From Governmentality to Accommodation: Qualitative Inquiry of India’s Abysmally Forgotten Nomadic Communities

Abstract

The diabolical policy approaches and apparatus constructed by colonial state and further reconstructed by post-colonial state under the tactical visions of governmentality and politics of accommodation jeopardised millions of Nomadic and De-notified Tribes NTDNTs. Thus, once located on mainstream of society the NTDNTs are pushed at the bottom of the lowest rungs of socio-economic and political hierarchy. Against this backdrop, the paper aims to examine the long-troubled trajectory of NTDNTs throwing light on continuities of governmentality and politics of accommodation grounded during colonial-post colonial states methodically captured through (19) select cases of policy approaches and apparatus, respectively. The paper uses life stories of NTDNTs and their envoys voices as prime qualitative method for analyses using hermeneutics tradition. The paper through conceptual lens of governmentality and politics of accommodation concludes that the immensity of NTDNTs subjugation and exclusion instituted by colonial-postcolonial state is the vexing case of world’s most elongated hapless victims of ‘governmentality and politics of accommodation’ beyond the pale of social-accountability. Finally, the paper put-forth unfeigned future policy priorities (FPPs) coupled with integrated model of change actors upon whom the onus lies to ensure NTDNTs re-integration and legitimate possibility of developmental accommodation for a new democratic India.