenty of mummies have been found at Saqqara before, including 8 million mummified animals and dozens of people, but the 2020 discovery was notable for the sheer number of well-preserved sarcophagi.

Researchers can use such finds to learn more about the business of funerary practices—and even what people of the day sounded like. In January, for instance, researchers published their work taking a 3D scan of an Egyptian mummy’s vocal tract, printing a replica, and pushing air through it to make it “speak” a single sound.

Stonehenge—one of the most dramatic and famous archaeological sites in Britain—offered up some surprises this year.

In June, researchers announced the discovery of an immense ring of 20 shafts surrounding the Neolithic settlement of Durrington Walls, just northeast of the famous stone circle and within the Stonehenge World Heritage Site. The circle is 2 kilometers wide and 4,500 years old, with each hole measuring more than 10 meters in diameter and 5 meters deep. The researchers think the circle may have been some kind of barrier to protect the sacred region inside. The discovery is part of the Stonehenge Hidden Landscape Project, which is using remote sensing to map out the sections between famous landmarks in the World Heritage Site.

Meanwhile, other researchers have printed out a 3D model of Stonehenge itself to investigate its acoustic properties. Their work shows that sound would have been amplified inside the henge but muted to people standing outside it.

REWRITING DISEASE HISTORIES

Bioarchaeology has helped extend our understanding of when, where, and how various viruses and human defenses against them have evolved—including the new SARS-CoV-2 virus that has been sweeping the globe. Researchers have found that certain portions of the genome inherited from Neanderthals seem to make some people particularly susceptible to severe COVID-19 illness, for example.

Researchers have also shone a light on the origins of smallpox and measles. In July, researchers found traces of variola virus—which causes smallpox—in Viking-era remains from around 1,200 years ago; genetic differences between the viral fragments found from that time show the virus in human populations goes back at least 1,700 years. That conclusion pushes the earliest definitive detection of the virus back 1,000 years. (Historical records hint that the virus might have impacted humans more than 3,000 years ago and could have killed Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses V.)

The genetics of measles and the related cattle rinderpest virus, meanwhile, hints that measles may also go back 3,000 years. Understanding the deep roots of humanity’s interactions with viruses helps inform our present struggles with disease.

MAYA SLAVE SHIP IDENTIFIED

Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History identified a shipwreck off the coast of Mexico as having been a steamer that Spanish traders used to illegally transport enslaved Maya during the mid-1800s. The find speaks to a dark period of Mexico’s history.

After Mexico achieved independence from Spain in 1821, some White and mestizo Mexicans continued to exploit Indigenous populations, provoking the Maya of the Yucatán to revolt starting in 1847. Some Maya were later captured and enslaved, and put to work on sugar cane plantations in Cuba. The recently identified ship, La Unión, owned by a Spanish trading company, transported about 25 to 30 Maya to Cuba every month from about 1855 to 1861.

Maritime archaeologists have been documenting slave ships around the world. Most are from the abhorrent transatlantic slave trade. The Mexican find—the first Maya slave ship found—serves as a potent reminder of the abuse and displacement of Indigenous peoples by Europeans and those of European descent starting in the 15th century.

CARBON DATING REBOOT The key tool used for determining the age of ancient organic material—from bones to cloth to seashells—got a reboot this year. Radiocarbon dating works on the basic principle that living creatures absorb a certain amount of radioactive carbon-14 from the natural environment. When they die, that absorption stops, and the radioactive material starts to decay. So, by looking at how much carbon-14 is left, archaeologists can tell how old something is.

But there are a lot of wobbles in carbon-14 in the natural environment, thanks to everything from fluctuations in the Earth’s magnetic field to seasonal changes in the atmosphere. As science advances, researchers tweak the details of how they match up radiocarbon years to calendar years. Such a recalibration happened in 2020 for the first time in seven years.

The latest update will help revise or clarify calendar ages of varied items and events, including Siberia’s oldest modern human fossils and an infamous volcanic eruption on the Greek island of Santorini.

This year brought intense scrutiny of U.S. political leadership in the wake of bungled pandemic responses, increasing violence, continuing struggles for the LGBTQ community, and a divisive presidential election. Some pundits framed the U.S. election as a test of right-wing populism, a rising breed of politics that embraces an “us-versus-them” mentality at the expense of immigrants and those deemed to be “other.”

Populist leaders rule in Hungary, Brazil, and the Philippines, and make up strong parts of the opposition in Germany, Italy, and France. The U.K.’s departure from the European Union, cemented in January, joined the isolationist trend. Although incumbent populist U.S. President Donald Trump lost the election in November, the margins remain so narrow in key states that the movement has hardly been squashed.

The world is grappling with new ways to achieve social and environmental justice, fair political engagement, and more humanitarian notions of citizenship and belonging. The tail end of 2019 saw political protests erupt in Lebanon, Ecuador, Colombia, India, and elsewhere, many of which have continued into 2020. This October, Chileans voted to scrap their dictatorship-era Constitution and create a new one. Peru, a nation hit hard by the pandemic alongside inequality and corruption, had three presidents in the span of one week in November.

Soon after the start of 2020, the Doomsday Clock was set at just 100 seconds to midnight (the closest to “doom” it has ever been) thanks to the twin threats of nuclear war and climate change, compounded by eroding international political infrastructure and the use of communication technologies to misinform the public.

It remains to be seen if humanity will harness these moments of turmoil—along with the global upheaval created by the pandemic—to carve out a better world.

(SOURCE:SAPIENS)

2. Climate Change May Have Been a Major Driver of Ancient Hominin Extinctions Several close relatives of our species, Homo sapiens, have walked this Earth since the genus Homo evolved more than 2 million years ago. These hominins lived in diverse habitats and challenging environments. Some even crossed paths and interbred. Though more than one may have reached significant technological and cognitive milestones, such as controlling fire, developing stone tools, or creating clothes, today only we, H. sapiens, survive.

Scholars have much debated our current exclusivity. Some have proposed that H. sapiens’ better technological abilities may have given us an advantage over the rest. Others have suggested we may have eaten a more varied diet or were more efficient runners than other hominins. Meanwhile, other researchers posit that, given high levels of interbreeding, perhaps some hominins did not go extinct as much as merge completely with our gene pool.

Researchers have also hypothesized that climate change could have played a role in the extinction of Homo species. In a new study, published in the journal One Earth, a multidisciplinary team of scientists from Italy, the United Kingdom, and Brazil make the case that this factor was the major driver in the extinction of other hominins. The authors believe the findings could serve as a warning as humanity faces human-made climate change today. “Even the brain powerhouse in the animal kingdom, [the Homo genus], cannot survive climate change when it gets too extreme,” says paleontologist Pasquale Raia, of the University of Naples Federico II, one of the study’s authors. “People should mind that, given the current mayhem we are causing.”

For this study, the team focused on just six of the recognized Homo species: H. habilis, H. ergaster, H. erectus, H. heidelbergensis, H. neanderthalensis, and H. sapiens. They omitted others because the available fossil records were too limited for their analysis.

Using a fossil database spanning 2,754 archaeological records, the researchers mapped out where these species lived over time—linking both fossil evidence and tools associated with each species to various locations and time periods. They also applied a statistical modeling technique called a past climate emulator that uses available records to reconstruct climate conditions, including temperature and rainfall, over the last 5 million years.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION For three of the five extinct species—H. erectus, H. heidelbergensis, and H. neanderthalensis—a sudden, strong change in climate occurred on the planet just before these species died out. Climes became colder for all three, drier for H. heildelbergensis and Neanderthals, and wetter for H. erectus. According to Raia, the change in temperature was roughly 4 to 5 degrees Celsius, on yearly averages.

The researchers further assessed just how vulnerable these species were to extinction by trying to determine their tolerance to climate change over time, using their presence in various locations as a clue to their preferred niche. The team determined that, before disappearing, H. erectus and H. heidelbergensis lost more than half of their niche to climate change. Neanderthals lost about one-fourth. Food sources likely dwindled as habitats changed, and cold may have threatened survival for species adapted to warmer climes.

This climate explanation does not necessarily mean that other drivers of extinction weren’t important too—the authors note that competition with H. sapiens, for example, could have made things worse for Neanderthals—but Raia and his colleagues believe their analysis reveals “the primary factor” in past Homo extinctions.

The extinction of Neanderthals has been studied—and debated—quite a bit, but the loss of other hominin species has had little attention, says archaeologist Tyler Faith, from the University of Utah, who was not involved in the study. This new study represents the first attempt to understand how multiple Homo species died out across large swaths of space and time, he says.

“But I think it’s a bit early to discount other potential extinction mechanisms,” Faith adds. He notes that the limited fossil record for some species makes it difficult to have a full picture of the environmental or climatic conditions that other Homo species could handle.

Similarly, anthropologist Giorgio Manzi, from Sapienza University of Rome, who was not a contributor to the study, notes that many elements should be taken into account to explain the disappearance of past Homo species. The relationship between climate change and extinction is complex, he says, and one doesn’t always lead to the other: “Various abrupt climatic breakdowns and environmental crises are known during, at least, the last million years. These circumstances did not always lead to extinctions.”

Still, Manzi believes the new work makes a reasonable case that climate change can have a big impact. “This offers a picture of the tremendous effects that climate adversities have had on human populations of different species,” Manzi says. With the planet projected to warm as much as 5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by 2100, more climate challenges lie ahead.

(SOURCE:SAPIENS)

3. Were Neanderthals More Than Cousins to Homo Sapiens?

Around 200,000 years ago, in what is now northern Israel, a small band of tech-savvy humans dragged home and dismembered a bounty of wildlife. Using exquisitely pointed flint spearheads and blades, they hunted and butchered myriad prey, including gazelles, deer, and now-extinct aurochs, the ancestors of modern cattle.

In the cool, humid climate of the coastal plain, these early Homo sapiens foraged for acorns in nearby forests of oak, olive, and pistachio. They ate the saline leaves of shrubby saltbush and lugged ostrich eggs back to the cave, where they slurped down the yolks. This vision of the past comes from Haifa University archaeologist Mina Weinstein-Evron. In 2002, she and her colleagues discovered the upper jaw and teeth of a H. sapiens that dated to between 177,000 and 194,000 years old in Israel’s Misliya Cave, with animal bones and sharp tools nearby.

It’s probable, Weinstein-Evron explains, that these humans migrated to the Arabian Peninsula more than 200,000 years ago, trekking along lush corridors out of Africa. “We don’t know how many crossed, and how many of them perished, and how many went back. We only know that these people arrived,” she says.

We also know that they were likely not alone. Based on small finds of teeth and bones from local caves, “we know that the area was inhabited by Neanderthal-like creatures,” or the predecessors of Neanderthals, at that time, says Tel Aviv University anthropologist Israel Hershkovitz, an expert on modern human origins.

While out foraging, H. sapiens may have mated with these Neanderthal-like inhabitants. In this land that later birthed the Bible, they likely knew each other in the Biblical sense. VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION The humans* who lived in the Misliya Cave were part of a population that, many scholars suspect, ultimately died out. Later waves of H. sapiens that left the African continent succeeded in reproducing and spreading out. But braided into the story of those human migrations is that of Neanderthals, hominins—members of our family tree closest to modern humans—who may have first evolved in Europe from African ancestors some 400,000 years ago.

Many scientists now suspect that H. sapiens and Neanderthals met and mingled their genes multiple times. Geneticists have documented how Neanderthal genes survive today among modern humans, evidence of some earlier instances of interbreeding.

New studies, made possible in part by computational techniques that enable researchers to analyze huge quantities of genetic data, show that H. sapiens and Neanderthals interbred far more than previously imagined. Indeed, their proclivity for pairing off has led many researchers to question the old dictum that Neanderthals and H. sapiens were separate species. Such ideas raise questions as to what it really means to be a distinct “species.” They also raise the possibility that perhaps H. sapiens did not outcompete Neanderthals into extinction, as some scientists have suggested.

Rather, one species may have simply absorbed the other—and so, Neanderthals, in a sense, could survive in us.

In 1856, in the Neander Valley of Prussia (now Germany), limestone cutters discovered the partial skeleton of a thick boned, brow-ridged hominin in a cave. A German anthropologist named Hermann Schaaffhausen examined the bones.

Schaaffhausen realized that the skull differed from that of modern humans but concluded it could nonetheless belong to what he called a “barbarous and savage race” of human. However, his contemporary, Irish geologist William King, disagreed.

King noted that the skull of this fossil, with its “strong simial [apelike] tendencies” was “generically distinct from Man.” In 1863, King declared it a new species, which he named Homo neanderthalensis. Scientists have been arguing over whether H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis are truly separate species ever since. By appearances alone, Neanderthal fossils resemble ours—they are clearly members of our hominin family tree. But on closer examination, Neanderthal features are also quite distinct. “There was debate back and forth: Was this just a weird variant of us—a more primitive, brutish-looking thing than living humans—or was it really something different?” asks physical anthropologist and evolutionary biologist Jeffrey Schwartz of the University of Pittsburgh. Schwartz can rattle off a raft of anatomical differences between H. sapiens and Neanderthals: H. sapiens are flat-faced; the Neanderthal face sticks out. Neanderthals had boxy, stout bodies, and their major arm and leg bones were thick. H. sapiens, by contrast, have thinner, gracile bodies. Neanderthals had different teeth and thumb lengths, as well as longer collarbones.

The argument might have been confined to questions of anatomy had it not been for a singular discovery in 2010. A team led by evolutionary geneticist Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, extracted bits of DNA from Neanderthal fossils and published an early version of the Neanderthal genome. By comparing portions of the Neanderthal genome with the genomes of five modern-day humans—from Southern Africa, West Africa, Papua New Guinea, China, and France—they found that Neanderthals share more genetic snippets with humans in Europe and Asia today than with people living presently in much of sub-Saharan Africa.

Pääbo and his team’s findings showed that between 1 and 4 percent of the genomes of modern non-African humans consist of Neanderthal DNA. That overlap suggested, for the first time, that our H. sapiens ancestors could have had intimate encounters with Neanderthals. VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION

That study would be the first of many to indicate that these two hominins interbred. And such studies matter to the question of whether Neanderthals and H. sapiens are one or two species because, by biologist Ernst Mayr’s “classic definition,” Hershkovitz explains, “if two organisms can breed and produce fertile offspring, it means that they belong to the same species.”

Genetic research has long faced a challenge in scale. There are an estimated 21,000 genes in the human genome that code for proteins, complex molecules that do most of the work in cells and play crucial roles in the body. Sequencing these genes involved studying the 3 billion DNA base pairs that make up the human genome.

Every advance that makes studying an individual genome cheaper, more accurate, and faster is a major step forward in understanding how individuals—whether H. sapiens, Neanderthal, or other—compare. For all of those reasons, the development of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, which enable researchers to set computers to solving problems and conducting analyses, has been a game changer.

AI has not only helped to confirm earlier genetic findings that H. sapiens and Neanderthals interbred, but also suggested their sexual encounters occurred to a degree that scholars never anticipated. All of this builds the case that the two could be the same species.

In 2018, for example, research published by population geneticists Fernando Villanea and Joshua Schraiber, then at Temple University in Philadelphia, made use of an AI tool called a deep learning algorithm, which seeks patterns in complex layers of data and is inspired by the brain’s approach to acquiring knowledge.

Computer scientists “train” algorithms by instructing them to identify specific patterns based on previously assembled data. In this case, Villanea and Schraiber used an algorithm to spot Neanderthal ancestry.

The pair then analyzed the distribution of Neanderthal DNA in the genomes of about 400 contemporary East Asians and Europeans, people whose ancestors have lived in these regions for a long time. This data came from the 1000 Genomes Project, an international collaboration to catalogue human genetic variation.

Schraiber and Villanea found fragments of Neanderthal ancestry: about 1.5 percent in each individual and 1.7 percent among people in East Asia specifically. Fabrizio Mafessoni, an evolutionary geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, reviewed Schraiber and Villanea’s findings and argued that the proportion of Neanderthal fragments among modern humans was a bit higher than would be expected if there had only been one episode in which these two populations mated.

“The intuitive explanation,” Schraiber says, “is that there were multiple episodes of interbreeding and that [populations in East Asia interbred more.”

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION A 2019 study, co-led by Oscar Lao, who studies population genomics at Spain’s National Center of Genomic Regulation, and Jaume Bertranpetit, an evolutionary biologist at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, used deep learning algorithms to identify a hitherto-unknown human population, a hybrid of Neanderthals and Denisovans. (The Denisovans are archaic hominins identified from the Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia.)

Their data showed that—given the distribution of Neanderthal DNA in various living human groups—Neanderthals interbred with Denisovans in East Asia, creating the Neanderthal-Denisovan population, and their hybrid descendants did the deed with modern humans before their arrival in Australia some 60,000 years ago.

That evidence for “admixing” between Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans, Bertranpetit says, indicates “that all of these populations belong to a single lineage.” Still other research, published in 2017, indicates that gene flow from early H. sapiens into Neanderthals might have occurred earlier in humanity’s story—around the time that the Misliya Cave H. sapiens were sucking the yolks of those ostrich eggs.

That study, led by Cosimo Posth, an archaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, examined DNA collected from an approximately 120,000-year-old femur bone excavated in a cave in southwestern Germany.

A researcher examines a Neanderthal fossil with protection on so as not to contaminate the sample’s DNA. A researcher examines a Neanderthal fossil with protection on so as not to contaminate the sample’s DNA. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology via Wikimedia Commons

Specifically, they turned to mitochondrial DNA, genetic information handed down from mother to child and found within the cells’ energy-generating structures called mitochondria. The analysis concluded that the ancestors of Neanderthals and H. sapiens interbred at some point between 270,000 and 220,000 years ago, most likely in the Levant.

Taken together, these studies strengthen the case that H. sapiens-Neanderthal pairings occurred and that such mating was by no means unusual. Rather, H. sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and their hybrids all interbred (hinting, yes, that all three were the same species). And that mixing may have occurred as early as some of the first forays of modern human ancestors out of Africa.

“For hundreds of thousands of years, modern humans as well as archaic humans, such as Neanderthals and Denisovans, have been … crossing modern-day borders that, of course, were not existing in the past and multiple times admixing and exchanging genetic material,” Posth says. “This was not the exception but was the norm.”

If “species” is defined in large part by the ability to breed and have young who can also reproduce, one might argue that Neanderthals and H. sapiens are indeed one species. And many of the scientists who work on these studies agree. Yet some experts still contend otherwise.

Approximately 75 kilometers south of the Misliya Cave, Hershkovitz is sitting in his tiny office in Tel Aviv. Around him, the skulls of H. sapiens—the oldest dating back 15,000 years—jostle with one another on shelves lining the walls.

These skulls, which belonged to living, breathing human beings, evoke an aura of a long-forgotten world. And once, earlier still, such humans coexisted with other hominin species. Yet determining how different these species were from each other is difficult. Hershkovitz, for example, sees H. sapiens and Neanderthals as “sister populations” within the same species. But Mayr’s “classic definition” of a species, based on interbreeding, is riddled with exceptions. For instance, if members of two different species happen to reproduce, they can have offspring but that new generation of “hybrids” may not be able to reproduce.

A horse and a donkey’s offspring, the mule, is typically sterile, for example. But lions and tigers, separate species that in the wild live on different continents, can sire “ligers” or “tigons” in captivity, and those hybrid felines can rarely or occasionally reproduce. In other words, scientists recognize instances where two species remain separate despite interbreeding—and some researchers extend that exception to H. sapiens and Neanderthals.

