Socio economic status of scheduled tribes in Mysuru District –Karnataka

The paper was aimed to assess the socio economic status of tribes of the Mysuru district of the Karnataka state. Three taluks of the Mysuru district were selected for the study based on their highly Schedule tribe populous status; H D Kote, Periyapatna andHunsur. Primary survey of 500 households was carried out and the different socio economic statuses assessed were; caste, income, educational level, occupational structure, size of landholding, types of crop cultivation. The study revealed that there are six different scheduled tribes (Nayaka, JenuKuruba, DongriGaracia, Yarava, Soliga, Hakkipikki ) residing in the selected study area with maximum percentage of 68 % of the 500 households belonging to Nayaka tribe followed by Jenuuruba (18.6 %) out of the total 50 different tribes found across the Karnataka. Further, 94% of the 500 households were found to have Below Poverty Line (BPL) income, only 4.35% was found to have received the higher education. Occupational structure of the study area discovered that only 5.70% of the sample number is involved in business and mere 2.64% of the total number work as Government contract daily wages. Among the population, major proportion is engaged in agricultural labour with only 44.4% of the population having the cultivation land while as 55 % are landless