Which region in India has the highest concentration of Adivasi communities?

Adivasi (Scheduled Tribe) settlement in India is governed by terrain rather than by administrative boundaries. Forested hill and plateau country — much of it later notified as Scheduled Areas under the Fifth Schedule — sustained tribal communities over long periods, while the open alluvial plains and the urbanised coast largely did not. A question asking which region has the highest concentration is therefore asking where the tribal population is clustered most densely and most continuously on the ground: which broad zone contains the country's principal tribal belt — not merely which zone has tribal communities present, and not which zone has the largest absolute headcount.

Applying that test means first locating India's principal tribal belts: the Central belt of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the Eastern belt centred on the Chotanagpur plateau (Jharkhand, Odisha, adjoining West Bengal and southern Bihar), the Western belt along the Satpura, Vindhya and Aravalli slopes, and the North-Eastern hill states. Of these, the Chotanagpur plateau and the forested uplands beside it form the single largest continuous, densely tribal tract in the country, home to the Santhal, Munda, Oraon, Ho, Kondh and Bhumij.

• North India: Scheduled Tribe communities such as the Gujjar and Bakarwal of the Pir Panjal and the Gaddi of the Himachal hills occupy narrow Himalayan margins, while the alluvial plains that form most of this zone carry very small tribal populations — Uttar Pradesh records about 0.6% Scheduled Tribes in Census 2011. The heavily tribal North-Eastern hill states form a separate zone in this scheme and are not counted here.

• South India: the Toda, Irula, Chenchu and Paniya occupy separated pockets along the Western and Eastern Ghats rather than one continuous tract, and the southern states record low Scheduled Tribe shares — about 1.1% in Tamil Nadu and about 1.5% in Kerala in Census 2011.

• East India: this zone contains that Chotanagpur plateau tract, and its two plateau states record the highest Scheduled Tribe population shares of any state in the four zones offered — Jharkhand about 26.2% and Odisha about 22.8% in Census 2011.

• West India: the Bhil form the largest single tribal group in India by headcount, but the western tribal country is spread along the Satpura, Vindhya and Aravalli slopes across three large, heavily populated states — Gujarat records about 14.8% and Rajasthan about 13.5% Scheduled Tribes in Census 2011 — so a large headcount here does not produce the densest tribal tract.

One caution about that state-level comparison: a zone-wide arithmetic average would be a different and much blunter measure, because the eastern zone also contains low-share Bihar (about 1.3%) and West Bengal (about 5.8%). The item turns on where the country's principal tribal belt lies under the exam's own four-region convention, not on a zone-wide average.

Among the four zones offered, then, East India is the region with the highest concentration of Adivasi communities. The Central Indian belt of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, frequently described as the country's foremost tribal region, is not among the options here. CBSE's official CTET July 2024 Paper II answer key keys this item to East India.