New York University biological anthropologist Shara Bailey believes H. sapiens and Neanderthals reproduced but remained distinct species—just like lions and tigers. She describes the two hominins as morphologically separate species who diverged from each other at least 800,000 years ago.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION “For all intents and purposes, they were separate species,” Bailey says, “but they maintained the ability to hybridize.” Their offspring, she argues, would have been rare and, though able to reproduce, less successful in reproducing compared with their parents. The genetic record, then, indicates that some hybrids did sometimes succeed, contributing Neanderthal DNA to the modern human gene pool.

Bailey’s not alone in this viewpoint. Anthropologist Chris Stringer, at the Natural History Museum in London, also concludes that these populations both were separated long enough in terms of their evolution and were physically distinct enough in their features to remain separate species that occasionally hybridized.

Given the complications in Mayr’s definition, some scholars argue it ought to be replaced. To that end, there are now different conceptions of what a “species” could be—and no strong consensus on which should take center stage. Some scientists subscribe to the theory of species mate recognition, in which members of the same species “recognize” one another as mates through courtship rituals, breeding seasons, or protein compatibility.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION And at least one researcher still questions the genetic evidence for interbreeding. Schwartz says he has seen and studied almost every specimen of the entire human fossil record and notes that “Neanderthals are clearly a different species from us: They are so morphologically unique.”

Schwartz doubts the interpretation of genetic evidence thus far. Although dozens of hominins once existed, Schwartz points out, scientists have only sequenced the genomes of three specimens whose species they could clearly identify by their morphology: modern H. sapiens, the Neander Valley Neanderthal, and a 400,000-year-old hominin called Homo heidelbergensis. (Researchers have endeavored to identify the species of other, fragmentary specimens, primarily using genetic clues derived from the definitively identified Neanderthal and H. sapiens fossils.)

Because we don’t know how many hominin species there were—and because the vast majority have not had their DNA sequenced—we can’t know how many of these hominins had genes that were specifically “Denisovan” or “Neanderthal,” Schwartz argues. Therefore, he says, there is no way of knowing whether the DNA sequences extracted from Neanderthals were exclusive to Neanderthals.

“Pääbo and his group are very good technicians,” Schwartz says. “I don’t doubt that they have really worked hard to make sure these sequences are not contaminated.” Still, he says, we lack the DNA of many other hominins. The evidence that the sequenced DNA is specific to Neanderthals is therefore unreliable, he argues, and so claims that they interbred with H. sapiens are also dubious.

“I’m not saying that the comparisons are incorrect or that the sequences are incorrect,” Schwartz says. “I’m saying that the conclusion is not that solid.”

Schwartz doubts that Neanderthals and H. sapiens would have recognized each other as mates: “Neanderthals don’t look like us; we don’t look like them; they wouldn’t move the same way we did,” he says. Also, “they probably smelled different than we do.”

For the moment, then, the answer to whether or not H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis were the same species is still up for debate (along with the entire messy concept of “species”). But the larger message that comes through with each wave of findings is simple: Despite a long history of derogatory “cave man” descriptors, H. neanderthalensis was probably a lot like us.

The first time H. sapiens and Neanderthals met was likely in the region that is now Israel. Just as the Misliya Cave helps establish how long anatomically modern humans were present in the region, tools associated with Neanderthals, such as spearheads and knives, have been found in other caves in Israel.

But many mysteries remain. Did H. sapiens and Neanderthals whisper sweet nothings to each other beneath the leaves of a pistachio tree? Was there some secret lure, facial or pheromonal, that attracted one to the other? We can only speculate.

Neanderthals were intelligent; they were skilled toolmakers. We don’t know whether they had spoken language, because even though they had vocal anatomy similar to H. sapiens, the soft tissue associated with the vocal box—the area of the throat containing the vocal cords—has not been preserved.

Both H. sapiens and Neanderthals shared a propensity for primping. Neanderthals made jewelry out of animal teeth, shells, and ivory. They decorated themselves with feathers and probably ochre as well.

Some scholars suspect that fierce competition between H. sapiens and Neanderthals pushed the latter from the warmer Levant into an ice-covered Europe. “The world was almost empty,” Hershkovitz says. “The way I personally see this probably most people would not agree with me—the European Neanderthals had no other choice.”

Though Hershkovitz declines to conjecture as to whether female Neanderthals were forced into sex—rape has been used as a weapon of war through the ages to punish and terrorize—he does offer, “I don’t think it was a happy marriage.”

Others, including Schraiber, posit more peaceful encounters. “I imagine that when humans ran into some vaguely human like thing, they were like, ‘This is cool,’” he speculates. But, he demurs, “I really don’t know, especially since I’m not an anthropologist, I’m a geneticist.” At least one researcher, computational biologist Rasmus Nielsen of the University of California, Berkeley, goes further. He hypothesizes that Neanderthals never went extinct: They, or their genes, were simply absorbed into modern humans. In other words, instead of dying out through violence or starvation, the Neanderthal population hybridized with H. sapiens.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION Using mathematical models, Nielsen and his colleague Kelley Harris have argued that at one point, the proportion of Neanderthal DNA in humans alive today was as high as 10 percent—and that proportion later dwindled. That 10 percent figure is significant because other researchers have estimated H. sapiens outnumbered Neanderthals 10-to-1, so perhaps, Nielsen contends, the two species interbred to such an extent that they merged together.

Over time, however, modern humans lost significant amounts of Neanderthal DNA, perhaps because it carried harmful mutations. Indeed, another research team, which included Pääbo, found that most Neanderthal genes survive in H. sapiens in regions of non-coding DNA. “The regions that are most important for function—the protein-coding genes—are depleted of Neanderthal DNA,” Nielsen says.

In a Q&A for the journal BMC Biology, Nielsen and Harris write: “It is possible that Neanderthals did not truly die off at all but simply melted together with the human species. One could perhaps argue that Neanderthals did not disappear due to warfare or competition—but due to love.”

If they are right, then whether we were once one species or two does not matter because we are all one now.

(SOURCE:SAPIENS) 4. It’s Official: Neanderthals Created Art

New evidence from caves in Spain shows that Neanderthals engaged in complex symbolic thought—and were pretty good artists to boot.

What makes us human? A lot of people would argue it is the ability of our species to engage in complex behavior such as using language, creating art, and being moral. But when and how did we first become “human” in this sense? While skeletal remains can reveal when our ancestors first became “anatomically modern,” it is much harder for scientists to decipher when the human lineage became “behaviorally modern.”

One of the key traits of behavioral modernity is the capacity to use, interpret, and respond to symbols. We know that Homo sapiens have been doing this for at least 80,000 years. But its predecessor in parts of Eurasia, the Neanderthal, a human ancestor that became extinct around 40,000 years ago, has traditionally been regarded as uncultured and behaviorally inferior. Now our recent study, published in Science in February, has challenged this view by showing that Neanderthals were able to create cave art.

The earliest examples of symbolic behavior in African Homo sapiens populations include the use of mineral pigments and shell beads—presumably for body adornment and expressions of identity.

However, evidence for such behavior by other human species is far more contentious. There are some tantalizing clues that Neanderthals in Europe also used body ornamentation around 40,000 to 45,000 years ago. But scientists have so far argued that this must have been inspired by the modern humans who had just arrived there—we know that humans and Neanderthals interacted and even interbred.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION Cave art is seen as a more sophisticated example of symbolic behavior than body ornamentation and has traditionally been thought of as a defining characteristic of Homo sapiens. In fact, most researchers believe that the cave art found in Europe and dating back over 40,000 years must have been painted by modern humans, even though Neanderthals were around at this time.

DATING CAVE ART

Unfortunately, we have a poor understanding of the origins of cave art, primarily due to difficulties in accurately dating it. Archaeologists typically rely on radiocarbon dating when trying to date events from our past, but this requires the sample to contain organic material.

Cave art, however, is often produced from mineral-based pigments that contain no organics, meaning radiocarbon dating isn’t possible. Even when it is—such as when a charcoal-based pigment has been used—it suffers from issues of contamination, which can lead to inaccurate dates. It is also a destructive technique, as the sample of pigment has to be taken from the art itself.

Uranium-thorium dating of carbonate minerals is often a better option. This well-established geochronological technique measures the natural decay of trace amounts of uranium to date the mineralization of recent geological formations such as stalagmites and stalactites—collectively known as speleothems. Tiny speleothem formations are often found on top of cave paintings, making it possible to use this technique to constrain the age of cave art without impacting on the art itself.

A NEW ERA

We used uranium-thorium dating to investigate cave art from three previously discovered sites in Spain. In La Pasiega, in northern Spain, we showed that a red linear motif is older than 64,800 years. In Ardales, in southern Spain, various red painted stalagmite formations date to different episodes of painting, including one between 45,300 and 48,700 years ago, and another before 65,500 years ago. In Maltravieso, in western central Spain, we showed a red hand stencil is older than 66,700 years.

These results demonstrate that cave art was being created in all three sites at least 20,000 years prior to the arrival of Homo sapiens in western Europe. They show for the first time that Neanderthals did produce cave art, and that it was not a one-off event. It was created in caves across the full breadth of Spain, and at Ardales it occurred at multiple times over at least an 18,000-year period. Excitingly, the types of paintings produced (red lines, dots, and hand stencils) are also found in caves elsewhere in Europe, so it would not be surprising if some of these were made by Neanderthals, too.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION We don’t know the exact meaning of the paintings, such as the ladder shape, but we do know they must have been important to Neanderthals. Some of them were painted in pitch black areas deep in the caves—requiring the preparation of a light source as well as the pigment. The locations appear deliberately selected, the ceilings of low overhangs or impressive stalagmite formations. These must have been meaningful symbols in meaningful places.

Our results are tremendously significant, both for our understanding of Neanderthals and for the emergence of behavioral complexity in the human lineage. Neanderthals undoubtedly had the capacity for symbolic behavior, much like contemporaneous modern human populations residing in Africa.

To understand how behavioural modernity arose, we now need to shift our focus back to periods when Homo sapiens and Neanderthals interacted and to the period of their last common ancestor. The most likely candidate for this ancestor is Homo heidelbergensis, which lived over half a million years ago.

It is perhaps also now time that we move beyond a focus on what makes Homo sapiens and Neanderthals different. Modern humans may have “replaced” Neanderthals, but it is becoming increasingly clear that Neanderthals had similar cognitive and behavioral abilities—they were, in fact, equally “human.”The Conversation

(SOURCE:SAPIENS)

5. Who First Buried the Dead?

We have learned a lot by trying to figure out what makes humans unique. Now, it's time to focus on what we have in common with the rest of life.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION A mysterious cache of bones, recovered from a deep chamber in a South African cave, is challenging long-held beliefs about how a group of bipedal apes developed into the abstract-thinking creatures that we call “human.” The fossils were discovered in 2013 and were quickly recognized as the remains of a new species unlike anything seen before. Named Homo naledi, it has an unexpected mix of modern features and primitive ones, including a fairly small brain. Arguably the most shocking aspect of Homo naledi, though, concerned not the remains themselves but rather their resting place.

The chamber where the bones were found is far from the cave entrance, accessible only through a narrow, difficult passage that is completely shrouded in darkness. Scientists believe the chamber has long been difficult to access, requiring a journey of vertical climbing, crawling, and tight squeezing through spaces only 20 centimeters across. It would be an impossible place to live, and a highly unlikely location for many individuals to have ended up by accident. Those details pushed the research team toward a shocking hypothesis: despite its puny brain, Homo naledi purposefully interred its dead. The cave chamber was a graveyard, they concluded.

For anthropologists, mortuary rituals carry an outsize importance in tracing the emergence of human uniqueness especially the capacity to think symbolically. Symbolic thought gives us the ability to transcend the present, remember the past, and visualize the future. It allows us to imagine, to create, and to alter our environment in ways that have significant consequences for the planet. Use of language is the quintessential embodiment of such mental abstractions, but studying its history is difficult because language doesn’t fossilize. Burials do.

Burials provide a hard, material record of a behavior that is deeply spiritual and meaningful. It allows scientists to trace the emergence of beliefs, values, and other complex ideas that appear to be uniquely human. Homo sapiens is unquestionably unlike any other species alive today. Pinpointing what separates us from the rest of nature is surprisingly difficult, however.

The paradox is that humans are also unquestionably a part of nature, having evolved alongside all the rest of life. Anthropologists have narrowed in on one singular human feature in particular: the capacity to think in the abstract. Our ability to imagine and communicate ideas about things that are not immediately in front of us is a complex cognitive process, scientists argue, one that is remarkably different from simple, primitive communication about nearby food or imminent danger.

Humans use symbols to communicate and convey these abstract thoughts and ideas. We imbue nonpractical things with meaning. Art and jewellery, for example, communicate concepts about beliefs, values, and social status. Mortuary rituals, too, have been put forward as a key example of symbolic thought, with the idea that deliberate treatment of the dead represents a whole web of ideas. Mourning the dead involves remembering the past and imagining a future in which we too will die—abstractions believed to be complex enough to be contemplated only by our species.

The assumption, then, was that death rituals were practiced only by modern humans, or perhaps also by their very closest relatives. The possibility that primitive, small-brained Homo naledi could have engaged in the deliberate disposal of dead bodies not only challenges the timeline about when such behaviors appeared; it disrupts the whole conventional thinking about the distinction between modern humans and earlier species and, by extension, the distinction between us and the rest of nature. For humans, death is an enormously culturally meaningful process. Cultures around the world honor the deceased with rituals and ceremonies that communicate a variety of values and abstract ideas. Since the 19th century, anthropologists have examined these mortuary practices to learn about the religions and beliefs of other cultures.

During this time, it never occurred to anyone that other creatures, even other hominins (the primate group encompassing the genus Homo, along with the genus Australopithecus and other close relatives) could have engaged in similar behavior. Surely, the thinking went, humans alone operate in such an abstract world as to assign deep meaning to death.

Yet this behavior must have appeared at some point in our evolutionary history. Since mortuary rituals such as song and dance are invisible in the archaeological record, scientists focused on material aspects such as burial to trace the history of the practice. The discoveries soon prompted tough questions about the conventional viewpoint, suggesting that mortuary rituals might not have been uniquely human after all.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION The first debate over nonhumans burying their dead arose in 1908 with the discovery of a fairly complete Neanderthal skeleton near La Chapelle-aux-Saints in France. After excavating their find, the discoverers argued that the skeleton had clearly been deliberately buried. To them, it looked as though a grave had been dug, the body purposefully laid inside in the fetal position, and safely covered up from the elements. Many contemporary scientists remained dubious of this interpretation or dismissed the evidence outright. Later skeptics suggested that early 20th-century excavation techniques were too sloppy to prove such a sweeping conclusion. Debate over the burial of the La Chapelle Neanderthal continues to this day.

It is fitting that the controversy over mortuary ritual in hominins began with the Neanderthals, now known as the species Homo neanderthalensis. Ever since the first discovery of Neanderthal fossils in 1856 in the Neander Valley in Germany, the species has occupied an ambiguous relationship to humans. Neanderthals are the closest species to humans, and their location on the spectrum between humans and other animals has constantly been contested.

For the first century after their discovery, they were typically imagined as highly nonhuman creatures, their primitive aspects emphasized to such an extent that they became known as brutes who couldn’t even stand up straight. More recently, the pendulum has swung the other way, with some scientists arguing that the creatures were so close to humans that a Neanderthal wearing a suit and a hat on a subway would go largely unnoticed. The debate over Neanderthal burials has similarly wavered back and forth. At some times, scientists have accused each other of overly anthropomorphizing our cousin species, at other times of dehumanizing them.

A discovery in 1960 in Shanidar cave in Iraq illustrates the dangers involved in inferring Neanderthal behavior and in trying to understand their cognitive processes from sketchy remains. Excavators studying fossils at Shanidar uncovered evidence of multiple Neanderthal burials. One burial appeared particularly interesting: Soil samples from the area surrounding that individual, named Shanidar IV, revealed pockets of pollen. Ralph Solecki, the leader of the team and an anthropologist at Columbia University, viewed this pollen as evidence that colorful flowers were placed in the grave when the Neanderthal was buried, in a very modern human style.

In Solecki’s view, this “flower burial” suggested that Neanderthals had an appreciation of beauty—the first time such a sentiment had been found to extend beyond the boundary of our own species. He argued that scientists could no longer deny that Neanderthals experienced the “full range of human feelings.” But Solecki’s ideas collapsed when the pollen surrounding Shanidar IV was shown to have been transported by burrowing rodents, which disturbed the soil in distinctive patterns. The collapse of the flower-burial hypothesis caused scientists to be more cautious when asserting human beliefs based on limited fossil evidence—and perhaps on wish fulfillment. Looking back on the incident, later scientists remarked that it was probably no coincidence that the error occurred during the “great decade of flower power.”

Today, most scientists agree that Neanderthals did in fact bury their dead—at least some Neanderthals did, in at least a few instances. The more difficult question is, why did they do it? Did Neanderthals think about death in ways similar to modern humans, contemplating abstract thoughts such as the afterlife? Or was burial a practical solution to a decomposing corpse located in a living space?

Anthropologists agree that the current evidence linking Neanderthal burial to symbolic thought is shaky at best. There is little evidence of burial goods or other clear signs of ceremony included in Neanderthal graves, a practice seen more often with early Homo sapiens. Without clearly symbolic additions such as flowers or grave goods, it is difficult to get into the heads of these ancient hominins. Then again, it isn’t so radical to imagine that Neanderthals had the capacity to bury their dead for the same reasons that we do. They had extremely large brains, well within the range of modern human brains; it’s conceivable that they were as cognitively and behaviorally complex as humans, too. Even if scientists were to admit Neanderthals within the group of species that practiced mortuary rituals, then, we could still maintain a uniqueness argument that only large-brained hominins performed this symbolic activity.

Homo naledi is a whole different story. Its brain was less than half the size of a modern human’s brain. One way to look at the puzzle is that naledi makes the connection between burial and symbolism increasingly dubious: It is easier to imagine that these creatures disposed of their dead for practical reasons than for symbolic ones. But why, then, would naledi go through all the effort of bringing the fossils through the darkness, so far into the cave? The evidence demands at least considering the other possibility, that these seemingly primitive creatures were in fact engaging in complex, deeply emotional behaviour.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION By challenging accepted ideas of symbolism and body disposal, naledi forces scientists to reconsider long-held assumptions and ideas about this behavior. Perhaps mortuary ritual is not as uniquely human as previously believed.

If Neanderthals and naledi are accepted into the club of hominins who practice mortuary rituals, it would not be the first time that a supposedly uniquely human behavior turned out to be shared with other species. Until the 1960s, toolmaking was widely considered something that only humans do. Then Jane Goodall witnessed chimpanzees modifying materials to make tools of their own. In response to the news, her mentor Louis Leakey telegraphed: “Now we must redefine tool, redefine Man, or accept chimpanzees as humans.”

Perhaps burial is yet another reminder that there is no sharp, impenetrable line between humans and other animals. Such blurring of boundaries is now well-recognized in anatomical evolution. In recent decades, scientists have become aware that distinctively “human” features actually appeared piecemeal, in unexpected patterns; upright posture and an increase in brain size, for instance, appeared in fits and starts, with some reversals along the way. Our ancestors appear to us as mosaics, containing some of these modern features while lacking others.

Maybe this mosaic progression applies to human behavior as well. Could it be that our culture—including abstract thinking and complex symbolic actions—arrived not in a single package, but rather evolved piecemeal?

This hypothesis leads to new questions about the emergence of human nature, and suggests new places to look for evidence. A growing number of anthropologists have begun to argue for a broad shift in the ways we think about change, innovation, and emergence throughout human evolution. They argue that, instead of conceptualizing human evolution in terms of extraordinary moments of origin and revolution, it is more productive to focus on gradual transitions. This shift in thinking regards incremental evolutionary processes as more significant than moments of sudden innovation.

