Assessment as intervention: Practice reflections from a displaced indigenous Gond settlement in urban India
Emmanuel Daniel, Anto V, Priscilla V Alex, Vigneshwaran Subbiah AkkayasamyNewly resettled indigenous communities often remain invisible to social work practice until a crisis demands intervention. This Voices from Practice section draws on engagement with the Gond tribe, India’s largest Indigenous community, particularly a displaced Gond settlement in Gondi Nagar, Coimbatore, uprooted from Nagpur, Maharashtra, over 60 years ago and now comprising nearly 1000 households. Fieldwork pointed out the depth of these vulnerabilities and the ethical and practice complexities of evaluating a historically displaced community without repeating extractive patterns, shaping an adapted application of Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC’s) Graduation Approach. Assessment itself, done sensitively, is already an intervention.