Tribal India History, Politics, Polemics

Tribal India: History, Politics, Polemics Nirmal Sengupta Tribal Society in India by K S Singh; Manohar, New Delhi, 1985, pp 327,
K S SINGH is one of the few administrators who have not only retained a lively interest in academic research but have vigorously pursued it. The book under review is a product of the rethinking he has been engaged in since the seventies. The contents are, therefore, not only informative but polemical Indeed, the book deserves attention for both these reasons. As a participant observer in the capacity of an administrator in tribal areas for about twenty-five years, Singh was in a unique position to amass many varieties of information, And although one agrees with him that a public servant today does not have the leisure and opportunity to keep pace with the rapidity with -which each discipline is generating and discarding its theoretical models, one admires how, in spite of that, Singh has remained so well-conversant with many of the most recent thoretical developments in the related fields. However, the time constraint is very sharply manifested in one area