The anthropologists pushing for this conceptualization argue that breaking processes such as the development of complex cognition and culture into their constituent parts opens up new opportunities to examine those parts in fine detail—an exercise more revealing than trying to understand the package in its entirety. The complex practice of mortuary ritual might be easier to understand if deconstructed into its constituent practices and cognitive processes. This idea dovetails with a recognition of the permeable boundary between human mortuary behavior and the behaviors of other hominins or even more distantly related species. It could ultimately allow for more detailed cross-genera comparisons, leading to a better understanding of those other species, as well as of ourselves.

The recognition that human culture might have emerged gradually, through starts and stops, exposes a common but poorly founded assumption that major developments happen in bundles. Without any evidence to the contrary, it was easy to default to the notion that major human transitions occurred simultaneously—that we emerged as our modern selves through a kind of evolutionary genesis. Charles Darwin fell into this trap, assuming that bipedalism evolved alongside the increase in brain size and the simultaneous freeing of the hands for tool use. But as more evidence has accrued, the picture has become more complicated and difficult to fit in a tidy narrative. The discovery of australopithecines and other fossil hominins made it clear that these processes happened at different stages in human evolution.

If Homo naledi truly did engage in symbolic behavior, that would raise an even more sweeping question: Should scientists disregard the idea of human uniqueness altogether? Some scholars have been making that argument for decades, suggesting that searching for unique traits detracts from the more useful endeavor of pinpointing smaller transitions and recognizing differences of degree rather than kind. They also caution that the practice of defining uniquely human features is colored by value judgments about what matters to us in the present. In Beast and Man (1979), the moral philosopher Mary Midgley argued: “If man wants to set up a contest in resembling himself and award himself the prize, no one will quarrel with him. But what does it mean? All he can do by these roundabout methods is perhaps to assert a value-judgment about what matters most in human life.”

Understanding humans’ evolutionary history is a daunting task. It is a subject that is deeply personal to us, and we anthropologists have often been accused of standing too close to our family tree to be able to see the larger picture. From that vantage, it is all too easy to view the evolution into Homo sapiens as distinct from the evolution of other creatures. Recognizing a mosaic aspect to human behavior has the potential to alter that perspective.

By letting go of the belief in the uniqueness of our behavior, we might be able to see how our tendency to view ourselves as terribly special alienates us from the rest of our primate family, and indeed from all of evolution. Writing in The New York Times in 2015, the primatologist Frans de Waal argues that the discovery of Homo naledi is an opportunity to rethink that fractured relationship between humans and the rest of nature: “Why not seize this moment to overcome our anthropocentrism and recognize the fuzziness of the distinctions?”

What does the discovery of Homo luzonensis mean for our understanding of humanity’s history?

This week, anthropologists working in the Philippines unveil new fossils that they say belong to a previously undiscovered species of human relatives. The fossils come from Callao Cave, on the northern island of Luzon, and are at least 50,000 years old.

The team, led by Florent Détroit of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris and Armand Mijares of the University of the Philippines, has named the new species Homo luzonensis after the island where it lived.

With only seven teeth, three foot bones, two finger bones, and a fragment of thigh, the set of Callao fossils doesn’t give much to go on. Their small size is reminiscent of Homo floresiensis, the tiny-bodied species discovered in 2003 on the island of Flores, Indonesia, that lived around the same time. But there aren’t enough remains here to say just how tall Homo luzonensis was. And, unfortunately, the team was unsuccessful in attempts to find DNA. Many people will wonder, on such slim evidence, if the declaration of a new species is warranted.

I was fortunate to be a part of the team that discovered the new hominin species Homo naledi, which lived in South Africa around 250,000 years ago. That work was published in 2015. Such discoveries seemed almost unimaginable 20 years ago, when I was finishing my Ph.D. At that time, some of the most respected anthropologists actually suggested that the hunt for hominin fossils was almost over. Funding agencies directed their efforts away from exploring for new fossils and toward new technologies to wring more precious data from fossils discovered in the past.

Yet the last 20 years have seen an unprecedented burst of new discoveries. Some, like H. naledi and H. floresiensis, represent branches of the human family tree that separated from the modern human line quite early and yet survived until a surprisingly recent time.

Was H. luzonensis another such population? To establish that these fragmentary fossils justify recognition as a new species, a key first step is to exclude their membership to modern humans. Living people of the Philippines include some very small-bodied groups. Small size alone is not enough to place the Callao fossil teeth outside the range of modern people.

To go further, Détroit and colleagues studied the details of the bones and teeth. Together, they represent a mash of features that are confusingly reminiscent of a huge range of other hominins, and together make for something new and hard to classify. The molars, for example, are small compared to every other known species, while the adjacent premolars, bizarrely, are not so small.

The molar crowns have a simple, humanlike pattern, but the premolars bear resemblance to the larger teeth more typical in older species, including H. floresiensis and some early specimens of Homo erectus. Some premolars have three roots, as sometimes found in H. erectus and more distant human relatives. The toe and finger bones also seem different from modern humans: One finger bone is curved, and the toe doesn’t seem to have been able to bend upward at the ball of the foot as much as ours. In some ways, these bones resemble hominins that lived more than 2 million years ago, such as Lucy’s species, Australopithecus afarensis. No other known species shares the whole set of features found at Callao.

So, what does this discovery mean? To me, it solidifies the case that ancient human relatives were a lot smarter and more adaptable than we used to give them credit for.

Flores lies about 2,000 miles to the south of Luzon, but both islands share a peculiar geography: Land bridges never connected these islands to the Asian continent. Another large, disconnected island in the region is Sulawesi. There, stone tools from a site called Talepu were made by hominins more than 118,000 years ago, though no fossils have been found yet to indicate who was making them. Some anthropologists have thought that the colonization of such islands over water was due to luck. Maybe ancient storms or tsunamis washed a few unsuspecting survivors onto ancient beaches. But where one strange event might be attributed to luck, three are much more interesting.

The evidence for life on these islands goes back a long way. Some hominins were making stone tools on Flores more than a million years ago, and the oldest hominin fossil on that island is around 700,000 years old. Last year, paleoarchaeologist Thomas Ingicco, from the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, and colleagues reported on work at the site of Kalinga, Luzon. There, they found stone tools and butchered rhinoceros bones, also around 700,000 years old. Very early forms of Homo must have surpassed barriers and found new ways of life in places with very different climates and plant and animal communities than their African ancestors. Meanwhile, within Africa, a diversity of hominin species continued to exist throughout most of the last million years.

It’s too early for us to say whether the earliest inhabitants of Flores and Luzon gave rise to H. floresiensis and H. luzonensis. I wouldn’t bet on it. Many new arrivals may have come between the first occupations and the later appearance of modern people in the region. One such arrival may have been the Denisovans, a mysterious group known from DNA evidence. Today’s people of the Philippines bear genetic traces of Denisovan ancestry, and new analyses of Denisovan genetic contribution in New Guinea suggest deep roots for this ancient group. Could the Denisovans have existed on Flores, Sulawesi, or the Philippines?

To answer such questions, we must reinvest in exploration. The new discoveries of the past decade or so have transformed the field of human origins. New methods of exploration, and more intensive exploration of underrepresented regions, have introduced a new paradigm. Ancient groups of human relatives were varied and adaptable. They sometimes mixed with one another, and that mixing gave rise to new evolutionary solutions. Our species today is the lone survivor of this complicated history. We have replaced or absorbed every other branch of our family tree.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION 1. How Did Belief Evolve? An anthropologist traces the development of Homo sapiens’ most creative and destructive force, from the making of stone tools to the rise of religions.

About 20 years ago, the residents of Padangtegal village in Bali, Indonesia, had a problem. The famous, monkey-filled forest surrounding the local Hindu temple complex had become stunted, and saplings failed to sprout and thrive. Since I was conducting fieldwork in the area, the head of the village council, Pak Acin, asked me and my team to investigate.

We discovered that locals and tourists visiting the temples had previously brought food wrapped in banana leaves, then tossed the used leaves on the ground. But when plastic-wrapped meals became popular, visitors threw the plastic onto the forest floor, where it choked the young trees.

I told Acin we would clean up the soil and suggested he enact a law prohibiting plastic around the temples. He laughed and told us a ban would be useless. The only thing that would change people’s behavior was belief. What we needed, he said, was a goddess of plastic.

Over the next year, our research team and Balinese collaborators didn’t exactly invent a Hindu deity. But we did harness Balinese beliefs and traditions about harmony between people and environments. We created new narratives about plastic, forests, monkeys, and temples. We developed ritualistic caretaking behaviors that forged new relationships between humans, monkeys, and forests.

As a result, the soils and undergrowth were rejuvenated, the trees grew stronger and taller, and the monkeys thrived. Most importantly, the local community reaped the economic and social benefits of a healthy, vigorous forest and temple complex. Acin taught me that science and rules cannot ensure lasting change without belief—the most creative and destructive ability humans have ever evolved.

Most people assume “belief” refers to religion. But it is so much more. Belief is the ability to combine histories and experiences with imagination, to think beyond the here and now. It enables humans to see, feel, and know an idea that is not immediately present to the senses, then wholly invest in making that idea one’s reality. We must believe in ideas and abilities in order to invent iPhones, construct rockets, and make movies. We must believe in the value of goods, currencies, and knowledge to build economies. We must believe in collective ideals, constitutions, and institutions to form nations. We must believe in love (something no one can clearly see, define, or understand) to engage in relationships.

In my recent book, Why We Believe,* I explore how we evolved this universally and uniquely human capacity, drawing on my 26 years of research into human and other primates’ evolution, biology, and daily lives. Our 2-million-year journey to complex religions, political philosophies, and technologies essentially follows a three-step path: from imagination to meaning-making to belief systems. To trace that path, we must go back to where it started: rocks. A little over 2 million years ago, our genus (Homo) emerged and pushed the evolutionary envelope. Its hominin ancestors had been doing pretty well as socially dynamic, cognitively complex, stone tool–wielding primates. But Homo ratcheted up reliance on one another to better evade predators, forage and process new foods, communally raise young, and fashion superior stone tools.

One of the skills that helped Homo succeed was imagination—an ability you can use now to picture how it developed.

Imagine an early Homo preparing the evening meal. She knows stones can be hit and flaked to form sharper utensils that cut and chop. She also knows the stone tools her ancestors made don’t do a particularly great job: They take a long time to hack the raw meat off a carcass, to smash and grind the roots the community has dug up, and to crack open bones and scoop out the delicious marrow.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION One day she looks at her brethren laboring to create simple, one-sided, flaked stone tools. She sees, in her mind’s eye, flakes being removed from both sides, further sharpening the edges and balancing the shape. She creates a mental representation of a possibility—and she makes it her reality.

She and her descendants experiment with more extensive reshaping of stones—creating, for example, Acheulean hand axes. They begin to predict flaking patterns. They conceive of more diverse instruments for slicing roots and raw meat, and carving bone and wood. They translate private musings and imaginings into communal realities. When they make a discovery, they teach one another, speeding up the invention process and expanding the possibilities of their efforts.

By 500,000 years ago, Homo had mastered the skill of shaping stone, bone, hides, horns, and wood into dozens of tool types. Some of these tools were so symmetrical and aesthetically pleasing that some scientists speculate toolmaking took on a ritual aspect that connected Homo artisans with their traditions and community. These ritualistic behaviors may have evolved, hundreds of thousands of years later, into the rituals we see in religions.

With their new gadgets, Homo chopped wood, dug deeper for tubers, collected new fruits and leaves, and put a wider variety of animals on the menu. These activities—expanding their diets, constructing new ecologies, and altering the implements in their environment—literally reshaped their bodies and minds.

In response to these diverse experiences, Homo grew increasingly dynamic neural pathways that allowed them to become even more responsive to their environment. During this time period, Homo’s brains reached their modern size.

But their brains didn’t uniformly enlarge. Parts of the frontal lobes—which play critical roles in emotional, social, motivational, and perceptual processes, as well as decision-making, attention, and working memory—expanded and elaborated at an increased rate.

Another brain organ that ballooned was the cerebellum. Over the course of hominin history, our lineage added approximately 16 billion more cerebellar neurons than would be expected for our brain size. This ancient brain organ is involved with social sensory-motor skills, imitation, and complex sequences of behavior.

These structural changes helped Homo generate more effective and expansive mental representations. What emerged was a distinctively human imagination—the capacity that allows us to create and shape our futures. It also gave rise to the next step in the evolution of belief: meaning-making.

The rise of imagination sparked positive feedback loops between creativity, social collaboration, teaching, learning, and experimenting. The advent of cooking opened up a new landscape of foods and nutrient profiles. By boiling, barbecuing, grinding, or mashing meat and plants, Homo maximized access to proteins, fats, and minerals.

This gave them the nutrition and energy necessary for extended childhood brain development and increased neural connectivity. It allowed them to travel greater distances. It enabled them to evolve neurobiologies and social capacities that made it possible to move from imagining and making new tools to imagining and making new ways of being human.

By about 200,000 years ago, Homo had begun to push the artistic envelope. Groups of Homo sapiens were coloring their stone tools with ochres—red, yellow, and brown pigments made of iron oxide. They were likely also using ochres to paint their bodies and cave walls.

Ochre decoration requires far more complicated cognitive processes than, for example, an Australasian bowerbird arranging sparkling glass and other baubles around its nest to attract a mate. It requires the kind of complex creative sequences made possible by elaborate frontal lobes, a dense cerebellum, and more diverse and intricate social relationships.

Imagine an early Homo sapiens who wants to paint a stone ax. She and her companions must seek out specific types of rocks and use a tool to scrape off the iron oxides. Then, they might manipulate the minerals’ chemistry, mixing them with water to transform them into pigments or heating them to turn them from yellow to red. Finally, they must apply the paint to the ax, changing how light reflects off its surface—making it look different, making it into a new thing.

When early humans colored something (or someone) red or yellow, it changed the way they perceived that tool, that cave, that person. They were using their imagination to reshape their world to match their desired perceptions of it. They were imbuing objects and bodies with a new, shared meaning.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION Gradually, they established relations with more and more distant groups, sharing meanings for the items they swapped and the interactions they exchanged. In short, Homo sapiens began engaging full time in meaning-making.

Collective meaning-making changes the way humans perceive and experience the world. It enables us to do the wildly imaginative, creative, and destructive things we do. It is during this period that Homo broke the boundaries of the material and the visible so the realm of pure imagination could be made tangible.

When a typhoon smashes into land, it tosses trees like matchsticks and fills the air with a deafening roar that drowns out voices. For millennia, every animal caught in such a storm feared it, hunkered down, and waited for it to pass. But at some point, members of the genus Homo began to explain it.

We don’t know when it happened, but within the last few hundred thousand years, humans had developed the imagination, the thirst for meaning, and the communication skills necessary for creating explanations of mysterious phenomena.

By 300,000 to 400,000 years ago, human groups across the planet were sparking fires with sticks and stones, and carefully transporting the flames. And by 80,000 years ago, they were carrying water in intricately carved ostrich eggshells. They made glues to craft containers, adorned themselves with beads, painted with multi-ingredient pigments, and etched geometric patterns into shells, stones, and bones.

These kinds of hyper-complex, multi-sequence behaviors cannot simply be imitated. They require explanation. So, when researchers see multiple instances of abstract art and creative crafts, we assume individuals were engaging in deep, intricate communication based on shared meanings.

By at least 40,000 to 50,000 years ago, representational art arose: depictions of hunts, animal-human hybrids, blazing sunsets, and hand prints waving, as if they are signaling meaning across the deep gap of time.

Once groups are attributing shared meaning to objects they can manipulate, it is an easy jump to give shared meaning to larger elements they cannot change: storms, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, eclipses, and even death. We have evidence that by at least a few hundred thousand years ago, early humans were placing their dead in caves. Within the past 50,000 years, distinct examples of burial practices became more and more common.

Through language, deeply held thoughts and imaginings could be transferred rapidly and effectively from individuals to small groups to wider populations. This created large-scale shared structures of meaning—what we call belief systems.

Between about 4,000 to 15,000 years ago, numerous radical transitions occurred in many populations. Humans started to domesticate plants and animals. They developed, along with agriculture, substantial food storage capacities and technologies. Concepts of property and inequality emerged. Towns and, eventually, cities grew. All of this led to the formation of multi-community settlements with stratified political and economic structures.

This restructuring profoundly shaped, and was shaped by, belief systems. Toward the end of this period—by 4,000 to 8,000 years ago—we see clear evidence of formal religious institutions: monuments, gathering places, sanctuaries, and altars. There are numerous explanations for the evolution of religions, and none of them by itself is satisfactory. Some proposals are psychological: Our ancestors understood that other individuals have different mental states, motivation, and agency, so they attributed those same qualities to supernatural agents to explain everything from lightning to illness.

Other researchers note that the rise of huge, hierarchical communities that engaged in large-scale cooperation and warfare correlated with the rise of far-reaching, hierarchical religions with powerful, moralizing deities. Some scientists posit that “big groups” prompted the creation of “big gods” who could enforce order and cooperation in unruly societies. Other researchers hypothesize the reverse: that humans first created “big god” religions in order to coordinate larger and larger social groups.

Still other experts say the human capacity for imagination became so expansive it reached beyond the real and the possible into the unreal and the impossible. This generated the capacity for transcendence—a central feature in the religious experience.

But though belief can be transcendent, creative, and unifying, not all of humanity’s beliefs are beneficial.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION For example, many humans today believe the world should be exploited for our benefit. Many believe that racial, gendered, and xenophobic inequalities are a “natural” result of inherent differences. Many believe in religious, scientific, or political fundamentalism, which is often used as a weapon against other belief systems.

Over the past 2 million years, we have evolved a capacity that has benefited humans but can also introduce horrible possibilities. It is up to us to manage how we use this power.

2. India’s attitude to arranged marriage is changing. But some say not fast enough

New Delhi, India (CNN)Ananya was 15 when she watched her older sister marry a man she barely knew.

Her sister was 19 years old at the time, and had only met her new husband once before, a few months earlier. They'd talked a handful of times on the phone.

"My oldest sister's marriage was traditional. I don't think she was prepared and she didn't seem to be that happy bride ... I think 19 is too young to get married," says Ananya, who requested to use an alias to discuss personal family matters.

Ananya's parents chose her sister's husband, as well as partners for her two other sisters, who got married when they were 22 and 26 years old. Now aged 30, Ananya knows that her family would love her to settle down with a spouse. She's not so sure.

Either way, she says she will have more control over her future than her sister. Arranged marriages are still the norm in India, but there's a growing trend for some women to choose their own partners — or to not marry at all. Technology is also replacing traditional methods of matchmaking. Instead of relying on family connections, many young Indians and their parents are turning to online marriage sites to find a partner. While the methodology may be modernizing, many young Indians still say the old measures of compatibility -- such as caste and complexion -- are discriminatory and need to go.

How arranged marriage works

Arranged marriages date back centuries as a way for upper caste families to maintain their status and consolidate assets. Over time, the system spread to other communities for similar reasons. Traditionally, families would write up a resume of their children's vital statistics -- weight, height, complexion and caste — and share the list with the parents of prospective partners. Lists can also be shared with family friends, a local priest or even a paid matchmaker of the kind featured in Netflix's hit show "Indian Matchmaker," although that is increasingly rare. In the past, such information may have been confined to that inner circle, but now it's often also on the internet for the world to see.

