Augmenting Tribal Economy through Leveraging Common and Private Land: Cases from Koraput

At a time when tribal livelihood base is shrinking because of loss of forest and agriculture land, the tribals have become marginalized. The disintegrated economy has a negative consequence on socio-cultural lives of the tribals. Therefore, it is important that their livelihood is ensured and they be provided with more economic opportunities. There has been a realization that livelihood security depends on access to productive assets like land, water and trees. In geographical areas where poverty and lack of livelihood security have been major concerns, it has been observed that people have least access to productive assets. In this background, in the present article I have discussed how leveraging common and private land for agriculture purposes can help poor and marginalized people in expanding their livelihood base, thus adding to their income.