Abstract

The Baiga, a forest-dwelling community of central India concentrated
in the Maikal hills of Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, are officially
classified among India’s Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups
(PVTGs). This paper reviews the scholarly and policy literature on
Baiga livelihoods in order to understand the nature, sources and
trajectory of their economic vulnerability. Drawing on classical
ethnography, peer-reviewed studies, government and committee
reports, and contemporary field documentation, the review traces how
a once self-sufficient subsistence economy organised around bewar
(shifting cultivation), hunting and the gathering of forest produce has
been progressively eroded by colonial forest policy, the prohibition of shifting cultivation, restricted
forest access, displacement and an incomplete transition to settled agriculture and wage labour. The
literature is organised thematically around forest dependence, the criminalisation of bewar, land and
displacement, livelihood diversification and distress wage labour, poverty and nutritional deprivation, and the rights-based and welfare interventions intended to address these conditions. The review draws
on the sustainable livelihoods framework and Amartya Sen’s entitlement and capability perspectives
to interpret recurring findings. It concludes that Baiga livelihood vulnerability is structural rather than
incidental, that recognition of habitat rights under the Forest Rights Act, 2006 marks an important but
partial corrective, and that the existing literature suffers from a scarcity of recent, disaggregated, micro-level economic evidence — a gap that motivates further primary research.

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