Matrimonial sites function in a similar way to dating sites, encouraging users to post their personal information to find a match. But while dating site bios are typically fun and witty, the information shared on a marriage site is much more personal. Occupation, income, religion and caste are all listed. For women, the post might also specify their weight, body type and complexion. Many families see such data as crucial for a successful match, but more liberal Indians view some criteria -- particularly caste and complexion -- as discriminatory. "You're made to feel like cattle. You're dehumanized to such an extent and I don't think the families even realize this," said Mira, a 26-year-old lawyer who lives in New Delhi. She requested to use a pseudonym to avoid offending her family.

"When you are reduced to a set of qualities on a piece of paper, and I'm sure this holds true for men as well, it's profoundly objectifying and that's what puts me off the whole thing," she said.

Finding a partner If a match is made -- either through a marriage site or word of mouth -- the prospective couple often then have a handful of "dates," usually chaperoned by family members. The couple are then expected to make a decision on whether to marry. While there are similarities with dating in the West, these marriages are not considered "love marriages," the union of two people who have fallen for each other. But these modern arranged marriages give the individuals involved more power than they might have had in the past. VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION For instance, when Ananya was 25 she was asked to compile her own biodata -- years ago, her family might have done it for her. "I remember it was like making a CV and I sent it to my dad who forwarded it," she said.

Ananya was already living a relatively modern life. She had moved away from her home city of Jaipur in Rajasthan state to the Indian capital, New Delhi, where she works for an arts events management company. After the information was exchanged, a family from a city near Jaipur approached her father about the possibility of marriage, but with the condition that their daughter-in-law would either stay at home or join the family business.

"I found this strange because I was very clear about being independent. He said no to them -- but only told me later," she said. Ananya said her success outside the family home had helped to convince her father that there was no need for her to rush into marriage.

"He's seen that I manage my own life and I work," she said. "Every year or so, they do ask when I want to take the decision to get married. It's in a concerned way, but casual -- not that you have to do this."

Making the right choice

In the past, parents made most of the decision-making around their children's nuptials. Couples were told who they were to marry and the event was celebrated at a typically big Indian wedding.

"Today, the parties seeking to get married have substantial say in whether to say yes or no to one or more proposals," said Amitrajeet A. Batabyal, the Arthur J. Gosnell Professor of Economics at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Sanjay Chugh, a psychiatrist and therapist in New Delhi, who has worked with couples for 35 years, said young Indians are taking advantage of the arranged marriage system to meet people -- and they're spending more time getting to know each other before exchanging vows.

"Arranged marriages are a system here and it's not going away in a hurry," said Chugh. "The difference now is that it serves as an introduction to a prospective bride or groom and people meet five or six times. Usually the chances when you've met that many times, you're going to go ahead with it."

Pallavi -- not her real name -- said this modern approach to an arranged marriage worked well for her. She spent six months getting to know her husband, who was introduced by a family friend.

"We met, our families met. We clicked and decided to go ahead with it. On the same day, both sides said yes," Pallavi said. She wasn't under any pressure to get married and could have broken off the engagement at any time. "My parents were very relaxed. It was up to me to get married or not," she said.

The evolution of arranged marriages

In a country as vast and diverse as India, experiences of finding love range from the staunchly traditional to modern romance. But broad trends are emerging that suggest times are changing.

In the past 30 years, the average age for a woman to marry has risen from 19.3 years in 1990 to 22.3 years in 2018. There are differences based on where women live. For example, in rural regions the average age of marriage was 21.8 years in 2019, but 23.4 years in urban areas, according to a government survey.

Women's participation in the labor force also fell over roughly the same period -- between 1993-94, the labor force participation rate of urban women aged from 15 to 19 was 142 per 1,000, according to government data. Less than a decade later, that figure had dropped to 89 per 1,000.

There are different theories for that, including a weaker job market. But one of the reasons is that more Indian women are staying in education for longer. Some are then going onto university and gaining degrees, which gives them more options beyond getting married.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION "There's been a natural progression, and finances and money give someone more confidence. Women have more control of their own lives," according to Nisha Khanna, a New Delhi-based psychologist and marriage counselor.

"The patriarchal structure of society is slowly changing. Women are becoming more assertive, whether it's in terms of needs of physical intimacy or financial matters. They're becoming more outspoken, they're becoming more equal," she said

Maybe never

Mira, the young New Delhi lawyer, is not sure if she'll ever marry.She says her perspective on marriage -- and life more broadly -- changed when she left home for the city, where she met people from different backgrounds and castes.

Mira's family is from Amritsar, a small city in the northern state of Punjab. They hold the traditional view that young women should settle down and start a family.

"I was reared to be a wife, there's no two ways about it. Even small things like running the house or making sure things are in order, those things are ingrained in me," Mira said.

She said she was brought up to want to get married, but is now "unlearning" that expectation. "Every year, I push it forward is just rebellion," Mira said. "Because I'm 26, I'm at this dangerous age where my family really want to see me get married in the next two years because, of course, you can't be 30 and unmarried. It's like the sky will fall or something."

"Who knows? Maybe at 30, I will feel lonely and my friends will have partners, houses and kids, maybe it will get to me then, but I hope the process of unlearning pays off. 3. Why Endogamous Marriages Could Make Us An Unhealthy Population

When I look around my family and close relatives, I often find multiple family relations between two people. My father’s sister married a man whose sister married my mother’s brother. You might need a pen and a paper to figure that one out! What I intend to communicate here is that in small communities marriages among relatives is a common affair. This is known as endogamy.

Endogamous marriages are the ones that take place within a particular social group such as caste, clan, tribe, gotra, etc. The presence of thousands of castes and communities in India has led to the formation of a very fragmented and dissociated society. These castes, even though belonging to the same religion, are so different from each other that it is laborious to find similarities in their customs and traditions. As a result, marriages are found to be conventionally more successful when they are endogamous due to the familiarity between the two cultures. One of the most common endogamous groups is caste. Caste-system in India is primordial and it was first mentioned in Rig Veda, the oldest Hindu shastra. This division that varna-system created has lost its muscle today but the notion and attitudes remain in the minds of people. Every caste has its sub-castes and an imperceptible hierarchy exists which results in the formation of new endogamous groups. Due to the presence of a strong caste system in India, inter-caste marriages are overtly avoided even today. The social and cultural gap between different endogamous groups is so significant that marriages among them are believed to destabilise and dismantle the society. Consequently, the choices for marriage unions are limited and restricted to the core primary group. When members of this group mate and have children, it is often found that these children suffer from genetic imperfections that their ancestors might have possessed. Inbreeding is one of the reasons for these ‘hereditary diseases’.

Inbreeding is a phenomenon where two close relatives mate with each other. While there is a huge demand for inbreeding in animals such as dogs and cows for various reasons, it is a taboo in many human societies. Inbreeding is infamous as it results in sub-optimal heritable attributes in the inbred offspring. When a child inherits a pair of recessive genes, one from each parent, it becomes dominant even though it might have been inactive in the parent. The chances of a recessive gene being present in close relatives are higher and therefore it is more likely that an inbred child will have a genetic disease.

In our fragmented society, there are over 4000 castes and communities, some of which comprise only a few hundred people. When a group of people indulges in marriage unions through generations, it results in an aggregated gene pool due to the absence of diversity. This limited gene pool is often responsible for the transmission of recessive genes from one generation to another creating a risk of chromosomal, genetic, or congenital abnormalities.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION There have been several studies to identify the pattern of diseases in consanguineous families. In Bradford, which has the highest South Asian population in England, it was found that the children born to consanguineous couples are more at risk of genetic defects, congenital abnormalities, and infant mortality. Another peculiar example of inbreeding disorder as a result of endogamous coupling is the deformity in the jaws of Spanish Habsburg dynasty rulers. Due to the incessant inbreeding across generations, the lineage suffered from a host of health problems including infertility and a high mortality rate. The last ruler of the empire, Charles II, died at a young age of 38 years without leaving any immediate heir to the throne.

Indian castes, especially the ostracised ones, have lived in isolation for a very long time as a result of the ‘founder effect’. It occurs when a small group of people gets splintered off from the main population and forms a sub-population of its own. In other words, a few ancestors give rise to a large number of descendants.

A study conducted by Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology(CCMB), through the analysis of socially and linguistically distinct populations from the Indian subcontinent, has found that over 25 percent of these groups show strong founder events. Precisely it means that these populations have a higher chance of receiving genetic disorders through their ancestors. Therefore, the communities which have been alienated for centuries due to the unfortunate existence of rigid caste-system have been exposed to the detrimental ill-effects of unintended inbreeding.

The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes in India have had a history of oppression by the so-called upper castes since time immemorial. Even after seventy years of independence, many castes and tribes are bound by the chains of casteism and classism. Be it the incidents of honour killings in opposition to inter-caste marriages or the discrimination with ‘ex-criminal tribes’, the historical suppression is still intact.

Such ostracised communities live in a closed group where they share customs and rituals, their culture and traditions matching closely with each other. Therefore, caste-endogamous marriages or marriages between members of the same group are an obvious choice for unions. These unions, many of them being consanguineous, become an accelerator in the transmission of recessive genes through the generations. The implicit inbreeding and substandard lifestyle, with the absence of quality education and hygiene in these endogamous unions, has aggravated the plight of marginalized communities while coping with health-related issues.

Genetic counseling is a technique by which the potential side-effects of inbreeding can be mitigated. The couple can make an informed choice once they know the risk of genetic defects their offspring might carry. The family health history is used as a tool to draw conclusions about the successor’s genes. Gene testing is also one of the methods where genes from a foetus can be tested for diseases that can hamper the quality of its life ahead. All being said, these methods and techniques are nothing but a dream for any rural, impoverished family in India.

The SCs and STs have always been found to be at the bottom of all social groups when it comes to health indicators. Most of the women from these marginalised communities do not even have access to basic health facilities and supplements required during pregnancy. In those circumstances, it is imperative to construct a mechanism for the socio-economically underprivileged classes to have accessible resources for making informed choices where they are bound by cultural and social traditions of caste-endogamous marriages.

Having said that, it is just a temporary solution because the problem is way bigger than it appears to be. Even if the resources are available to find out the potential defects in an inbred child, there aren’t any significant solutions to cure that defect. In the end, it is just a mitigation process and not an elimination one.

The core problem lies in the fact that Indian society still prefers endogamous marriages over inter-caste, inter-class marriages which inhibits the biological aim of mating in evolution.

"Endogamous marriages are the ones that take place within a particular social group such as caste, clan, tribe, gotra, etc. The presence of thousands of castes and communities in India has led to the formation of a very fragmented and dissociated society.”

Evolution relied on the idea of reshuffling of DNA across the human species. The early men who unknowingly practiced persistent inbreeding, as a result of a strong founder effect, were extinct after a few centuries. When societies create the social Barrier amongst themselves in the name of upholding their culture andN‘purity of blood’ by dehumanising some sections of people, it not only disturbs the evolutionary process but also injures the ideology of liberty, fraternity, and equality.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION The benefits that the government provides to these disadvantaged groups in the name of positive discrimination cannot provide relief unless the social endosmosis occurs which requires the intermixture of genes and culture among the different castes and classes.

Dr. Ambedkar in his Annihilation of Caste mentions that according to him a real remedy for breaking the caste system is breaking away from endogamous unions and opting for inter-marriages, which is much more effective than abolishing sub castes or pursuing inter-dining (the act of dining with members of other castes). Inter-marriage introduces cultural diffusion as it brings together families from distinct social and economical backgrounds thereby establishing a new fraternal relationship. Not only will the practice weaken the permeability of genetic diseases, but it will also liberate caste-ridden India in the long run. This dream for a utopian Indian society—free from casteism and prejudices—is a far-fetched one. But this is one of the prerequisites for a quintessentially healthy population. The genomic study is crucial to identify genetic recessive diseases in various subpopulations across India. Once mapped, these results can be used in prenatal testing, genetic counseling, and screening, etc. thereby decreasing the burden on vulnerable communities. There aren’t many facilities available for genetic counseling in India as it is an expensive tool with inadequate research in the field.

However, this paves a way for the government, NGOs, and other private health networks to extend their support to the disadvantaged groups. Apart from this, the local governments, with the help of health workers, should play an active role in de-stigmatising inter-caste marriages and sensitising the communities by advising against close-kin and endogamous marriages.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION 1. Trifed Signs MoU with Akhil Bhartiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram for Setting up of TRIFOOD Parks in Madhya Pradesh

Continuing its mission to improve the livelihoods of the tribals(both forest dwellers and artisans) and work towards tribal empowerment, TRIFED under Ministry of Tribal Affairs has decided to explore a convergence and build a partnership with Akhil Bhartiya Vanvasi Kalyan Kendra, a pioneering organization that has been working for the welfare of tribals in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand since 1952. In this regard, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was exchanged between the two organisations on January 3, 2021 to work togetherfor setting up of TRIFOOD Parks in 5 districts in Madhya Pradesh. The MoU was signed by Shri Pravir Krishna, MD, TRIFED and Shri Yogesh Bapat, General Secretary, AkhilBhartiyaVanvasi Ashram in the presence of Shri Durga Das Uikey, Member of Parliament from Betul, Madhya Pradesh.

Speaking on the occasion, Shri Pravir Krishna said that TRIFEDhas been actively exploring convergences with various like-minded organizations to continue our mission to improve tribal livelihoods.Engagement with VanvasiKalyan Ashram to undertake meaningful work will ensure round-the-yearincome earning opportunity for tribalsby engaging them in a variety of economic activities ranging from agriculture, horticulture, floriculture, Medicinal & Aromatic plants etc. and go beyond Minor Forest Produces.”

The two organisations will work together by undertaking various initiatives all aimed at improving the livelihood of tribal people and implementation of the Van DhanYojana through the mobilization of Self Help Groups (SHGs) / VanDhanVikas Kendra (VDVKs) / VPCs / TRIFOOD Parks. With TRIFED as the mentoring organization, it has been agreed that VanvasiKalyan Ashram would form new Van DhanKendras in tribal areas by identifying SHGs, organize training, building infrastructure, provide machinery and equipment and other support.

Among other scope of activities, Kalyan Ashram will include other areas, viz agriculture, horticulture, floriculture, fisheries, animal husbandry, handlooms, crafts to keep the operations running year-long and make the VanDhan scheme all inclusive and viable.

2. TRIFED to Collaborate with Various Ministries and Departments for GI Tagging of tribal Products

In the light of the Covid-19 pandemic that has thrown unprecedented challenges, the focus has shifted towards “Vocal for Local” and building an “AatmanirbharBharat”.India has a rich legacy of indigenous products, be it handicrafts, handlooms, and other produce. As the national nodal agency, TRIFED has been working extensively to help market and promote the indigenous products that tribal groups across the country have been producing since centuries. It is in this context that Geographical Indication or GI tagging has acquired even more of an importance.

TRIFED, Ministry of Tribal Affairs with active collaboration and support from Lal Bahadur Shastri National Institute of Academy, Ministry of Culture, Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Ministry of Commerce; India Posts;Ministry of Tourism and Office of the Prime Minister will take up the cause of promotion of GI Tag products along with tribal productsand transform them into a brand, symbolizing empowerment of tribal artisans. These initiatives will also help recognize and promote age-old tribal traditions and methods that in danger of being lost due to urbanization and industrialization.

In consultation with Ministry of Culture, TRIFED has identified 8 heritage locations across the country, where GI specific Tribes India stores will be set up. Among these 8 heritage places, work is shortly expected to commence in Sarnath, Uttar Pradesh, Hampi, Karnataka, Golconda Fort, Telengana. In close collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, it has been planned to develop a designer’s lab at Lal Qila (Red Fort), Delhi, wherein select tribal artisans will give live demonstrations of their rich craft traditions. Pochampally in Andhra Pradesh, known for its fine Ikat fabric, has been chosen to be the second venue where a designer’s hub may be developed. Initial work in this regard is currently ongoing. In addition to the live demonstration centre, it is being proposed to set up this city as a textile hub as well.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION The Aadi Mahotsav festival, an initiative commenced in 2017, is TRIFED’s attempt to familiarize the people with the rich and diverse craft, culture and cuisine of tribal communities across the country in one place. It is now proposed to hold a GI specific Aadi Mahotsav at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA), Mussourie in collaboration with Ministry of Culture in February 2021.

Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Ministry of Commerce has identified 370 GI tagged products out of which 50 have a tribal origin.It has been decided thatTribes India will market and promote all these 370 GI products through its extensive network. Plans are afoot to register the 50 native produces under GI, andpromote these through TRIFED’s existing Network of Outlets and e-commerce platforms. Efforts are underway to identify 50 more items for further promotion.

Along with Department of Post, Ministry of Communication and Technology, these items will be promoted in an exhibition that will be organized in January 2021. The Department of Post is developing stamps on 6 GI items which will be showcased in this Philatelic exhibition. Also it has been planned to supply lac and gum from Van DhanVikasKendras to India Post.

Tribes constitute over 8% of our population however, they are among the disadvantaged sections of the society. An attitude that pervades among the mainstream is the erroneous belief that they have to be taught and helped. However the truth is otherwise – the tribals have a lot of teach urban India. Characterized by natural simplicity, their creations have a timeless appeal. The wide range of handicrafts which include hand-woven cotton, silk fabrics, wool, metal craft, terracotta, bead work, all need to be preserved and promoted.

The Geographical Indication, which has been recognized by the World Trade Organization, is used to denote the geographical territory from where a product, be it an agricultural produce, natural product or manufactured, and also conveys assurance of qualities or attributes that are unique to that specific geographic region. India became a signatory to this convention, when, as a member of the WTO, it enacted the Geographical Indications (Registration and Protection Act), 1999, which came into effect from September 15, 2003.

Hence TRIFED, as the nodal agency working for tribal empowerment, which has been working in improving the income and livelihoods of the tribal people, while preserving their way of life and traditions, now expands its scope to GI tagged products.

With these impressive ventures the larger vision of “Vocal for Local, Buy Tribal” can be achieved which will be truly transformational in the areas of Sustainable Income generation and Employment of tribal people in the country.It is hoped that these and other efforts of TRIFED will enable the economic welfare of these communities and bring them closer towards mainstream development.

Team TRIFED wishes everyone the very best for a happy and healthy 2021.

3. Shri Arjun Munda Inaugurates New Office of National Education Society (NEST) for Tribal Students & Other Renovated Offices of Ministry of Tribal Affairs

Union Minister of Tribal Affairs Shri Arjun Munda inaugurated the new office of National Education Society for Tribal Students (NESTS), an autonomous society under the Ministry of Tribal Affairs in the presence of Shri Deepak Khandekar, Secretary Tribal Affairs at Jeevan Tara Building, Sansad Marg, New Delhi today. Speaking on the occasion, Shri Arjun Munda highlighted the importance being accorded by the Government under the leadership of the Prime Minister for provision of quality education to tribal students. He said that Eklavya Model Residential School (EMRS) is a flagship intervention of the Ministry to provide quality education to students in the remote tribal areas through state-of-the-art infrastructure and quality educational facilities.

By the year 2022, there is target of establishing 740 EMRSs across the country covering every block with 50% or more ST population and 20,000 or more tribal persons, which where 3.5 lakh tribal students will take education.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION Sh. Khandekar briefed the Minister about the achievements of EMRS students in the field of sports, cultural and academics and about Sudha Painuli is the vice-principal of EMRS-Kalsi, Dehradun, who was selected for National Award to Teachers (NAT) 2020..

