Economic Inequality among the Rural Tribal People in Arunachal Pradesh: An Empirical Study

A tribal economy is always characterized by the collection of their social, institutional, technological and finally economic arrangements through which the community seeks to enhance their material and social well-being. They have little knowledge and little power to influence the direction of change taking place due to broader changes in society due to impact of development of science and technology in every field. All economic and social development activities are planned for the welfare of its people and this is truly reflected in their levels of living which is the end product of all economic efforts. In recent times, the rich are very rich and poor are very poor. The middle class people are almost absent. There is rampant social corruption with no social audit. That is, income inequality is very rampant. Therefore, there is a vast scope for research to examine the economic inequality between these two groups in the level of their living in intra and inter region. So far the development consists of a series of poverty alleviation programmes, designed to widen the income earning opportunities for the poor to enhance their socio-economic status. Several rural development and poverty Alleviation Programmes have been implemented by Governments. But such programmes have not yielded the desired result. The objective of the study is to search the income inequalities among the rural tribal people by taking the concept that (1) poverty and inequality do not change at the same pace and they may even change in the same directions and (2) there are differences in the levels of living of people between regions, villages and even within a village due to inequality of income earned by the household or unequal distribution of wealth.