Bastar District is located in the state of Chhattisgarh in central India. Jagdalpur is the district headquarter of this district. Bastar was one of the 16 Madhya Pradesh districts that formed the new state of Chhattisgarh and in 1999, the district was divided into the present-day districts of Bastar, Dantewada, and Kanker.

The district has an area of 8755.79 km². Bastar District is bounded on the northwest by Rajnandgaon District, on the north by Kondagaon District, on the east by Nabarangpur and Koraput districts of Orissa state, on the south and southwest by Dantewada District, and on the west by Gadchiroli District of Maharashtra state.

The district is divided into 12 tehsils,12 panchayat samitis, 296 patwari circles and 580 Gram Panchayats.

Bastar District of the Chhattisgarh state was selected as a study site for the present work. Bastar is one of the tribal districts of the state. Before splitting in to three districts in the year 1999, was one of the largest district in India, the area of the district was even larger than the area of Kerala state and some other countries like Belgium, Israel etc. Bastar district was divided in to three districts namely Bastar, Kanker and Dantewada. Later in new state of Chhattisgarh Bastar incorporated five districts namely Bastar, Kanker, Dantewada, Narainpur and Bijapur. In the year 2007 Bastar became one of the districts amongst the five divided districts of old Bastar. The district of Bastar is located in the southern part of Chhattisgarh state, situated at the height of 2000’M. above plateau MSL. In Chhattisgarh, state Bastar district is surrounded by Kanker district in the north Maharashtra state in the west Dantewada district in the south and Orissa state in the east. The total forest area of the Bastar is 7112 sq km, which is more than the 75% of total area of the district. Out of the total population, more than 70% are tribals like Gonds, Abujhmaria, Dardamaria, Muriya, Doriya, Dhruva, Bhatra and Halba etc. The largest and the most important river in the Bastar districts is the Indrāvati, neither the river nor its tributaries dry of in the hot session. As per 2001 census, the population of Bastar is 1302253, out of them 648068 are male and 654185 are female. Majority of population 1172265 lives in rural area.