The Minister also reviewed the progress of construction of schools. Dr Naval Jit Kapoor, Jt Secy Ministry of Tribal Affairs and Sh. Asit Gopal, Commissioner, EMRS gave presentation and briefed the Minister about the issues pertaining to construction status, land availability, recruitment of teachers and problems concerning each State. As on date, a total of 575 EMRSs have been sanctioned and 285 EMRSs are functional across the country. The progress of functional and construction status is updated monthly on dashboard of the Ministry (dashboard.tribal.gov.in). Hon’ble Minister advised the officers that all parameters regarding progress of these schools should be reviewed on weekly basis so as to achieve the target of 740 schools on 75th Anniversary of Indian Independence.

The scheme of Eklavya Model Residential Schools (EMRSs) was introduced in the year 1997-98 to impart quality education exclusively to ST children to provide quality education to Scheduled Tribe (ST) students. In 2014, there were only 164 EMRS sanctioned out of which 120 were functional under scheme of Grants u/s 275 (1) of Constitution. However, in December 2018 it was formulated into a new scheme under which 452 new schools will be established by 2022 resulting in total 740 schools across country. Out of these 452 new schools, 287 schools have been sanctioned in last year. The recurring cost per student per annum was enhanced from Rs 42000/- in 2013-14 to Rs. 61500/- in 2017-18, which was subsequently enhanced to Rs. 1,09,000/- in December 2018. These schools will be managed by National Education Society (NEST), which was set up in April’2019.

Over the years, EMRSs have become an island of excellence in the remote tribal hinterlands attracting large number of tribal children. The focus under the scheme is to ensure holistic development of the students in both academic and extracurricular sphere. Efforts are being taken to improve the quality of education in the schools, through capacity building of teachers, leadership development of principals, introduction of online education etc. The EMRSs have become beacon of successes in the tribal areas and emerging as a premier institution of Nation Building.

The Minister also took round of other 3 renovated offices of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs funded under the “Modernisation of Government Offices scheme” of the Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances, which provide modern aesthetic work environment to for the staff of the ministry. 4. TRIFED Signs MoU with MOFPI For Upliftment of Tribal Lives Through the Implementation of The PM- FME Scheme

TRIFED under Ministry of Tribal Affairshas been exploring convergences and partnerships with like-minded organisations to create synergies together with the main aim of furthering tribal empowerment and improving their livelihoods.In this regard TRIFED has started tying up with government departments and otherlike-minded organisations.

One of the departments with whom TRIFED has aligned with is Minister of Food Processing (MoFPI). MoFPI is implementing the Prime Minister Formalisation of Micro food processing Enterprises (PM-FME) Scheme, which is a landmark initiative under the Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan to support micro-level food entreprenuers, FPOs, SHGs and co-operatives. An important component of this scheme is the tribal sub-plan.

A communique to define the Convergence mechanism in implementation of this schemewas signed between Shri Deepak Khandekar, Secretary Minister of Tribal Affairs and Smt. PushpaSubrahmanyam, Secretary, Ministry of Food Processing in the presence of Shri Arjun Munda, Minister of Tribal Affairs and Shri Narendra Singh Tomar, Minister of Agriculture and Food Processing, Shri Thawar Chand Gehlot, Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment, RameswarTeli, MoS, MoFPI and Shri Pravir Krishna, Managing Director, TRIFED on December 18, 2020.

Other than the communique an MOU was also signed between TRIFED and MoFPI to detail the key areas of collaboration. It has been agreed that TRIFED, as the nodal agency working for tribal upliftment would develop a new range of tribal food products, TriFood.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION With the necessary funding under the PM-FME Scheme of MoFPI, the TriFood range of tribal food products would be developed, branded, and packaged by TRIFED. It has also been agreed that the SHGs working under the Van DhanYojana would be provided support under the PM-FME Scheme including for handholding, training, capital investment, and working capital. TRIFED will identify the eligible SHGs and their members and “Van DhanYojana” groups and their members engaged in food products and create a list with necessary details on their level of operations, type of product, marketing channels, means of production, production facilities, training, etc. and share them with State Government and MoFPI.As a part of capacity building,it has been decided that MoFPI under PMFME scheme would also provide necessary funds to TRIFED to undertake training, capacity building of tribals engaged in food processing. In addition, funds would be provided to TRIFED for product development and improved packaging for tribal food products.

TRIFED will also provide handholding support to Tribal SHGs and Van Dhan SHG groups and their members in preparation of DPRs, application process, getting necessary technical training, etc. so as to enable them to benefit from various provisions under PMFME scheme including for capital investment.

As a part of taking tribal welfare and development to the next logical phase, other convergences with various Ministries and Departments and expert institutions such as Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD), Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME), DMF, ICAR Ministry of AYUSH are being planned all with the aim of improving sustainable livelihoods and income opportunities for these tribals.

With the successful implementation of this collaborationand many more upcoming convergences, TRIFEDhopes toeffect a complete transformation of tribal lives and livelihoods across the country.

5. Giant Rock Bee Honey, a Unique Variant of Honey Sourced From Malayali Tribes of Tamil Nadu Added to Tribes India Collection

More than 35 new, attractive, immunity-boosting tribal products have found a new home in Tribes India outlets and website in the 8th edition of “From Our Home to your Home”’ campaign. The campaign had been launched 8 weeks back by TRIFED under Ministry of Tribal Affairs in order to source as many effective, natural, and attractive products from diverse indigenous tribes across the country so that these can reach a wide variety of audience. Key among the products this week are the natural, fresh, organic produce from the Malayali tribes of Tamil Nadu, such as Giant Rock Bee Honey, honey, variants of millet rice, tamarind and black pepper. Malayali is a tribal group from the Eastern Ghats in North Tamil Nadu. With a population of around 3,58,000 people they are the largest Scheduled tribes in that region. The tribals are usually hill farmers and they cultivate different types of millet.

Among the other products sourced include vibrant and eye-catching micro-beaded jewelry (mainly neckpieces) from the Patelia tribe from Madhya Pradesh. While agriculture is their mainstay, their handiwork is exceptional too as can be gauged from the beautiful, colourful pieces made by the artisans of Jhabua. Otherproducts include organic varieties of dals and spices locally sourced from the Vasava tribes of Gujarat and an assortment of produce – such as honey, jams and two unique variants of rice from the Kharwar and Oraon tribes of Jharkhand and some interesting wooden products (chakla and belan) and attractive metal jalis from the AdimJanjati tribes and Lohra tribes of Jharkhand.

All new products introduced over the past weeks are available in 125 Tribes India outlets, Tribes India mobile vans and on online platforms such as the Tribes India E-marketplace (tribesindia.com) and e-tailers. The recently launched Tribes India e-marketplace, India’s largest handicraft and organic products marketplace which aims to connect5 lakh tribal enterprises to national and international markets; showcases tribal produce and handicrafts, making them accessible to customers across the country.

With a variety of natural and sustainable produce and products, the Tribes India e-marketplace offers a glimpse into the age-old traditions of our tribal brethren. Do check out market.tribesindia.com. Buy Local Buy Tribal!

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION 6. Trifed Signs MoU with Day-NRLM M/O Rural Development to Foster Tribal Livelihood Development Through Synergies

As a part of its mission to improve the livelihoods of the tribals (both forest dwellers and artisans) and work towards tribal empowerment, TRIFED under Ministry of Tribal Affairs is exploring convergences and partnerships with like-minded organisations to create synergies together. In this regard, TRIFED has tied up with Deen Dayal Antyodaya- National Rural Livelihood Mission (DAY-NRLM) to undertake economic support programmes that will help boost livelihoods especially that of the SHG women, including those from tribal populations of the country. TRIFED and DAY-NRLM, have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) today to cement this collaborative and co-operative effort. The MoU was signed by Shri Pravir Krishna, Managing Director, TRIFED and Shri Nagendra Nath Sinha, Secretary of Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD).

Speaking about the significance of this agreement and the pivotal role it will play in enhancing livelihoods, Shri Pravir Krishna added, “TRIFED has been actively working on convergences with various ministries and organisations in the areas of Skill development and Tribal Livelihoods. This collaboration will help us get together and work for the two marginalized sections of society – tribal people and women.”

Shri Nagendra Nath Sinha said, “I am very happy that our two organisations will be cooperating to benefit and improve the livelihoods of these sections of our society.”

The two organizationshave agreed to work together in synergizing various programmes and schemes that are being implemented already by both to achieve the common goal of enhancing the livelihoods of the marginalized sections of society that they are working with - tribal beneficiaries and women, in our country. During the meeting, the scope of work was also discussed and detailed post the signing. The scope of work outlined two broad areas:

Minor Forest Produce:It has been agreed to establish market operatives synergy between the State Implementing Agencies that are implementing MSP for MFP and the State Rural Livelihood Mission (SRLM) to protect tribal gatherers against unfair practices of middlemen. The SRLMs will also participate in the implementation of the Van Dhan Yojana, with adequate technical and other support from TRIFED. NRLM through its SRLMs will support establishment of Van Dhan Kendras for creating a sustainable models and help facilitate establishing a viable enterprise. The two organisations also have agreed to work together for the development of common facilities centres like warehouses for storage, primary processing of agricultural, horticultural and Minor Forest Produces (MFPs) under MGNREGA and other similar schemes.

Handloom/ Handicrafts:TRIFED will empanel the SHGs or FPOs with majority tribal members (as identified by NRLM) and will enable the sale of their products through both its online and offline network. In case needed, these SHGs or FPOs will also be provided adequate training and capacity building programmes which will enable them to produce better products – handloom/ handicrafts or processing of packed food/ organic products. In addition to these aspects, the organisations will identify other areas of cooperation for the benefit of tribal SHG members.

Other than this, many convergences with various Ministries and Departments and expert institutions such as Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD), Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME), Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MoFPI), DMF, ICAR Ministry of AYUSH are being planned and initiated with the aim of improving sustainable livelihoods and income opportunities for these tribals. The scope of convergences will range across different aspects of development.

With the successful implementation of this collaboration and many more upcoming convergences, TRIFEDhopes tohelp in generating income and livelihoods for these people and ultimately help in in a complete transformation of tribal lives and livelihoods across the country.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION In consultation with Ministry of Culture, TRIFED has identified 8 heritage locations across the country, where GI specific Tribes India stores will be set up. Among these 8 heritage places, work is shortly expected to commence in Sarnath, Uttar Pradesh, Hampi, Karnataka, Golconda Fort, Telengana. In close collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, it has been planned to develop a designer’s lab at Lal Qila (Red Fort), Delhi, wherein select tribal artisans will give live demonstrations of their rich craft traditions. Pochampally in Andhra Pradesh, known for its fine Ikat fabric, has been chosen to be the second venue where a designer’s hub may be developed. Initial work in this regard is currently ongoing. In addition to the live demonstration centre, it is being proposed to set up this city as a textile hub as well. 7. In India, Manual Scavenging Goes Beyond An ‘Occupation’: It’s A Human Rights Issue

Most of you reading this probably do not think about your shit after flushing it. Some people, though, are not so privileged.

Indian society and the caste system force them to touch human excreta with bare hands, to dive in clogged sewers without any protection. To deal with hazardous waste- used syringes, toxic biomedical waste, noxious gases, human and animal corpses, without proper compensation, without dignity.

We are talking about Manual scavenging. Yes. Even In 2021.

What Is Manual Scavenging?

From a limited perspective, it is the process of clearing human excrement from toilets, septic tanks, or sewers by hand. Globally also, humans do Sewage diving to clear clogged sewers.

But in India, it is not an occupation but a human rights issue. Why? Deep-rooted in the caste system, this practice is forced upon Dalit communities specifically. Over 1.3 million people in India are manual scavengers. 99% of those are Dalits. Among them, 95% are women. (International Dalit Solidarity Network) In many countries, due to the risk involved, the pay for sewage divers is disproportionately high. But in India, manual scavengers are coerced and threatened into modern slavery by caste stigmas and lack of opportunities.

There are inadequate safety protocols or equipment. Despite exposure hazards, deadly infections, toxic fumes, there is no health insurance or healthcare facilities. “One person has died every five days while cleaning sewers and septic tanks across the country” [National Commission for Safai Karamcharis]. This number might be a gross underestimation due to a lack of data.

Developed countries treat sewage divers as heroes. In India, they are humiliated, ghettoised, treated as polluting, and prevented from joining the mainstream. “Manual scavenging is the worst surviving symbol of untouchability.” [National Advisory Council resolution]

Does it still exist? Why are we talking about this in 2021? Many people find it hard to believe that such a repulsive practise still exists.

In November 2019, a report India Brief: The hidden world of sanitation workers in India, was published by WaterAid, a non-profit. These were the findings. [Box1]

“While media sensitivity and societal attention happen only around the unfortunate episodes of deaths during sewer or septic tank cleaning, these fatalities form only the tip of the iceberg,” the report stated.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION Media and society tend to see these deaths in isolation and rarely ever try to go in-depth about why such deaths occur, even in present times. Besides the septic and sewage cleaning in urban areas, there is a total lack of awareness about rural and semi-urban sanitation. These are the places with dry toilets, lack of sewage systems, explicit caste hierarchy – where manual scavenging flourishes brazenly, in its most malignant form. But because of media apathy, most readers might still be uninformed and living in denial that this social evil persists.

Can’t They Stop Doing It?

These are excerpts from a report by Human Rights Watch – Cleaning Human Waste: “Manual Scavenging,” Caste, and Discrimination in India.

No one would want to carry human waste out of choice. Often in villages, access to resources is denied to stop Dalits, especially women, from leaving this work. This is accompanied by threats of physical violence and social boycott. The criminal justice system, especially at the lower levels, often fails to empathise with them. The HRW report talks about how Valmiki women of Parigama village failed to file a complaint at the local police station against the dominant castes harassing them for leaving manual scavenging.

It took the intervention of NGO Rashtriya Garima Abhiyan, a visit to the distant district police headquarters, and an appeal to the Superintendent of Police to even initiate an FIR. Another excerpt here, from the same report, talks about the difficulties faced by the marginalised sections in accessing the criminal justice system.

Despite all these factors, if a person manages to break away from their shackles, they cannot find alternative employment due to a lack of employable skills and stigma attached to their caste. Many have to return to manual scavenging.

“It was also found that some scavengers have tried to challenge their social and economic status by changing their jobs. But finally, they have to return to their original profession because of a social boycott and the lack of support from both private and governmental agencies. The law and order machinery has also proved inefficient. For example, Chinta Devi of Meherpur locality, started her shop with a loan arranged by a local NGO and left this menial job. But later she resumed this humiliating job as she faced a severe boycott even by her own community.” [Case Study in Ghazipur district of UP]

In urban areas, migration and anonymity have in some cases resulted in upward occupational mobility among Dalits, but the majority continue to perform their traditional functions. Manual sanitation in urban centres also rests on the caste system. Most work as sweepers and scavengers in urban centres as well.

What Laws Exist Against This Practice?

Before 1993, even State governments had a post called ‘scavenger’ for manually removing human excreta in households and designated places. The local authorities levied scavenging tax on houses for availing this service. Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993 was the first step in banning manual scavenging. But it failed due to its limited scope, narrow reach (limited only to a few states), and inadequate punishments. This Act did not have any deterrent effect. Its failure led to much litigation. Finally, the Supreme Court issued directions for rehabilitating manual scavengers in Safai Karamchari Andolan v/s Union of India (2014).

Adopting the recommendations of the Safai Karamchari Andolan case, the Prohibition of Employment of Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 was passed. It expanded the definition of ‘manual scavenger’, provided for heavier punishments and protection to the weaker sections of the society. It also increased focus on rehabilitation, with provisions of training and cash assistance.

However, the 2013 law did not successfully translate into practice. Dry toilets continued to exist, so did the employment of Dalit persons to clean them. Lack of data hindered rehabilitation and protective gear not used in practice. And most importantly, this law had no provision for undoing historical injustice by providing quality education or guaranteed alternate jobs for children of safai karamcharis.

In 2020, the government amended the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 to include complete mechanisation of sewer cleaning, stringent punishments, and better protection at work.

Yet again, the amendment fails to address the issue of caste. Caste – the reason behind unchanging attitudes towards manual scavengers, despite improvements in technology.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION It also fails to include sanitation workers employed in hazardous jobs like biomedical waste management, garbage collection, rag picking, cremation of dead bodies, and so on, who also mostly happen to be Dalits. During Covid-19 pandemic, these essential workers were hailed as Corona Warriors but their safety and protection were as usual neglected. They worked without any special training, safety instructions, health check-ups, or even adequate protective equipment.

What Is The Way Out?

Stricter implementation of the law,

Proper surveys for data collection and skilling programmes for rehabilitation.

Fixing accountability of officials – district collectors, police officials, municipal officials strict punishment for digressions.

Social security provisions like better healthcare facilities, insurance cover, pension plans for sanitation workers.

Payment of workers should be at par with semi-skilled workers with additional hazard pay depending on the risk involved.

Ensure good quality education to children of manual scavengers to enable them to avail alternative livelihood options

Immediate compensation for families of those who lose their lives in this work. A proper mechanism for providing legal help in cases of death and legal redressal.

The unregularised ‘Contractual employment system’ for allotting sanitation works needs to be reassessed. Along with that formation of trade unions, self-help groups, co-operatives, and pressure groups to educate and empower sanitation workers.

Most important is, enlarging the scope of the definition of sanitation workers rather than manual scavengers. Along with mechanisation, focus on changing attitudes. Attack the root cause by acknowledging the role of caste and how it traps people in the practice of manual scavenging.

What Is Our Role As Individuals?

If scavenging still exists, we all are equally guilty and responsible. Our silence makes us complicit.

Every one of us has a moral obligation to curb this problem.

From talking to your families and friends, spreading awareness on social media, to actively volunteering and supporting civil society groups like Safai Karamchari Andolan, Rashtriya Garima Abhiyan, ARUN (Association for Rural and Urban Needy) and many others, filing RTIs, reporting cases of manual scavenging in your surroundings – a lot can be done as an individual.

As said by an ex-rural development minister, “unless we get a sense of shame, anger and take it as an affront to our, not just the involved person’s, dignity, there can be no change in the existing practice.” 8. Legal discrimination of religious minorities

Radical Hindus in India use ‘forced religious conversions’ to target religious minorities and Dalits

Radical Hindutva, that denies the existence of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, and any other religious beliefs has been on the alarming rise ever-since radical Hindu Narendra Modi and his neo-Nazis came to power in 2014. Under the absurd excuse of so-called forced religious conversions, almost everyday members of the religious minorities and Dalits are targeted by the radical Hindus belonging to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in particular and their Hinduist cohorts in forcing Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Sikhs and Dalits in particular in getting converted into Hinduism. Draconian anti-conversion laws and majoritarian vigilante groups have all but ended the freedom to choose a new faith in India.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed by the United Nations in 1948, is a landmark document. It accorded all humans the same rights – the first time in history that this had ever happened.

Or well, that was the idea at least. In the real world, it’s a bit different. Take Article 18 of the charter that describes the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. It explicitly states, “this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief” – a tenet India does not subscribe to.

In fact, far from recognizing a right to convert, the Indian state and powerful Hindutva groups use the bogey of so-called forced conversions to harass minorities (mainly Christians in this case). Several radical Hindu groups including ‘Hindu Yuva Bahini’ (Hindu Youth Force) are targeting members of the religious minorities and forcing them into converting into Hinduism. Anyone refusing it would only suffer unending ordeals. Female members of the Christian and Muslim community in particular would regularly face extreme forms of persecution, including sexual assaults – if they refuse to convert into Hinduism.

Members of the ‘Hindu Yuva Bahini’ are attacking priests of churches, while the law enforcement agencies – instead of taking action against these radical Hindu thugs, play a notoriously biased role and in most cases put the affected members of the churches and Christian communities into further legal harassments.

