A Comparative Study of the Rhetoric of Inclusion in Electoral Campaigns and Governance: Case Study of Tribal Inclusion in Odisha

This paper critically examines the politics of tribal inclusion in Odisha through a comparative study of electoral campaigns, narratives, and governance outcomes. By analyzing the competing narratives of two dominant political parties in the state, it explores how both parties deploy inclusive rhetoric through welfare promises, historical commemorations, and symbolic gestures while often failing to deliver meaningful structural reform. The study focuses on the disconnect between political promises and implementation in key areas such as forest rights, food security, agrarian policy, and tribal women’s welfare. Drawing on various sources of data, the paper reveals how issues like delayed implementation of the Forest Rights Act, failures in welfare schemes, and the persistent weakening of agrarian systems among tribal groups reflect deeper dissonance between rhetoric and reality. The paper argues that inclusion is often reduced to a floating signifier, mobilized as electoral capital that does not lead to transformative structural change. Ultimately, it calls for a relational, structural understanding of inclusion that addresses intersecting exclusions in land, gender, and tribal livelihoods.