Who are the Tharu people?

The community belongs to the Terai lowlands, amid the Shivaliks or lower Himalayas.

• Most of them are forest dwellers, and some practice agriculture.
• The word tharu is believed to be derived from sthavir, meaning followers of Theravada Buddhism.
• The Tharus live in both India and Nepal.
• In the Indian terai, they live mostly in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar.
• According to the 2011 census, the Scheduled Tribe population in Uttar Pradesh was more than 11 lakh; this number is estimated to have crossed 20 lakh now.
• The biggest chunk of this tribal population is made up of Tharus.

Members of the tribe survive on wheat, corn and vegetables grown close to their homes. A majority still lives off the forest.

Constitutional provisions related to Scheduled Tribes:

• Article 366 (25) of the Constitution refers to Scheduled Tribes as those communities, who are scheduled in accordance with Article 342 of the Constitution.
• Article 342 says that only those communities who have been declared as such by the President through an initial public notification or through a subsequent amending Act of Parliament will be considered to be Scheduled Tribes.
• The list of Scheduled Tribes is State/UT specific and a community declared as a Scheduled Tribe in a State need not be so in another State.

Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups:

There are certain Scheduled Tribes, 75 in number known as Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs), who are characterised by:

• pre-agriculture level of technology;
• stagnant or declining population;
• extremely low literacy; and
• subsistence level of economy.

Source: Times of India