Govinda Chandra Rath Tribal Development in India: The Contemporary Debate. New Delhi: Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd. 2006. 340 Pages. Paperback. Indian Rs 450.00.

The word ‘Tribe’ denotes a group of people living in primitive or barbarous conditions. It is a social group with territorial affiliation, endogamous with no specialisation of functions. They have a headman or a chief who controls the activities of that group. Tribals have several sub-groups all of them together known as ‘Tribal Society’. It is really difficult to say whether they are Indigenous or not but they are the earliest settlers of India. They were inhabitants of forests since prehistory and even now some of these groups follow the same trends and live in forests. Tribals constitute around 8.08 percent of the total Indian population, and of the total tribal population around 80 percent are found in Central India.