The recognition of the Narikuravar community as a Scheduled Tribe in 2023 has begun changing access to education and opportunity in Tamil Nadu, but the community’s experience shows that legal classification alone cannot undo decades of exclusion from housing, services and social acceptance. For people who were historically pushed into nomadic livelihoods and stereotyped as hunters, the change is being felt most clearly in classrooms, competitive examinations and professional careers.
The shift is visible in the stories of community members who have entered professions that were once difficult to imagine. Sakthivel, from Uthiramerur in Kancheepuram, became a forester after completing college and securing a job with an MNC earlier in his career. He now helps members of the community obtain housing and access to education and provides guidance to civil services aspirants. According to the report, he has helped more than 250 people with these opportunities.
Suvetha Mahendran, described in the report as Tamil Nadu’s first engineering graduate from the community, works through the Narikuravar Education and Welfare Society to expand education and livelihood opportunities. The organisation supports students seeking financial assistance and helps community members across villages develop income sources. It has also supported tuck shops and launched Jadi, an online jewellery brand featuring work by Narikuravar women.
These examples matter because the Narikuravar question is not only about representation in professional institutions. It is also about whether a community can move from insecure and stigmatised livelihoods to stable access to education, housing, formal work and public institutions. The report describes Narikuravars as a nomadic community primarily residing in Tamil Nadu, continuing to face poverty, low literacy, housing difficulties and social marginalisation despite education initiatives by non-profit organisations and community leaders.
That combination of progress and deprivation is a familiar problem in the development of marginalised urban and semi-urban communities. A change in legal status can create access to reservations, certificates and state programmes, but those benefits depend on administrative delivery. Families need documentation, information, schools, coaching, financial support and stable places to live. Without those foundations, formal recognition may remain distant from everyday life.
The long history of the Narikuravar demand for ST recognition illustrates how institutional categories shape access to the state. The community had earlier been classified as denotified after the British government labelled such communities “criminals” under the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871. The provincial Madras government repealed the law in 1949, followed by national repeal in 1952. The stigma, however, did not disappear with the law.
In 1965, the Lokur Committee recommended that Narikuravars be identified as a Scheduled Tribe. The demand continued through protests, petitions and campaigns. The Tamil Nadu Narikuravar Federation organised a statewide conference in 1980. In the early 1980s, then chief minister M G Ramachandran sent a petition to the Centre. In 1989, Tamil Nadu listed the community under the Most Backward Classes category. A further petition was sent in 2013, and the Union Cabinet approved a proposal to add Narikuravars to the ST list in September 2022. Parliament passed the Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order (Second Amendment) Bill in December 2022, and Tamil Nadu issued a government order in March 2023 to remove Narikuravars from the MBC list and issue ST community certificates.
The timeline shows that recognition was not a sudden policy adjustment. It followed decades of mobilisation and repeated engagement with state and Union institutions. Karai R Subramanian, president of the Tamil Nadu Narikuravar Federation, told the Times of India that he had campaigned for more than 35 years. He joined a 900-kilometre march from Kanyakumari to Chennai and was detained during protests. Later, he established a residential school for Narikuravar children in 1996 and has since helped educate more than 1,000 students.
Subramanian’s account also points to an important institutional lesson: protest can secure attention, but durable change requires community capacity. He told the newspaper that he realised the community needed educated people who could speak up and fight for its rights. The residential school, civil services coaching and education workshops described in the report represent that shift from demanding recognition to building the ability to use it.
For students, the effect of the new status can be immediate. S Kokila, a third-year MBBS student from Paramakudi, said that she had previously been unable to meet the cut-off while classified under the MBC category. After the ST community certificate became available during the second round of seat allotment, she became eligible for the ST cut-off and secured a place in medical college. Her account demonstrates how a certificate can alter access to a highly competitive professional pathway within a short period.
But the same account also reveals the gap between policy recognition and practical access. Kokila’s family had to invest in NEET coaching, and the certificate arrived around the time of the second round of seat allotment. The opportunity existed only because several conditions aligned: a family willing to finance coaching, a student able to compete, an admissions process that recognised the new category and a certificate issued in time. Other families may not have the same information, financial capacity or administrative access.
The report does not provide statewide data on the number of certificates issued, the number of Narikuravar students entering higher education or the extent of housing coverage after the 2023 recognition. That absence limits what can be concluded about the scale of change. The available evidence is instead a collection of individual and organisational examples showing how recognition is being used, rather than a complete assessment of outcomes across the community.
Housing remains one of the most important parts of that unresolved picture. Sakthivel has helped more than 250 people access housing, while the report identifies housing access as a continuing hurdle for the community. For a historically nomadic population, housing is not simply a question of shelter. A stable address can affect access to school admission, identity documents, welfare schemes, community certificates, banking and formal employment. It can also determine whether families can remain connected to public services over time.
The report’s evidence suggests that community-led institutions are filling some of these gaps. The residential school established by Subramanian, the welfare society’s education and livelihood initiatives, and the guidance offered by professionals such as Sakthivel all perform functions that are usually associated with a wider support system. They help translate legal recognition into applications, coaching, certificates, housing claims and livelihood opportunities.
Livelihood diversification is another part of this transition. Narikuravar women’s handmade jewellery has been developed into a formal online brand through Jadi. The organisation behind it reported that 33 women were working with the brand and that it generated a turnover of ₹1.3 crore in the previous year. The figure is significant as an example of how an established community skill can be repositioned as a market-facing enterprise rather than treated as evidence of a fixed traditional identity.
Yet the persistence of old stereotypes shows why economic activity alone cannot resolve the problem. Suvetha continues to receive calls from people asking for snakes, monkeys or rat-hunting services. She told the newspaper that callers sometimes offered money even after being told to contact the Greater Chennai Corporation for such services. The interaction illustrates how occupational stereotypes can survive even when members of a community have entered engineering, medicine, teaching, information technology and public service.
The urban dimension is particularly visible in this conflict between mobility and identity. Narikuravars have historically travelled and worked in public spaces, markets and neighbourhoods, while their livelihoods have often been interpreted through stigma rather than through economic need. As members move into professional education, formal businesses and government employment, institutions and the public must recognise them as citizens with diverse occupations and aspirations rather than as a single traditional category.
The 2023 recognition therefore marks an important administrative milestone, but it is not the endpoint of inclusion. The evidence in the report confirms gains in professional access, education initiatives and community organisation. It also confirms that poverty, low literacy, housing difficulties and social prejudice remain. What is not yet established from the available material is how widely the benefits of ST status have reached across Tamil Nadu or whether certificate access has been matched by improvements in housing and basic services.
The developments that deserve attention are practical: the spread of community certificates, access to higher education and coaching, housing outcomes, the scale of livelihood support and the ability of public institutions to move beyond inherited stereotypes. The Narikuravar experience shows that recognition can open doors, but sustained inclusion depends on whether people have the documentation, housing, education and institutional support needed to walk through them.
