There are two types of Constitutional provisions for scheduled tribes. The one is with regard to their protection and the other for their development.

(i) Article 366 (25) of the Constitution of India defines Scheduled Tribes as 'such tribes or tribal communities or parts of or groups within such tribes or tribal communities as are deemed under Article 342 to be scheduled tribes for the purposes of this Constitution.

(ii) In terms of Article 342 (i) the President of India may, with respect to any state or union territory, and where it is a state, after consultation with the governor thereof, notify tribes or tribal communities or parts thereof as scheduled tribes. This confers on the tribe or part of it a Constitutional status making the safeguards provided for in the Constitution, to these communities in their respective states' UTs According to the 2001 census the population of Scheduled Tribes in the country was 8.43 crore i.e. constituting 8.2% of the total population of the country.

(iii) The first proviso to article 275 (1) provides for assumed special financial assistance for promoting the welfare of STs and for raising the level of administration of the Scheduled Areas to that of the rest of the state.

(iv) The state is enjoined upon to promote with special care for the educational and economic interest of scheduled tribes and protect them from social injustice and any forms of exploitation.

(v) Seats are reserved for scheduled tribes in Lok Sabha and state legislations. They are provided with reservation for government jobs.

(vi) The recognition of traditional tribal rights to land and legal protection against alienation of tribal land.

There are two broad forms of family:(i) The nuclear family and (ii) The joint family. The joint families are further divided in two forms—(a) Patrilineal and Patrilocal family and (b) Matrilineal and Matrilocal family. A third form of family is the extended family which is not a very common form.

Another classification adds two forms i.e. (i) the polygamous family and (ii) the polyandrous family. Polygymous family is based upon one man having more than one wife whereas the polyandrous family is based upon one woman married to more than one husband at the same time.

We would like to define the structure of these family forms as under—

(i) Nuclear Family:It is a group of persons consisting of husband, wife and their un-married children. It is a basic grouping of mates and their offsprings. The kinship relationships in nuclear family are husband-wife, father-son, father-daughter, mother-son, mother-daughter, brother-brother, sister-sister and brother-sister. This is the smallest composite family unit. There may be supplemented nuclear family units with widowed parents of the husband or his younger brother and sisters as residents.

(ii) Joint family:It consists of more than one nuclear family. All the members are blood relations (except wife and husband) or close kins and generally share common residence, kitchen and property. Joint family have three or more generations but two or more colateral families living together in a common residence and sharing common kitchen and property also form a joint family. This family is the hallmark of traditional indian society having very deep roots in history. Its traditional form is found in India even today however, in meagre number.

(iii) Extended family:When closely related kins other than those forming nuclear or joint family are added to the nuclear family, it takes the form of an extended family. These other kins can be those to which the nucleus kins surrounded by distant co-sanguineous kins or those in which kinship universe is extended still further E.g. Parents-in-laws living with son-in-laws.

(iv) Matrilineal Family:In this family the husband resides with his wife in her mother's house. The concestry in this family is traced to the maternal line. It is also matriarchal in nature because the authority in this family lies with the mother. She is the head of the family. This is not a common form of family. For example, the Nayars of South India live in matrilocal families.

(v) Patrilineal Family:Most of the families world over are of this kind in the patrilineal, patriarchal and patrilocal family ancestry is traced to the paternal line. Unlike matrilocal families, the ancestors in the patrilocal families are men. Patrilocal family is also patriarchal. The authority lies with the male members and the final authority rests with the eldest male member of the family.

(vi) Polygynous family:When a man marries more than one wife, the family organisation which formed by virtue of this, is a polygynous form. Most of the tribal families are polygynous.

(vii) Polyandrous family:In this family a woman has more than one husband. This is composed of the fraternal polyandry where several brothers marry one wife.

Degrees of kinship relationship : There can be different degrees of distance between the kins. The relationship may be very close, not so close, distant, remote and so on. On this basis, kinship relatives can be classified into the following categories.

(i) Primary kinship relatives : Who belongs to the same nuclear family as a particular person viz. the individual's father, mother, brother and sister in the family of orientation and husband, wife, son and daughter in the family of procreation are called primary kinship relatives.

(ii) Secondary kinship relatives : Grand father, Grandmother, Aunt (father's sister) brother's wife, sister's husband etc.

(iii) Tertiary Relatives : Each secondary relative has primary relatives who are neither primary nor secondary relatives of the individual. These are tertiary relatives. The great grand parents, father's cousins, spouses of father's, uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces

(iv) Distant Relatives : (a) All other relatives who are remote than tertiary relatives called distant relatives (b) For all practical purposes, the relatives upto tertiary degree are normally found in interaction among themselves. Very few people remember remote relatives unless they are remembered for establishing the ancestry. In modern industrialised societies, tertiary relatives are only seen in contact with each-other. We can say that the most common range of kinship structure today is upto secondary relatives.

These are major problems of tribal communities as under:

(i) Indebtedness : It is probably the most difficult problem faced by the tribal population in India. It is due to rampant poverty, loss of tribal rights over land and forests and poor and primitive mode of agriculture i.e. shifting (Jhum) agriculture.

(ii) Land Alienation : Agriculture is the primary occupation of the tribals. Nearly 88 percent scheduled tribes are engaged in agriculture. Their chronic indebtedness to the shopkeepers and money lenders becomes the primary factor in land alienation.

(iii) Poverty and unemployment : Intensive planning in tribal areas has led to chronic poverty among the tribals. In 1983-84 the percentage of persons below the poverty line among tribal people was 58.4% in rural areas while 39.9% among the urban population.

(iv) Alcoholism : Drinking can be stated to be a part of tribal society from the times immemorial and has to be understand in that context. The distilled liquor shops have served as a channel through which anti-social elements from other areas of the country find their pressure in the tribal areas.

(v) Other problems : The tribals face illiteracy, housing, communication, interaction with mainstream, industrialisation, urbanisation, migration and depopulation problems.

Problems of the scheduled castes (i) A majority of Dalits are poor, deprived of basic needs and socially backward. Many among them do not have access to sufficient amount of food, healthcare, housing and clothing. Moreover, caste inequalities continue to be among the most important factors affecting their access to education.

(ii) Dalits generally continue to be concentrated in occupations that render little social status or possibility for social mobility.

(iii) Practice of untouchability and social-exclusion are still continuing in some areas regardless of constitutional guarantees and official decrees.

(iv) Scheduled castes as a group are not homogeneous. They are internally differentiated in terms of occupation, numerical strength, geographical spread over and ritual status. But together they are segregated from other castes on the criteria of untouchability.

(v) The majority of the scheduled castes in villages continue to suffer because they work under the control of the dominant castes and the landlords.