Chapter Test: Rural Life and Society - CTET & State TET MCQ

This region has vast reserves of coal and iron ore. Also, iron ore is cheaply available in the region, thus providing the raw material for iron and steel industries.

The correct meaning of habitat is a dwelling place. A dwelling place can be elaborated as a building or shelter where one lives. Hence habitat can be defined as a place where an organism or a community of organisms lives, including all living and nonliving factors or conditions of the surrounding environment.

Adivasi is the collective term for tribes of the Indian Subcontinent, who are considered indigenous to places within India wherein they live, either as foragers or as tribalistic sedentary communities. However, India does not recognise Tribe as Indigenous people.

The British colonisers passed the Criminal Tribes Act, labelling them, along with 198 other nomadic and forest groups, “criminal”. A stroke of the pen turned 14 million people into criminals in their own land. The Criminal Tribes Act 1871  was one of the many laws passed by the British colonial government that applied to Indians based on their religion and caste identification.

In 1895, a man named Birsa was seen roaming the forests and villages of Chottanagpur in Bihar. People said he had miraculous powers – he could cure all diseases and multiply grain. Birsa himself declared that God had appointed him to save his people from trouble, free them from the slavery of dikus (outsiders).

Tribals who had depended on the forest for food  and fodder were forced to stay in the forest and hills by the British.

Indian Forest Act was passed by British. It was passed in the year 1865. According to this act the right of Indian communities on forests were limited and authority was transferred to British government.

The act of 1865 empowered the British government to declare any land covered with trees as a government forest and make rules to manage it.