75 years of independence hasn't brought about any significant change in the socio economic and political standing of the tribals both in absolute and relative terms. Be it per capita income, or purchasing power parity, tribals are still in the margins. Economically tribals are still viewed as mostly forest dwellers but landless coupled with lower literacy rate which has compounded the challenges of this particular community as unproductive. Over the last quarter of a century since liberalisation, tribals have come out of its shell, have started significantly contribute in agriculture sector but still it is not good enough in overall GDP of the country. Today there is urgency to devise mechanism to strengthen farming among the tribals. The central policy makers must work towards giving ownership of Jal, Jungle, Jameen instead of siding with the capitalists who are trying to take over ownership of these resources. In a nutshell, tokenism of announcing "Janjati Gaurav Diwas" won't suffice unless efforts are made to instill "Gaurav" amongst the tribals.

Politically, tribals in India are about 8 per cent of India's 1.3 billion population and has only about 50 members of parliament. These members are a divided lot across several political parties. Hence tribal MPs have never been in a significant position to influence any legislation that could help in socioeconomic and political upliftment of the tribals.

The government of the day in declaring "Janjati Gaurav Diwas" may have made a significant beginning but proof of the pudding would be when government would work on an economic package which would have long-term impact to uplift more than 50 per cent of tribal population to Above Poverty Line. The current dispensation in New Delhi which had won highest number of tribal MP seats in 2019 election should also focus on including more tribal belts/areas in the 6th Schedule of the Indian constitution especially the tribal belts of Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha and other tribal dominated region of the rest of the country. This would significantly improve the political empowerment of the marginalized tribals.