Being Adivasi: Existence Entitlements: Existence Entitlements Exclusion (Rethiniing India) [Hardcover] Xaxa Abhay and Devy Ganesh N.

Abhay Flavian Xaxa was a fiery Adivasi intellectual and activist who graduated in sociology and
law, and acquired a doctoral degree in sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Xaxa took up research and activism, worked across social movements, research institutions and non-profit organizations on development-induced displacement, distress migration, bonded labour and fair wages for forest workers. In 2007, he became the first Adivasi student from Chhattisgarh to win the Ford Foundation's international fellowship for postgraduate study at the University of Sussex.
After returning from Sussex, Xaxa initially worked as a research fellow at the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies. From 2012 onwards, till his untimely death in 2019, he worked as programme coordinator with the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights.

G.N. Devy writes in three languages. He is the founder of the Adivasi Academy at Tejgadh and the Denotified and Nomadic Tribes Rights Action Group. He led the People's Linguistic Survey of India, which is published in fifty volumes covering seventy languages. Devy has received several literary awards and honours, including the Padma Shri in 2014.
Painted Words, his collection of literature of the Adivasis and the nomadic communities, was published by Penguin Books India in 2003.

The Adivasis form nearly 8 per cent of the Indian population and live in most states. Despite being one of the oldest constituents of the Indian population, barring a few states in the North-east, they are in a minority in the rest. Persistent problems faced by them-like land alienation, indebtedness, vanishing minor forest products from government forests and displacement from their ancestral lands-have led to their impoverishment. The Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA) and the Forest Rights Act (FRA), enacted by the previous governments, were decisive steps towards the empowerment of the Adivasis.
However, at present, the implementation of these provisions has taken a back seat. The seventh volume of the Rethinking India series, in collaboration with the Samruddha Bharat Foundation, presents the views of the Adivasis and the Denotified communities on the process of development and its clash with their rights.
This volume brings together the discussion of several issues from the Adivasi perspective, which is quite different from what is done in anthropology and ethnography.