Tribal youth of Madhya Pradesh float FB panchayat

A group of tribal youth of Madhya Pradesh has come up with a new age platform called Facebook Panchayat to address age-old problems of the tribals of the state. Ritesh Mishra reports.

A group of tribal youth of Madhya Pradesh has come up with a new age platform called Facebook Panchayat to address age-old problems of the tribals of the state.

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Come May 16, around 200 tribal youth of the Malwa and Nimar regions of western MP, who are active members of the Facebook communities Alirajpur Bhilala Samaj and Adivasi Samaj, will convene offline for the first time to come up with a "gameplan" to tackle tribal concerns.

The organiser, 30-year-old Hira Alwa, a senior resident of AIIMS-Delhi, belongs to the tribal-dominated Alirajpur district. He admits that the issues - be it the migration of Bhil and Bhilala tribes from Neemar and Malwa to Gujarat or the water troubles of Jhabua and Alirajpur - are too complex to be solved at one Facebook Panchayat. But as he says, "It's a start."

Unlike Alwa, most of the other participants are local youth, still living the problems they are discussing. Like Chetan Patel from Barwani they are excited about the meet.

"We will share our problems and get a new direction."