Even while Christian congregations are attacked by raising the bogey of conversion, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), one of the key allies of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party boasts openly about conversion of Christians and Muslims to Hinduism. In Jharkhand, the RSS aims to make whole blocks “Christianity free” and are continuing conversion of Christians into Hinduism by force.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) are dreaming of ensuring a 100 percent Hindu India by 2030 by getting the members of every religious minority groups converted into Hinduism. Additionally, members of RSS and Hindu Yuva Bahini are involved in raping Muslim girls and women with the mission of giving ‘Hindu seeds’ in them while some of the Christian and Muslim girls are forcibly married by these radical Hindus and converted into Hinduism.

This religious discrimination isn’t a one-off event. It is, in fact, enshrined in law. Five states across the Indian Union ban conversion in all but name. In Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh the process of conversion is regulated to such a Kafkaesque degree that it is impossible to carry out – which was precisely the motive of the framers of the law.

In September 2014, for example, the Madhya Pradesh police had arrested four Dalits for converting to Christianity. The four men had decided to change their religion driven by the caste system – a move perfectly in consonance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and, indeed, common sense. Yet, they broke the law by not taking the permission of the Madhya Pradesh state government.

As per the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act (a suitably Orwellian name for a law that actually curbs religious freedom), for a person to change his faith he needs the permission of the state administration. Even as the BJP-controlled state government booked them, the wider Sangh Parivar sprung into action putting pressure on their community (their crops were burnt and a social boycott instituted) and eventually forcing them to convert back to Hinduism. In effect, then, apostasy from Hinduism is practically disallowed in Madhya Pradesh. The law as well as majoritarian groups will make sure it never happens.

How did things get so bad in secular India?

There were no anti-conversion laws in British India. After Independence, the Lok Sabha debated two bills that sought to curb conversions, the Indian Conversion (Regulation and Registration) Bill of 1954, and, six years later, the Backward Communities (Religious Protection) Bill. While both bills had wide support, Nehru, playing his usual role as the one-man vanguard of Indian progressivism, saw that both were eventually binned. Predicting the repressions such laws could engender, Nehru argued with remarkable prescience that these laws, “will not help very much in suppressing the evil methods [of gaining converts], but might very well be the cause of great harassment to a large number of people. Also, we have to take into consideration that, however carefully you define these matters, you cannot find really proper phraseology for them. The major evils of coercion and deception can be dealt with under the general law. It may be difficult to obtain proof but so is it difficult to obtain proof in the case of many other offenses, but to suggest that there should be a licensing system for propagating a faith is not proper. It would lead in its wake to the police having too large a power of interference.”

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION Foiled at the Union level, anti-conversion laws had greater success in the states. In 1967, Orissa, then ruled by the right wing Swatantra Party, became the first state to enact a “Freedom of Religion” Law. Madhya Pradesh followed suit the next year, with Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh following with similar legislation. Chhattisgarh inherited Madhya Pradesh’s law when the state was partitioned. Arunachal Pradesh also has an anti-conversion law on its books, but since the rules for the act haven’t been framed, it remains a dead letter. The Rajasthan Assembly has already passed an anti-conversion bill that awaits the President’s assent to be made into law. Interestingly, the laws in Himachal Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh were promulgated by Congress governments, which shows how similar the two big parties in India view this matter.

All these state laws are remarkably similar in scope. None of the laws directly ban conversion. Instead, they ban conversions by means of “force, allurement, inducement or fraud” – but of course they leave these terms quite undefined, which gives the administration and its agents almost draconian powers.

What is a forced conversion?

For example, “force” also includes the “threat of divine displeasure”. So, farcically, if a missionary informs a person that only Christians are allowed entry into heaven – a core part of the faith – that could also be construed as “force”. This interpretation of “force” was upheld by the Orissa High Court in Yulitha Hyde v. State of Orissa. It held that the “threat of divine displeasure numbs the mental faculty; more so of an undeveloped mind and the actions of such a person thereafter, are not free and according to conscience”.

Note how the court infantilizes its citizens here, calling their very minds “underdeveloped”.

Again, “inducement” or “allurement” is defined broadly to include “the offer of any gift or gratification, either in cash or in kind and shall also include the grant of any benefit, either pecuniary or otherwise” (Orissa Freedom of Religion Act, 1967). This problematic definition was even noted by the High Court of Orissa in Yulitha Hyde vs State of Orissa and called out for its extremely wide scope. For example, any charitable work carried out by a religious organization could come under a “grant of benefit”, as would free education or healthcare. Unfortunately, in Stanislaus vs State of Madhya Pradesh (1977), the Supreme Court struck down the Orissa High Court’s ruling and upheld this vague definition.

To really see how absurd these laws are, one needs to come to “fraud”. Since none of these laws care to define what it is, theoretically, almost any religious tenet not matching scientific fact could be fraud. So, a person preaching that “Adam was the first man on earth” could be committing fraud since there is no way to prove that in the material world. On paper, fraud could even be applied to the RSS if they propagate the tenets of Hinduism. But of course, given the majoritarian attitude of the state administration, the law is almost never used in cases of conversion to Hinduism.

Two of these acts – Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat – take the Big Brother state to absurd lengths. Both require the person converting to take the permission of the state government. That Narendra Modi and Shivraj Chauhan think that citizens need the permission of the government in order to think their thoughts and adopt beliefs or ideas is an extremely disturbing development – one that strikes a particularly large nail into the coffin of Indian progressivism. Caste and conversion

When these laws first came out in Orissa and Madhya Pradesh, they were immediately challenged in the courts. Matters eventually reached the Supreme Court in 1977, wherein the landmark case, Stanislaus v. State of Madhya Pradesh, the court held that conversion, per se, is not a fundamental right under Article 25 and can be regulated by the state.

Like in the case of the India’s many beef laws, this was a disappointing stand taken by the Supreme Court, ignoring the global consensus as well as the crucial role of conversion in combatting caste in India. Bhimrao Ambedkar had for almost all his life advocated conversion for Dalit emancipation, in the end himself converting to Buddhism in 1956 along with lakhs of others. Ironically, while Ambedkar had the freedom to advocate conversion in colonial India, a free India would probably severely censure or even jail him today.

(Courtesy : BLITZ)

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION 9. ASI identifies 5 Adhichanallur sites for museum TUTICORIN: Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has identified five sites in Tuticorin district’s Adhichanallur for the establishment of an on-site archaeology museum.

A team led by ASI superintending archaeologist (Trichy Circle) T Arun Raj inspected the site on December 11 and again on Saturday. Raj said the team had sent a report on the selected sites to the Union government.

The team also visited the site where the excavation was conducted in the year 2004. Srivaikuntam tahsildar Gopala Krishnan was also present.

“This is a pre-historic site, among the iconic ones identified in India and the only one in Tamil Nadu. The on-site museum would have parts of the site exposed with sheds built for shade, and would allow visitors a peep into the past,” Raj said. The museum, which will be of international standards, will be established near one of the identified sites. ASI is now creating awareness and also promoting these sites with cultural notice boards.

A petition was filed in the Madras high court bench, seeking the establishment of a museum at Adhichanallur. Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had also mentioned in the Union Budget for 2020 that a world class museum would be established in Adhichanallur. The Trichy circle office was established in October on the court’s direction to facilitate the museum.

The latest excavation, conducted beyond the ASI’s protected area, at Adhichanallur by the Tamil Nadu archaeology department has led to many interesting findings. Burial urns, mud pipelines and other artefacts have been found. 10. Robert Bruce Foote: The father of India’s prehistory

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION In 1859, Charles Darwin published the theory of natural selection in his book, “Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection", suggesting that, among other things, humans evolved from apes, flying in the face of conventional thinking at the time.

The age of the earth had earlier been pegged at 6,000 years by European religious scholars, based on readings of the Bible, with estimates ranging to 100,000 years (based on other religions) at the high end. Darwin’s theory implied it was much, much older, transforming not only the field of biology, but geology too, along with archaeology and anthropology.

The theory, of course, faced widespread resistance. Evolution from apes? Did god not create humans in his own image? Wasn’t it blasphemy to suggest otherwise? “No," said one bold geologist from British India whose discoveries supported Darwin’s theory. His name was Robert Bruce Foote.

The British East India Company had conquered almost the entire Indian subcontinent by the early 19th century, an area of around 4.4 million sq. km. They divided it into four administrative regions—the Madras Presidency, the Bombay Presidency, the Bengal Presidency and the North-West Presidency.

While building their empire, they did two things. One, the company convinced the British crown to enforce the law of primogeniture—the firstborn son would inherit all property of the parents. British estates were never divided. If a couple didn’t have a son, the closest living male relative would inherit all the wealth.

It was an unfair law but it served the company and the crown well. The majority of sons were trained as soldiers mostly to serve the company abroad, so they could earn a living. The law essentially ensured a steady supply of soldiers who were also trained in another profession such as engineering and medicine.

The next was to set up teams of geologists in its colonies, like the Geological Survey of India (GSI) established in 1851, so they could locate precious minerals and metals across the empire to fill up the coffers of the crown and the company. They also mapped and studied the territories ruled by the British. In 1858, a 24-year-old Foote arrived in India and changed it all.

Early career

Robert Bruce Foote, the youngest son of Sophia Wells Foote and William Henry Foote, was born on 22 September 1834 at Cheltenham, England. He studied in Britain and was recruited to work in the GSI.

In 1857, Thomas Oldham, the Geological Surveyor of India, had deputed four people—Henry Blanford, William King Jr, Charles Oldham and Henry Geoghegan—to map Madras Presidency. While studying the rocky landscape of Trichy in 1958, Geoghegan died of sunstroke and Foote was appointed as an assistant geologist to replace him. It was here that he and King Jr became good friends.

After the work in Trichy, Foote returned to Madras often to deliver a series of lectures on geology at the College of Engineering, Guindy, from 1861 on. It was here that he met Peter Percival, an ordained priest and former missionary who had severed ties with the missionary society. He was registrar of the Madras University and professor of linguistics, especially Sanskrit and vernacular literature, at Presidency College, Madras. Percival’s progressive views on women’s education, culture and his fluency in Tamil and Telugu astonished Foote, who admired him a great deal. Percival published the first English-Tamil and English-Telugu dictionaries, as well as several books on Indian culture and religion, which included translations of the literary works of Tamil poet Avvaiyar.

In June 1862, Foote married Percival’s daughter Elizabeth Anne in Madras.

The big finds

The next year proved to be an eventful one. Their first child, Henry Bruce Foote, was born in April 1863. And in May, Foote Sr found an interesting-looking stone in Pallavaram that turned out to be an axe or cleaver dating back to the Palaeolithic Age, also known as the Old Stone Age.

The discovery would have caused a sensation in Europe but Foote, though delighted, was cautious and showed it only to his family, apart from his best friend, William King Jr.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION Then in September that year Foote, along with King Jt, discovered a number of implements and artefacts in Atirampakkam, about 64km north-west of Madras city (now Chennai), near Poondi in Tiruvallur district today. This spurred him to revisit the site of the first find, where he discovered two more Palaeolithic implements in January 1864.

These discoveries squarely established the antiquity of man in the Indian subcontinent, lending credence to Darwin’s theory of natural selection in the process. Secondly, the stone implements showed that humans were living in Pallavaram and Atirampakkam in the rude Stone Age. And lastly, Foote’s findings inspired a more scientific approach to geology in the subcontinent, rather than just a search for precious metals and minerals.

But why had Foote not announced his discovery to the world immediately?

He was only working for the GSI as an assistant geologist at the time and was busy mapping the entire Madras Presidency. He did, however, submit his findings to the GSI, but Thomas Oldham, the head of the institution, did not make any public announcement, a fact that seems to have annoyed Foote.

In his book published in 1865, titled “On the Occurrence of Stone Implements in Lateritic Formations in Various Parts of Madras and North Arcot Districts", Foote begins with “The discovery that certain of the more recent formations in Southern India contain stone implements of undoubtedly human manufacture and the same type precisely as flint weapons now creating so much interest in various parts of Europe cannot fail to excite Students of Geology, Ethnology and Archaeology. With the exception of a brief verbal notice to the members of the Bengal Asiatic Society at their general meeting in December last by Dr. Oldham, the Superintendent of the Geological Survey of India, no account of them has yet been made public."

I also asked archaeologist Shanti Pappu, founder/secretary at the Sharma Centre for Heritage Education, who is also writing a biography on Foote, whether there anything in his journals or comments to suggest he had a different view on the topic of creation and race.

Pappu replied, “His writings make clear his scientific attitude towards the subject, his wide multidisciplinary approach towards resolving questions, and his deep love for the land and the people, both past and present. As far as his early prehistoric discoveries are concerned, there is no question of religion, creationism or race arising here. Owing to contemporary and earlier discoveries of Palaeolithic artefacts in Europe, Foote was confident of his finds, and clearly attributed the stone tools found here to be the work of prehistoric Palaeolithic populations. He followed paradigms being discussed at the time drawing on Darwin, John Evans and geologists like Charles Lyell. Our ongoing research at these very Palaeolithic sites discovered by him, prove many of his observations to be deeply insightful."

In 2011, the Atirampakkam site was revisited by archaeologists (including Pappu) and they found antiquities that are over 1.5 million years old further cementing the antiquity of humans in India. Family and personal life

Foote’s wife, Elizabeth, was a source of support in his geological quests, patiently documenting and preserving the artefacts he found. For his presentation in 1866—the first time Foote’s findings were being showcased abroad—it was his wife who drew most of the illustrations. In 1867, Foote was elected a fellow of the Geological Society of London.

Elizabeth Anne Foote passed away in 1870, leaving behind four young children, and Foote was heartbroken, as was her father Percival.

In 1874, during a visit to England, Foote married Eliza Melissa Wells, his first cousin, who returned with him to Madras. They had another four children. Eliza Foote was equally supportive of Foote’s explorations of Indian prehistoric culture and stayed at home raising all eight children while he continued to work uninterrupted.

The Percival family remained an important part of Foote’s life; Peter Percival moved from Madras to Yercaud and the Footes accompanied him, making it their permanent home as well (they had a summer home there earlier). Percival died in 1882 and was buried at Trinity Church in Yercaud.

Of his children, Foote’s favourite remained his eldest son, Henry Bruce, a lieutenant of the Royal Artillery who shared his father’s passion for geology. Robert would even take his son along on digs, and Henry eventually became a famous geologist and archaeologist in his own right, discovering stone artefacts in the Billasurgam cave complex, in modern-day Andhra Pradesh, in 1884. Locals dub these caves as the “Grand Canyon of India", as they span almost 3.5km—it’s one of the largest and longest cave complexes in the world.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION 11. Christian families 'threatened', asked to leave villages in Chhattisgarh RAIPUR: Tension prevailed in the south Chhattisgarh's Kondagaon district where the inhabitants of five village panchayats assembled and warned the local Christian families to leave their villages. The houses belonging to Christian families were also allegedly ransacked.

Over 1500 villagers gathered at Singanpur in Kondagaon and held a demonstration. Many of them threatened that they would not allow any Christian to live in their area.

The local officials reached the spot to pacify the villagers but in vain as they remain adamant.

The villagers had asked the local Christian families to return to the tribal folds and worship the native deities if they wish to continue living with them.

A couple of days ago, the members of the Christian community living in the villages had lodged a police complaint at Kondagaon alleging that the locals are repeatedly harassing them and they fear for their lives and property.

“The Christians are being beaten up, their properties ransacked and intimidated in spite of the presence of senior officials such as collector and SP. As many as 10 Christian families from different villages have approached cops for protection from the mobs. The affected families are living in an absolute helpless situation”, alleged Arun Pannalal, president of Chhattisgarh Christian Forum.

The Kondagaon district collector Pushpendra Meena told that he was at the spot where the tension prevailed but didn’t reveal anything about the situation.

SP Sidharth Tiwari was not available for his statement. Local MLA and state Congress president Mohan Markam too was not available for his comment.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION 12.How Buddhism waxed and waned in India Nehru felt that Jainism and Buddhism were considered not as a revolt against Hinduism but an attack on polytheism and Brahminism. He concluded that the Upanishad philosophy had produced a powerful wave of materialistic thinking, agnosticism and atheism. Buddhism and Jainism grew out of this. Both Mahavira and Siddhartha preached non-violence and casteless societies; yet both did not claim that they were breaking away from the Aryan tradition. On December 21, while addressing the 6th Indo-Japan Samwad, Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered to set up a composite global library on Buddhist studies for scholars to carry forward “our ancient tradition of spiritual and scholarly exchanges”.

In 1938, French writer-philosopher Andre Malraux had made an almost similar suggestion to Jawaharlal Nehru, who was in Paris after being released from Almora jail on September 3, 1935. Nehru had completed his seventh imprisonment that began on February 12, 1934. Malraux wanted to know how Hinduism could succeed in pushing away an organised and popular religion like Buddhism from India without any major armed conflict and absorbing its principles over a thousand years ago.

Nehru worked hard on this query during his ninth imprisonment from 1942 to 1945 in Ahmednagar Fort prison. The result was his Discovery of India, a scholarly, 583-page tome. Nehru was imprisoned for more than nine years in nine phases.

In writing this treatise, Nehru utilised the impressions gathered during his travels since 1912 through the length and breadth of the country, meeting villagers, watching its mighty rivers, valleys and mountains, its forests and plains. His most absorbing experience was at the Kumbh Mela in his hometown where “hundreds of thousands come, as their forebears had come for thousands of years from all over India, to bathe in the Ganges”.

He would remember what the Chinese pilgrims and others had written 1,300 years ago about these festivals, even when these melas were ancient and lost in an unknown antiquity. “What was the tremendous faith, I wondered that had drawn our people for untold generations to this famous river of India?”

Nehru felt that both Jainism and Buddhism were considered not as a revolt against Hinduism but an attack on polytheism and Brahminism. He concluded that the Upanishad philosophy had produced a powerful wave of materialistic thinking, agnosticism and atheism. Buddhism and Jainism grew out of this. Vardhamana Mahavira (540-468 BC) and Siddhartha Gautama (560-480 BC) were Kshatriyas and believed in Hindu tenets of karma and rebirth. Both preached non-violence and casteless societies; yet both did not claim that they were breaking away from the Aryan tradition. That was one reason why the people did not feel that these two were new religions.

The ruling elite found Buddhism attractive, receiving initial impetus during the Bimbisara regime in Magadha, south Bihar (540 BC). Bimbisara had met Gautama before his Enlightenment. In fact, the Magadha empire, the doyen among contemporary kingdoms like Kosala (Oudh), was famous as one of the 16 kingdoms known as Mahajanpadas (great foothold of the people) in ancient northern India for all the three religions: Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.

Chandragupta Maurya, who captured Magadha from the Nandas in 322 BC, patronised all religions. He was mentioned in Buddhist, Jain, Hindu and Greek texts. Later, Ashoka expanded his empire through wars to practically the whole of India. Anguished by the bloodshed, he renounced violence as a policy under the influence of Buddhist ascetic Upagupta of Mathura. Yet, historians have doubts whether Ashoka had renounced Hinduism.

Years later, Asvaghosha, a Brahmin priest from Ayodhya who became a Buddhist, converted Kanishka to Buddhism. Kanishka was a Kushan (Yuezhi) from western China. He elevated Buddha from a preacher to God through ‘Mahayana’, borrowing the Hindu reincarnation theory and introducing Hellenistic features for Buddha’s statues like Apollo with jewels.

