New Delhi, Nov 29 (IANS): Lack of awareness, not attending to institutional medical facilities, distinctive culture, geographical isolation, and backwardness are reasons behind the higher Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) among tribal communities, the Parliament was told on Monday.

Higher IMR, and number of cases of women affected by anaemia may not be exclusively due to high dropout rate, lack of education, and there may be other reasons like lack of awareness, not attending to institutional medical facilities, distinctive culture, geographical isolation, backwardness, Minister of State for Tribal Affairs Bisheshwar Tudu told the Lok Sabha to a question on reasons due to which infant and maternal mortality rates and the cases of women affected by anaemia are very high among tribal communities.

To address the issue, the government is implementing Tribal Sub-Plan (TSP), Schedule Tribe Component (STC), Development Action Plan for Development of STs (DAPSTs) for overall development of tribal people across the country, he said.

"Besides, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, 40 Central Ministries/Departments have been obligated by NITI Aayog for earmarking certain percentage of their total scheme allocation every year as TSP funds for tribal development. TSP funds are spent by obligated Central Ministries, Departments under their schemes for various development projects relating to education, health, agriculture, irrigation, roads, housing, drinking water, electrification, employment generation, skill development, etc. for accelerated socio-economic development of Scheduled Tribes (STs) in the country."

State governments are also supposed to earmark TSP funds in proportion to ST population (Census 2011) in the state with respect to total state plan.

In order to bridge the gap, Ministry of Tribal Affairs is implementing the about 14 schemes and programmes for Tribal population in addition to the initiatives of line ministries and states under TSP, Tudu added.