From Criminalisation to Citizenship: Institutional Exclusion of Denotified and Nomadic Tribes in Maharashtra

This paper is a secondary-source synthesis examining whether the legal denotification of India’s Denotified and Nomadic Tribes (DNTs/NTs) has translated into substantive socio-economic and political citizenship, with particular attention to Maharashtra and its urban case of Mumbai. Using substantive citizenship alongside social exclusion theory, it traces the passage from colonial criminalisation under the Criminal Tribes Act to post-independence denotification, administrative classification as Vimukta Jatis and Nomadic Tribes (VJNT), and welfare interventions such as the Scheme for Economic Empowerment of DNTs (SEED). Drawing on the Renke Commission (2008), the Idate Commission (2017), and Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) research on Pardhi settlements in Mumbai, it argues that formal citizenship has expanded considerably without fully displacing historical stigma, documentation barriers, and political invisibility. Mumbai emerges as a site where proximity to state institutions produces uneven, rather than automatic, gains in substantive citizenship.