The Hindu revival was seen during 405-643 AD, starting from Chandragupta-1 (Gupta empire) till Harshavardhana. Commentaries by Chinese travellers Fa-hsien and Hiuen- Tsiang during this era indicate that the “ascetic realism of Jainism and Buddhism no longer appealed to the masses in contrast with the colourful deities of the Hindu pantheon”, although the kings were patronising Buddhism.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION Also, the evolvement of a system of the self-supporting village community had its adverse influence on Buddhism, which was patronised only by the upper classes. The villagers no longer needed expensive monasteries for spiritual elevation since the ‘New Brahmins’ started rendering door-to-door services as priest, agricultural adviser, ayurveda doctor and astrologer. That was the beginning of the decline of Buddhism in India.

Nehru’s interpretation of Buddhism’s trajectory was appreciated and endorsed by global scholars. What they could not understand was how a revived Hinduism could indulge in such inhuman caste oppression against non-Brahmins as to make Swami Vivekananda to call Kerala, even with high education levels, a ‘lunatic asylum’ in 1892. This was so cruel that he decided to appoint Srimad Ramakrishnananada and Sister Nivedita to lead the struggle for reforms.

However, Sri Narayana Guru (1855-1928) had already started his struggle in Kerala for ‘One Caste, One Religion, One God for Mankind’ since 1888. Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi visited him in his ashram in 1922 and 1925, respectively. Swami Dharma Theertha, his close follower had published A History of Hindu Imperialism in 1941 from Lahore as an alternative interpretation of Vedas, Brahmanas and Sutras. Originally, he was Shri Parameswara Menon, an upper caste activist. In his book, he charged Brahminism with ignoring the teachings of Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Dayananda Saraswati, Swami Vivekananda and Gandhiji and denying the Dalits the “solace and benefits of education, sanitation, good water and air, use of tanks, wells and roads”. However, the mainstream Hindutva movement ignored all these.

Babasaheb Ambedkar started thinking about conversion to Buddhism while in London in 1933. It was only on October 14, 1956, that an ailing Ambedkar and his three lakh followers converted themselves as Buddhists at Nagpur. In his speech, he ridiculed the allegation that he chose Nagpur to confront the RSS based there. Instead, it was to commemorate the lone ‘Nag’ man who had escaped from the original Aryan massacre and from whom the ‘Nags’ living near Nagpur had sprung, who finally carried Buddha’s message.

These are the points which should engage the attention of the new global library. In addition, they should also research why ochre-clad Buddhist priests like Ashin Wirathu in Myanmar are in the forefront in persecuting the hapless Rohingya against all Buddhist canons.

(Source:TribuneIndia) 13. Unlawful Religious Conversion Bills – Part 1

UP government has instituted a bill titled ‘Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance, 2020’ in the state. The title of the bill clearly relates to unlawful conversions which means that any willing religious conversions by adults are excluded. The bill also does not target any religion in particular as it is applicable for all religious conversions. Madhya Pradesh government too has passed a similar bill recently. A few other states too are likely to bring similar legislation in the near future. As expected, there is a lot of hue and cry over these bills from some quarters in the country. The question is do India and Indians need such a bill? Perhaps it may be prudent to clarify and understand some key issues involved before one can answer this question.

It is no secret that Christianity and Islam religions believe in conversions. Over centuries they have converted people from other faiths in all parts of the worlds. History is replete with instances where forced mass conversions were carried out at the point of sword, by terrorizing or by levying taxes. The fact that both these religions believe that the only God is their God and his teachings are contained in their respective holy books. Is it any wonder that despite being younger to Hinduism by thousands of years, the world today has around 84 Christian and 50 Islamic majority nations?

As opposed to such beliefs in Christianity and Islam, Hinduism has never resorted to conversions as it believes that one can only be born a Hindu. It also believes in co-existence as it does not see itself as the only religion. Therefore, it is not surprising that India and Nepal are the only two Hindu majority nations in the world. Mauritius, which has a majority Hindu population is made up of migrant from India who settled there starting from middle of nineteenth century. Thus, it may be logical to assume that the onus of protecting Hindu religion and culture rests with India by default.

While most western nations have been very liberal and tolerant towards other religions in recent times, the same cannot be said of Islamic nations who continue to impose all kinds of restrictions on people of other faiths. But today most western nations have realised that this freedom, that they offered to migrants of other faiths, has been misused and is now posing all kinds of challenges to their own culture and beliefs. Many have now started taking corrective measures to curb such misuse.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION Both Islam and Christianity are imports in India. They have been allowed to flourish in the country because of the spirit of coexistence and tolerance that is inherent to Hindu religion. Most of the conversions that occurred over centuries from within the Hindu population were either forced or out of fear since India was under Mughal rule and colonial subjugation by European nations for nearly ten centuries. But today India has no such limitations and instead is a master of its own destiny. Therefore, while continuing to follow its coexistence and tolerant policies in spirit and word, by no stretch of imagination can it continue to be a fertile land for any nefarious designs of other religions. The nation will, and it must, take steps to safeguard its own religion and culture.

In recent times the methodologies for conversion by Christianity and Islam have changed. Christianity mainly converts through inducements and promises of access to a better quality of life to the less privileged sections of our society in different parts through well planned programs conducted by their network of Churches and missionaries. Free rations, education and medical facilities are some of the common inducements. They specialize in focusing on remote and less accessible areas by targeting Dalits, Tribal and Adivasi population. Today there are four Indian states in North East where Christians are in majority. The funding is received from Vatican, Christian philanthropic and non-profit organisations apart from some governments in western world, both openly and covertly. Funding has been perhaps the least of their problem.

Islam on the other hands relies more on conversions through persuasion that at times turns to brain washing. The targets are mainly individuals or in small groups. Islam focuses on strengthening the identity of Muslims, both locals and migrants, to use them in service of Islam. They are encouraged to consider themselves as part of a global Muslim nation or fraternity. They are advised to act as devout Muslims, to build Muslim institutions such as mosques, madrassas and charity organizations with a view to serve political interests of Muslims worldwide and to proselytize. Perhaps this also explains why Muslim refugees invariably head to non-Muslim nations rather than Islamic countries. Once again there appears to be no shortage of funds that come mainly from Middle East Islamic nations. These funds are used to build mosques and madrassas to spread the message of Islam.

Muslim are charged with the duty of summoning non-Muslims to their faith. It is estimated that in England, France and Spain alone about twenty-five thousand Christians convert to Islam every year. For USA the figure is about twenty thousand. Unfortunately, there is no reliable data available on conversions in India. While these figures by themselves may not be very alarming, what is worrisome is when a small percentage of such converts turn fanatics. The presence of such converts from western nations and India in conflicts in Syria, Iraq and other places is testimony to this fact.

As already stated at the beginning there is no problem with lawful religious conversions for adults. The problem lies with forced or unlawful religious conversions or if children are targeted. The bills under discussion are applicable for only unlawful conversions. The bills are not religion specific and provide protection against unlawful conversion to people from all religions. To that extent the bills are not discriminatory and respect all religions equally.

Do the bills in question curtail the fundamental rights of any citizen? It is obvious they do not since willing conversions are not included. Any law that protects the citizens from an unlawful activity has to be a good law and cannot be seen as an infringement of their fundamental rights. Prevention of crime is a responsibility of the state and therefore it is duty bound to enact laws to that effect. Any forced, deceitful or inducement based religious conversion has to be seen as unlawful and therefore it has to be classified as a crime.

14. Why are Christians being attacked in Adivasi villages in Chhattisgarh?

The police have allegedly been told to play down the communal nature of such incidents. Our first glimpse of Chingavaram, a village in Chhattisgarh’s Sukma district, was in the dark. It was early evening on November 28. The village was quiet and apparently peaceful. A youth sat in the verandah of the local grocery shop, browsing on his mobile.

“Yes, there was some trouble three nights ago,” he told us, pointing down the road. “The Christian houses are there.”

We found no one there except for a few old women.

The attack The next morning, we spent two hours with influential members of the village: the sarpanch-pati, or the powerful husband of the female head of the panchayat, the patel, or the village headman, the son of the pujari, the village priest, and a teacher. We also met a leader of the Koya samaj, a tribal body, from the neighbouring village and a few others.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION Budra Madavi, the sarpanch-pati, described what had happened a few days earlier:

“The incident occurred on the intervening night of November 24 and 25. It began around 1am. Some families in our village have been Isu [Jesus] believers for the last five or six years. We had sat with them two or three times and tried to reason with them. We told them, don’t believe in Jesus. We have always believed in devi-devta. Be with us. But they did not listen.

That evening, around 60 persons from outside had come to Mukka’s house. A DJ was used. Songs were being played and people were dancing. The Christians had not taken permission from the patel or pujari. We asked them, why are you doing this? That time we were 15-16 of us. Afterwards, men of the whole village went and they beat them up.”

Mukka Madavi is one of the Christians in the village, explained Budra Madavi. Chingavaram, he said, was a village of around 130 households, all of them Gond Adivasi. More than half the households, including three of those we were talking to, participated in the “attack”. Budra Madavi said he had not been part of the “maar-peet”, beating.

When asked how they had beaten people up, they said that they had used their hands and dandas – thick bamboo or wooden sticks. They said that some managed to run away but they beat up whoever they could catch, man or woman. When asked whether there was any retaliation, they said: “Humi log, gaon vale, mare. Vah log vapas nahi kiye.” We, the village people, beat them. They did not hit back.

In one version of the story, the reason for anger was that the Christians had gathered without permission just a day after the rest of the village had celebrated the traditional harvest puja.

According to local accounts, the attack had been led by the patel, Somda Madavi, and the pujari, Devi Madavi. A large number of those who participated in the attack were from Patel para (locality), where the sarpanch, patel and pujari reside, and Mirkum para. Somda Madavi said much the same thing as the sarpanch-pati. He had also talked to Mukka Madavi, who hosted the programme, hoping for a samjhauta, compromise. “He did not listen, so we beat them up,” he said.

The patel added that the revellers had slaughtered a cow for the feast, but that was not a point of contention – all families in the village eat beef from time to time. Christian families at the gathering, however, made no mention of a cow.

Beatings and a bonfire

Later in the day, we managed to find the affected Christians in Sukma town. They had taken refuge there in a makeshift camp, with the help of the Church of New Bethesda Jesus Christ, to which they belong.

We had a long discussion with 20-25 men, women and children. Many of them had wounds – broken limbs, fractured ribs, beating scars and so on. We learnt that four persons had to be hospitalised for serious injuries while 15-20 others sustained minor injuries.

According to their account, on the evening of November 24, a programme was organised at Mukka Madavi’s house in Naka para, at one end of the village. A hut built in Mukka Madavi’s courtyard three years ago serves as a church.

The programme started around 7 pm. The guests, around 40 of them, were from nearby villages and districts. A prayer meeting was followed by a chhatti, naming ceremony, for Prakash, Mukka Madavi’s new nephew. After that, everyone had a meal of chicken, lentils and rice. Then most went to sleep or were talking among themselves while seven to 10 children and young people were dancing to songs played on a loudspeaker, but not very loudly, they said.

They were suddenly attacked by a large group of persons from their own village, armed with danda, metal rods, bows and arrows and sickles, they said. Many of the attackers were drunk, they alleged, and were shouting abuses and threats as they started beating whoever they could catch. The attack went on for a long time. “I managed to hide during the night but I was caught early in the morning by Somda patel, Deva pujari and four others,” said Madka Madavi, who is around 40. “They dragged me in front of our church and thrashed me mercilessly, fracturing my arm and a rib.”

Laxman Madavi, a college student, recounted how his father, 50-year-old Mukka Madavi, the host of the gathering, was hit by an arrow in the lower back and was in hospital. So was Sodi Ganga, who had been beaten with sticks and rods. Bending on the mud-plastered floor, Jaisingh lifted his shirt and showed us the dark marks on his back. Sanni Madkam, a young woman, raised her bandaged hand to show us where she had been hit by a rod. Three other women took me behind the house to show me the severe bruises on their buttocks, as did Gangi Madavi, who had bruises all over her body.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION They mentioned that the assailants heaped all the belongings of the guests in a pile and burned them. Among the things in the pile was a Bible and Rs 15,000.

Kikir Lakka, a Christian from Sukma town who was one of the guests, said he managed to run away that night while the attack was still in full spate. He ran to the nearby Central Reserve Police Force camp, less than half a kilometre down the road. He claimed he begged the CRPF to intervene but they refused, saying: “Bhago yahan se! Hum log raat me nahi aayenge.” Go away from here. We will not go there at night. Lakka said he and six others refused to leave; they stayed outside the camp until the police arrived from the Gadiras thana 12 km away.

The sub-inspector of the thana told us that he had learnt about the incident at 6am, when one of the thana staff, who was at the CRPF camp during the night, told him about it. He said went there soon afterwards with an ambulance. The district collector and the superintendent of police also visited the village later that day.

An FIR was filed by Bhima Madavi, one of the Christian residents of Chingavaram, at the Gadiras thana on November 25. It names 16 persons, who were charged under Sections 147 (rioting), 149 (holding every member of the unlawful assembly guilty), 294 (“obscene acts and songs”), 506B (“punishment for criminal intimidation”) and 323 (“punishment for voluntarily causing hurt”) of the Indian Penal Code. Eleven of the alleged attackers were apprehended on November 25 but released after three hours when they provided a personal bond of Rs 30,000. Five others were arrested and released the next day.

The Christian families sheltering in Sukma are terrified of going back to their homes in Chingavaram. They claimed that they had been told that if they went back, there would be “murder”. Mukka Madavi, his wife Pojje Madavi and his sons are said to be “targets” at greater risk.

Faith and community

Discussions with both sides revealed the complexity of the issue. Christian families said that there had been tensions in the past but they did not lodge a complaint. For example, in 2019, Mukka Madavi’s house was allegedly surrounded by the same crowd, but he got wind of it and escaped. In March-April 2020, a village meeting was held in which Joga Madavi, a teacher we met, tried to reason with the Christian families to give up their faith. When they refused, the families said, other village residents at the meeting beat them up. Such incidents have picked in the last two years, they say.

The attackers had several misgivings about the Christian families. Their main grudge is that the Christians stay aloof from the community and are giving up the collective traditions and practices of the village. “Unko alag hi samjho [consider them separate]”, said one resident of the Christian families.

Some also mentioned other grudges. For instance, one person expressed a fear that Christian organisations would gradually convert the whole village: “Pehle ek jan tha Isu ka phir dhire dhire badha, dhire-dhire pure gao ko kabja karte hain” – initially there was only one Christian and then slowly their numbers grew; they take over the whole village over time. Another resident said people were lured into Christianity with unscientific promises – you will have children or be cured of an illness – and material inducements.

One Koya Samaj leader from a neighbouring village argued that Adivasis who became Christians should not be entitled to reservation. He also argued that in an area under the Fifth Schedule, which aims to preserve tribal autonomy and culture, people have their own way of life and institutions, and outsiders should not be allowed in.

The Christian residents of Chingavaram saw it differently. Madka Madavi, who was beaten badly, said, “I became a Christian because of the dukh [pain] in my life.” Others mentioned that the regular meetings, collective prayers and blessings made them feel better. They said that they had changed their lives – by giving up liquor, for instance – and were now better off than others, which gave rise to resentments.

Government looks the other way

This is the second mob attack on Christian Adivasis by other Adivasis from the same village in the last two months in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar division. In late September, an attack on Christians of four villages in Kondagaon district made headlines. A joint team, consisting of the National Alliance for People’s Movements and the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, led by activist Medha Patkar, had investigated the incident a month later. We then met Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Bhagel and warned him of the imminent dangers.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION The ruling Congress party seems reluctant to antagonise the Adivasis in these villages by taking strict action. The Christian vote bank, as they see it, is theirs in any case. In Kondagaon, the district administration chose to attribute the incident to routine intra-village tensions. In the Sukma case, the assailants are trying to play down the issue as ordinary “maar-peet” and the police are going along with it: none of the charges in the FIR are to do with communal violence. According to reliable sources in the government, the police have been instructed to hush up the communal nature of the incident and avoid taking sides.

The question here is not of the Congress or the Bharatiya Janata Party – or, for that matter, the Communist Party of India, which has a strong presence in Sukma district. It is a deeper question of adivasi identity and culture. While adivasis of Bastar would be right in asserting their singular histories and traditions, the fact is that they have long been exploited by dominant forces.

The Hinduisation of Adivasis in India is an old phenomenon and has been carried out by successive governments, across the party spectrum. Some Adivasis have turned to Christianity as one way out of their “dukh”, as Madka Madavi explained. While forced conversion would of course be wrong, voluntary conversion can hardly be objected to under Article 25 of the Constitution.

Having said this, perhaps Chrisitian missionaries need to ask themselves a question often asked locally – whether good cannot be done for Adivasi communities without conversion. The New Bethesda Jesus Christ, for example, is an expansionist project that aims to cover Adivasi areas under its “Tribal Ministries”. That Adivasis also have a way of life that needs to be protected may not be appreciated by even well-meaning missionaries.

Christian missionaries may feel that they are “saving” people when they convert them, but if conversions end up dividing Adivasi society and bringing strife, they hardly serve people’s interests. Conversion activism also gives a foothold to rightwing organisations, such as the Bajrang Dal, which have their own expansionist and communal agenda.

There are many profound questions to be asked. But further communal violence in the area can be avoided only if all sides abide by the Constitutional principles of secularism, freedom of religion and respect for Adivasi culture.

(Source:scroll.in) 15. Expansion of Scheme of Minimum Support Price(MSP) for Minor Forest Produce(MFP) and Upward Revision of MSP of Existing Items during 2020

During 2020, sweeping changes were made in the existing list of MFP covered under MSP as well as upward revision of MSP of 49 items of MFP in view of the exceptional and very difficult circumstances prevailing in the country on account of the COVID-19 Pandemic, and the potential of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs scheme to offer the much needed support to the tribal MFP gatherers. The unprecedented circumstances caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic threw up challenges and resulted in a severe crisis among the tribal population. Unemployment among youth, reverse migration of tribals threatened to throw the entire tribal economy off track. It is in such a scenario that the MSP for MFP has presented an opportunity to all the States.

In May this year, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs announced Inclusion of 23 additional Minor Forest Produce (MFP) items and stipulation of their Minimum Support Price (MSP) under the Centrally Sponsored Scheme titled "Mechanism for Marketing of Minor Forest Produce (MFP) through Minimum Support Price (MSP) and development of value chain of MFP". This decision enhancing the coverage from 50 to 73 items. In another crucial announcement affecting the livelihoods of tribal gatherers, the Government also revised the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for Minor Forest Produce (MFP) of 49 items. The increase across various items of minor forest produce ranges from 16% to 66%. The increase in MSP as well as expansion of List of covered items under MFP gave the much needed momentum to procurement of Minor Tribal Produce this year. MSP for MFP scheme is to address several issues of exploitation by local traders, ensuring fair returns on their produce. The Scheme provides a social safety net to these underprivileged forest dwellers, and to aid in their empowerment.

