Synopsis This book addresses some of the issues that are of enduring interest to students and teachers in the social sciences. Though the three major themes, viz., development, ethnicity and gender around which the essays revolve are by no means new, the chapters have a distinctive quality, focusing on some of the subjects that are peripheral to the mainstream research. Some of the key issues dealt with in the book are the protracted debate on indigenous peoples; the effect of development environmental degradation on tribes and the interlinkages between them; state intervention on natural resource management; and the link between ethnicity, matriliny and gender, and area that has remained unexplored so far. Pitched against the backdrop of the central tribal belt and North-East India the book offers specialists in the field aas well as students and researchers a close view into the fast changing contours of life that confront these marginalized people. The author’s experiential location in the study universe and the emic perspective that underlined the analysis give an additional edge to the book.