14 of the newly added items, otherwise agricultural produce, are not commercially grown in the North Eastern part of India but are found to grow in the wild in forests. Hence, the Ministry favourably considered to include these specific items as MFP items for the North-East.Both the above initiatives gave a massive thrust to procurement of MFP by the central and state agencies as well as private traders. The procurement by Central agencies was an unprecedented amount of about Rs 150 crore accompanied by manifold higher procurement of MFP by state agencies as well as private traders.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION 16. Ministry of Tribal Affairs launches ‘Goal’ programme for Digital Skilling of Tribal Youth across India in partnership with Facebook (15th May, 2020)

Ministry Tribal Affairs launched the “GOAL (Going Online As Leaders)” programme. The GOAL programme is designed to provide mentorship to tribal youth through digital mode. The digitally enabled program envisages to act as a catalyst to explore hidden talents of the tribal youth, which will help in their personal development as well as contribute to all-round upliftment of their society.The link of the Webinar is as follows :

https://www.facebook.com/arjunmunda/videos/172233970820550/ UzpfSTY1Nzg2NDIxNzU5NjMzNDoyODg4MDg1MTAxMjQwODkw/

The Digital literacy has gained importance in view of challenges posed by Covid pandemic. MoTA’s partnership with Facebook through GOAL programme has come at the right time to provide a platform to tribal youth and women to move ahead in life. The program intends to upskill and empower 5,000 tribal youths in the current phase to harness the full potential of digital platforms and tools to learn new ways of doing business, explore and connect with domestic and international markets. The digital skilling and technology will integrate them into the mainstream. The programme has been designed with a long term vision to develop the potential of tribal youth and women to help them acquire skills and knowledge through mentorship in various sectors including horticulture, food processing, bee keeping, tribal art and culture, medicinal herbs, entrepreneurship among others.Starting with 5000, the programme can be extended to cover any number of tribal persons who show keen interest in being mentored to achieve their goals.

The intent and content of GOAL program is unique and influential. This will go a long way in creating an environment for empowerment of tribal women by connecting them with digital world and use digital platforms to groom their talents. She hoped that the GOAL program will be successful in making fruitful impact towards enabling the ST youth to become financially independent. The GOAL programme demonstrates affirmative action which will go a long way to reduce the gap between tribal and non-tribal youth and will enlist participation of tribal youth in national building.

17. Ministry of Tribal Affairs Launches Tribal Health & Nutrition Portal – ‘Swasthya’ (17th August, 2020) Ministry of Tribal Affairs launched the Tribal Health and Nutrition Portal ‘Swasthya’ and opened National Overseas Portal and National Tribal Fellowship Portal. The e-portal on tribal health and nutrition named ‘Swasthya’, is a first of its kind e portal, providing all health and nutrition related information of the tribal population of India in a single platform. Swasthya will also curate innovative practices, research briefs, case studies, and best practices collected from different parts of India to facilitate the exchange of evidence, expertise and experiences. The of Tribal Affairs has recognized Piramal Swasthya as the Centre of Excellence for Knowledge Management (CoE for KM) for Health and Nutrition. The CoE will constantly engage with the Ministry and provide inputs to drive evidence-based policy and decision-making pertaining to health and nutrition of the tribal population of India. The portal http://swasthya.tribal.gov.in is hosted on NIC cloud. 18 Online Performance Dashboard named “Empowering Tribals, Transforming India” launched

As a part of unwavering commitment of Government of India to realize Digital India goals, MoTA is an early adopter amongst Social Ministries as it moved towards a data-driven Governance model to achieve digital inclusion, financial inclusion, productivity improvement and social impact. It is ensuring that administrative data forms the backbone of evidence-based decision making, outcome-oriented planning and service delivery to the beneficiaries. In this endeavor all schemes and initiatives of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs are digitalized through 20 scheme specific portals and applications which are integrated with the mother website of Ministry – www.tribal.nic.in, and with a comprehensive, interactive, dynamic Performance Dashboard https:// dashboard.tribal.gov.in.

Online Performance Dashboard named “Empowering Tribals, Transforming India” provides updated and real-time data and status of 15 schemes and initiatives of the Ministry meant for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. This is perhaps the first such initiative of any social sector Ministry to put such a huge data in respect of all schemes and initiatives of the Ministry at one place.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION Out of these, 5 are scholarship schemes of the Ministry where every year about 30 lakh underprivileged ST beneficiaries are given financial support of Rs 2500 cr for pursuing studies from 9th Class (Pre Matric) to doing Post Garduation courses PhD and Post Doctorate in India and Abroad. In respect of Centrally Sponsored Scheme like Post Matric and Pre Matric Scholarship, the data is shared by 31 States/UTs on DBT Portal before being displayed on dashboard.

The dashboard is part of Digital India Initiative to work towards empowering Scheduled Tribes and will bring efficiency and transparency in the system. The performance of Tribal Ministry and 37 other Ministries who are required to spend allocated amount of their budget for tribal welfare under STC Component as per mechanism framed by NITI Aayog can be seen on various parameters on dashboard. The dashboard will also be one-point link to all e-initiatives of the Ministry” The Dashboard has been developed by Centre of Excellence of Data Analytics (CEDA), organization under National Informatics Centre (NIC) with domain name (http://dashboard.tribal.gov.in).

19. Ministry of Tribal Affairs signs MoU with IIPA for Setting up National Institute of Tribal Research (NITR) at IIPA Campus, New Delhi (4th September, 2020)

Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) and Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA), New Delhi signed an MoU for setting up of National Institute of Tribal Research (NITR) at the IIPA campus, New Delhi. The proposed National Institute will be engaged in quality tribal research in collaboration with reputed government and non governments NGOs spread over the country. The agreement was signed by Shri Deepak Khandekar, Secretary Ministry of Tribal Affairs and Shri S.N. Tripathi, DG, IIPA at the valedictory session of “National Tribal Research Conclave” organized by Centre of Excellence (CoE) for Tribal Affairs, (M/o Tribal Affairs), Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA), New Delhi.

The Ministry of Tribal Affairs designed workable models which provide end to end solution as part of action research to be implemented by policy initiatives. The Tribal Research Institutes (TRIs) have a very important role to play and their research should focus on drawing road map for future development. The Ministry is funding Tribal Research Institutions for research on various aspects of tribal life and culture but now intervention of research with policy should be emphasized in their research.

20. Shri Arjun Munda Launches ‘Capacity Building Programme for Scheduled Tribes PRI Representatives’ and ‘1000 Springs Initiatives’ in Bhubaneswar (27th February, 2020)

Shri Arjun Munda, Union Minister for Tribal Affairs launched the “Programme for Capacity Building of Scheduled Tribe Representatives in Local Self Governments” at a programme in Bhubhaneswar (Odisha) . He also launched “1000 Spring Initiatives” and an online portal on GIS-based Spring Atlas with hydrological and chemical properties of the Springs on the occasion. The Chief Minister of Odisha Shri Navin Patnaik and Smt. Renuka Singh Saruta, Minister of State for Tribal Affairs also graced the occasion.A short documentary film on FRA in Odisha (Odisha’s Journey in FRA) and FRA Atlas of Odisha were also released.

The '1000 Springs Initiative’ is a unique project of Springs Rejuvenation which aims at improving access to safe and adequate water for the tribal communities living in difficult and inaccessible part of rural areas in the country. It is an integrated solution around natural springs. It includes provision of infrastructure for piped water supply for drinking; provision of water for irrigation; community-led total sanitation initiatives; and provision for water for backyard nutrition gardens, generating sustainable livelihood opportunities for the tribal people. He hoped that the learning and suggestions coming out of the consultation will be used for further expansion of the project. The module for capacity building programme has been developed in conjunction with United Nations Development Programme for the purpose. This module will be translated to the local languages for imparting training. Facilitators from within the tribal communities will be involved in the Capacity Building process so that information sought to be conveyed can be better done in the local idiom. The methodology of capacity building will include audio-visual aids, role play and a workshop approach. The programme will commence with the Training of Master Trainers followed by training of facilitators. It will be implemented in a thematic manner by prioritizing themes for the capacity building of PRI Representatives, which are required for the community. The programme will be implemented by State governments through respective SIRD&PR and TRIs. VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION 21. EMRS/EMDBS holidays re-scheduled in view of contingent health situation due to COVID-19 (26th March, 2020) The Ministry of Tribal Affairs wrote to Tribal Development Departments of all States with Eklavya Model Residential Schools for rescheduling of Holidays in Eklavya Model Residential Schools (EMRS) and Eklavya Model Day Boarding Schools (EMDBS) funded by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs in view of the fact that at various places local administration have issued directions to take preventive measures including declaration of vacations to avoid spreading of infection due to Covid. In certain cases, the directions issued permits completion of the scheduled annual examinations. 22. Shri Arjun Munda wrote to Chief Ministers to advise State Nodal Agencies for undertaking procurement of minor forest produce at MSP in right earnest (8th April, 2020)

The Union Minister for Tribal Affairs Shri Arjun Munda had written a letter to the Chief Ministers of 15 States to advise the State Nodal Agencies for undertaking procurement of Minor Forest Produce (MFP) at Minimum Support Price (MSP) in right earnest. These States include Uttar Pradesh; Gujarat; Madhya Pradesh; Karnataka; Maharashtra; Assam; Andhra Pradesh; Kerala; Manipur; Nagaland; West Bengal; Rajasthan; Odisha; Chhattisgarh; and Jharkhand.

In the letter, he said that the current situation brought about due to outbreak of Covid-19 has posed an unprecedented challenge across the country. Almost all the States and UTs in India are affected by it, to varying degrees. Poor and marginalized including the tribal communities are most vulnerable in this situation. This being the peak season for collection and harvest of Minor Forest Produce (MFP)/Non Timber Forest Produce (NTFP) in many regions makes it imperative to initiate certain proactive measures to ensure the wellbeing of the tribal communities and their economy based on MFP/NTFP by providing them safety and ensuring their livelihoods. 23. Shri Arjun Munda launches ‘Goal’ programme of M/o Tribal Affairs for Digital Skilling of Tribal Youth across India in partnership with Facebook(15th May, 2020)

Union Minister for Tribal Affairs Shri Arjun Munda launched the “GOAL (Going Online As Leaders)” programme of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) in partnership with Facebook at a Webinar in New Delhi on 15th May, 2020. The GOAL programme is designed to provide mentorship to tribal youth through digital mode. The digitally enabled program envisages to act as a catalyst to explore hidden talents of the tribal youth, which will help in their personal development as well as contribute to all-round upliftment of their society.The link of the Webinar is as follows :

24. M/o Tribal Affairs receives SKOCH Gold Award for its “Empowerment of Tribals through IT enabled Scholarship Schemes” (31st July, 2020)

Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) has received SKOCH Gold Award for its “Empowerment of Tribals through IT enabled Scholarship Schemes” project of Scholarship Division of the Ministry. The 66th SKOCH 2020 Competition was entitled “INDIA RESPONDS TO COVID THROUGH DIGITAL GOVERNANCE” and MoTA chose to participate in DIGITAL INDIA & E-GOVERNANCE - 2020 Competition and the awards were announced yesterday i.e. on 30th July, 2020. This project is a step towards achieving unwavering commitment of Government of India towards realizing the dreams of Digital India and bringing transparency as well as ease in the delivery of services. To assimilate with the larger vision of ‘Digital India’ and to realize the cherished goal of e-governance, MoTA has integrated all 5 Scholarship Schemes with DBT Portal under the guidance of DBT Mission. The initiative was rolled out on 12th June 2019 by the Union Minister for Tribal Affairs Shri Arjun Munda and MoS Ms Renuka Singh Saruta.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION 25. M/o Tribal Affairs Setting up Tribal Freedom Fighters’ Museums to give due Recognition to Sacrifices and Contribution to Country’s Freedom Struggle by Tribal People (11th August, 2020)

Ministry of Tribal Affairs is developing “Tribal Freedom Fighters’ Museums” dedicated to the contributions of the Tribal people in India to the freedom struggle pursuant to Prime Minister’s announcement in his Independence Day Speech on 15thAugust 2016, regarding setting up of tribal freedom fighters’ museums. The Prime Minister in his address said, “The Government desires and is planning permanent museums in the States where Tribals lived, struggled against the British and refused to be bowed down. The Government will work to make such museums in different States so that the coming generations may know how our tribals were far ahead in making sacrifices”.

As per the directions of the Prime Minister, all the museums will have strong usage of technologies like Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), 3D/7D holographic projections etc.

These museums will trace the history along the trails, along which the tribal people in hills and forests fought for their right to live and will, therefore, combine ex situ display with in situ conservation, regeneration initiatives. These will be museums, objects as well as ideas. These will demonstrate the way tribal struggles for protecting their custodial concerns for the biological and cultural diversity of the country, have helped in nation building.

26. Joint Communique Signed between M/O Tribal Affairs and M/O Food Processing Industries Defining Convergence Mechanism in Implementation of PMFME Scheme for Micro Food Processing Industries (18th December, 2020) A “Joint Communique” was signed by Shri Deepak Khandekar, Secretary, Ministry of Tribal Affairs and Smt Pushpa Subrahmanyam, Secretary, Ministry of Minister for Food Processing Industries today in the presence of Shri Narendra Singh Tomar, Union Minister for Food Processing;Shri Arjun Munda, Minister of Tribal Affairs and Shri RameshwarTeli, Minister of State for Food Processing. The Joint communique addressed to States clearly defining Convergence mechanism in implementation of Pradhan Mantri Formalization of Micro Food Processing Enterprises (PMFME) Scheme of MoFPI and role of both Central Ministries and their respective departments at State level.

27. Success Story of Ice Stupa: Unique Initiative under Centre of Excellence Project

Resolving Water Problems in 26 villages through Ice Stupas in Ladakh in partnership with SECMOL

Ladakh is characterised by distinct geographical and climatic features. It is known as a cold desert. With reducing precipitation, increasing average temperatures, and reduced glaciers to water the villages , some Himalayan villages are now slowly turning into ghost towns with abandoned but habitable houses and wasted agricultural land. This gives rise to three major modern issues of Ladakh relating to water scarcity, low indoor temperatures in buildings, and a shift from the original agrarian-based economy resulting into youth migration. A unique way to solve water problems and livelihood problems through Action Research project in Ladakh has been initiated with SECMOL, Ladakh. 26 Ice stupas were built by Villagers and on an average 3 lakh liter water was stored in each such stupa for the winter season of 2019-20. Through this project, anticipating villagers were able to conserve about 75 lakh litres of water during winters and eco-tourism activities like “1st Ladakh Ice Climbing Festival” gave opportunity to the local youth to be indulged in eco-entrepreneurial ventures.

Ice Stupa Video Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SS4tKjUisfQoPpfwk6DBMjF8rWinVxP-/view?usp=drivesdk

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION It will help in rehabilitation of abandoned villages and can change economy of the village by solving water problem, plantation of trees and irrigation. The stupas are source of tourist attraction and plantation of trees through community participation and engaging local in Home Stay project will help in their economic upliftment. In 2 years,Ice Stupas would be established in 50 villages for drinking water and water irrigation required for agriculture and would go a long way in changing economy of the area. 28. TRIFED Launches transformational “Tech For Tribals” program in partnership with Institutes of National Importance (INIs) to develop Tribal entrepreneurship - (20 March, 2020)

A game changing and unique project aimed to transform Tribal Entrepreneurs under the name “Tech for Tribal” has been launched by Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India (TRIFED). It was launched on19thMarch 2020 by TRIFED and IIT-Kanpur along with IIT-Roorkee, IIM Indore, Kalinga Institute of Social Science, Bhubaneshwar and SRIJAN, Jaipurin the first phase of organising tribal entrepreneurship and skill development program.

‘Tech for Tribals’, an initiative of TRIFED supported by Ministry of MSME, aims at capacity building and imparting entrepreneurship skills to tribal forest produce gatherers enrolled under the Pradhan Mantri Van Dhan Yojana(PMVDY). The trainees will undergo a 30 days program over six weeks comprising 120 sessions.

29. TRIFED takes a giant leap towards digitisation of Tribal Commerce- (25 June, 2020) TRIFED works for the promotion of tribal commerce in the best interests of almost 50 lakh forest dwelling tribal families aligning them to their skill sets, ensuring a fair deal to tribals in their trade of Minor Forest Produces, and Handlooms and Handicrafts. The value of this trade according to a NITI study is almost Rs 2 lakh crores per annum. To scale up the activities and create a level playing field, TRIFED has embarked on a digitisation drive to map and link its village based tribal producers to the national and international markets setting up state of art e- platforms benchmarked to international standards.

The digital transformation strategy includes a state of art website - (https://trifed.tribal.gov.in/); setting up of an e-Market Place for Tribal Artisans to trade and directly market their produces; digitisation of all information related to the forest dwellers engaged in its VanDhanYojana, village haats and warehouses to which they are linked. Keeping every aspect of tribal lives and commerce in mind, TRIFED has also embarked on the digitisation of the procurement of MFPs through government and private trade and the related payments to tribals.

E-Marketplace : Tribes India e-Marketplace, launched on Oct 2, 2020 is an ambitious initiative through which TRIFED of M/o Tribal affairs aims to onboard 5 lakh tribal producers for sourcing of various handicraft, handloom, natural food products across the country and brings to buyers the best of tribal produce. The suppliers comprise of individual tribal artisans, tribal SHGs, Organisations/ Agencies/ NGOs working with tribals. 30. Trifed Launches its Own Virtual Office Network to Spearhead Tribal Socio-Economic Development on its 33rd Foundation day- (07 AUG 2020) With Pandemic Covid-19 raging across the country, when every aspect of life has gone online, TRIFED has launched its own Virtual office on its Foundation Day, August 6, 2020. The TRIFED Virtual office network has 81 online workstations and 100 additional converging State and agency workstations that will help the team of TRIFED warriors work with their partners across the country – be they from the nodal agencies or implementation agencies –on Mission-mode towards bringing the tribal people closer to mainstream development.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI — 110060 HOTLINE: 011- 42473555, 9650852636 , 7678508541 , DATABASE: WWW.VIJETHAIASACADEMY.COM CURIOUS 2020 DECEMBER COMPILATION 31. Team Trifed Wins Virtual Edition of National Awards for Excellence in PSU for Investment in Start-Ups – (14 OCT 2020) The team of TRIFED Warriors has been working diligently towards the transformation of lives of the tribal population across the country. Their unstinted efforts and initiatives got worthy recognition at the Virtual Edition of National Awards for Excellence – PSU held on October 14, 2020.Combined, the team won three Awards: two individual awards for the exemplary and inspirational leadership of Shri Pravir Krishna(MD, TRIFED) in the CEO of the Year and Visionary Leadership Award categories and a collective award in the Investment in Start-Ups Category. 32. Trifed, M/o Tribal Affairs to Expand Convergence Model in a big way to step up Tribal Incomes, Skills and Entrepreneurship..200 Projects to be taken up under Trifood/SFURTI Model-(26 November, 2020)

In a new convergence -based initiative, TRIFED of the M/o Tribal affairs has planned the transformation from the Van Dhan mode to the Tribal enterprise mode. One of the major actions being planned is the convergence of the Van DhanYojana with the MSP for MFP. A way of doing that will be through the convergence of the Van DhanYojana to the Enterprise Model: from processing to cluster development under SFURTI (Scheme of Fund for Regeneration of Traditional Industries) and TRIFOOD. In this cluster-based model of development, a typical SFURTI unit will include 10 Van Dhan Kendras (a cluster) and include 3000 households and encompass a tribal population of 15000 tribals. The TRIFOOD / SFURTI model converging both the MSP for MFP and the Van Dhan component, has already been launched in August in Raigad, Maharashtra and Jagdalpur, Chhattisgarh by the Tribal affairs Minister, Shri Arjun Munda. . It has been planned to take up 200 TRIFOOD projects across the country in the first phase in coming months with the plan to initiate 100 TRIFOOD projects immediately.

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I am UPSC aspirant, preparing for anthropology optional on my own. Firstly, I want to express my gratitude to the entire Team Vijetha for coming up with such a magazine. The “Humans are still evolving” article in March 2020 month issue was really informative. I would appreciate if you can bring up more issues related to Indian anthropology in the forthcoming issue.

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