Whose Nation?

WIose Nalion?
TIe BispIaced as Viclins oJ BeveIopnenl

AulIov|s) Snilu KolIavi
Souvce Econonic and FoIilicaI WeeII, VoI. 31, No. 24 |Jun. 15, 1996), pp. 1476-1485
FuIIisIed I Economic and Political Weekly
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Whose Nation?
The Displaced as Victims of Development
Smitu Kothari
Efforts at minimising displacement or improving resettlement will only be marginal, palliative and temporary if
they are not contextualised in a wider socio-political context. Three contentions support the argument: first, that
the current patterns of economic development which are constantly invoked to justify the forced eviction of people
all over the country, are themselves incompatible with the goals of creating wider conditions of equity and social w
security. Second, despite constitutional mandates, in an overwhelming number of cases, national and regional interests
violate the interests of politically and economically weaker groups and individuals. Third, political and ecological
solutions sought must recognise the need to both democratise the control over the resources and processes of production
and regenerate the degraded ecological resources.
The total domination of nature inevitably
entails a domination of people by the
techniques of domination.
Andre Gorz'
"I am most unhappy that development
projects displace tribal people from their
habitat, especially as project authorities do
not always take care to properly rehabilitate
the affected population. But sometimes there
is no alternative and we have to go ahead
in the larger interest..."
Indira Gandhi, 19842
Introduction
THIS paper, while providing an overview
of developmental displacement, situates the
debate on displacement and resettlement in
a wider socio-political context. It argues that
if this context is neglected, efforts at
minimising displacement or improving
resettlement will only be marginal, palliative
and temporary. These efforts will not, except
in a few rare cases, improve the socio-
economic and cultural security of the
communities who are displaced. Three
contentions support the argument.
The first contention is that the current
patterns of economic development which
have been constantly invoked to justify the
forced eviction of people all over the country,
are themselves incompatible with the goals
of creating wider conditions of equity and
social security. Further, these pattems have
been equated with national progress where
"public purpose" and "national interest" have
been used interchangeably and based on the
political premise that nation states are
sacrosanct political entities and possess
exclusive rights to political sovereignty and
the power of eminent domain:
In the name of the Constitution, courts and
governments, continue to justify large-scale
acquisition of land supposedly "for the public
good". For instance, as recently as 1994, the
Supreme Court stated that,
The power to acquire private property for
public use is an attribute of sovereignty and
is essential to the existence of a government.
The power of eminent domain was
recognised on the principle that the sovereign
state can always acquire the property of a
citizen for public good, without the owner's
consent... The right to acquire an interest in
land compulsorily has assumed increasing
importance as a result of requirement of
such land more and more everyday, for
different public purpose and to implement
the promises made by the framers of the
Constitution to the people ofIndia (emphasis
added).4
Claims that local populations should be
granted inalienable rights to their lands where
state access is subject to a mutually defined
process of negotiation are interpreted as
'sub-nationalist' or 'secessionist' and
therefore, except in the rarest of rare cases,
denounced.5 This issue gains greater
complexity in societies like India where
regular elections are held and it is thereby
assumed that those who are elected to rule
"represent" the people and have been thus
vested with the authority to define what is
and what is not in the national interest.6
These patterns and assumptions need to
be challenged and rethought if any serious
effort is to be made to reduce the number
of victims of displacement and to widen the
base of social and economic justice.
The second contention is that the issue of
displacement and resettlement has to be
viewed within the broad question of
distribution of power. Despite constitutional
mandates and an emphasis on favouring the
underprivileged, in an overwhelming number
of cases, national and regional (and
increasingly global) interests - the primary
beneficiaries of the developmental process -
transgress from or violate the interests of
politically and economically weaker groups
and individuals. In decisions on who should
be displaced and what should be the treatment
meted out to them, the more powerful
interests have continued to prc . aiil, especially
when they have encountered poor and
politically weak populations. This question
is therefore essentially linked to demo-
cratising the planning process itself and
integrally involving the historically
underprivileged and disempowered in
decisions that so crucially affect their lives,
livelihoods and lifestyles.
0
The final contention is that political and
ecological solutions must be sought which
recognise the need to both democratise the
control over the resources and processes of
production, and regenerate the degraded
ecological resources of the country. Else,
lakhs of people will continue to be consigned
"to the dustbins of history" by the processes
of planned and market-driven development.
POST-INDEPENDENCE DISPLACEMENT
Since independence, development projects
of the Five-Year Plans have displaced about
five lakh persons each year primarily as a
direct consequence of administrative land
acquisition.7 This figure does not include
displacement by non-Plan projects, changes
in land-use, acquisition for urban growth,
and loss of livelihood caused by environ-
mental degradation and pollution.8 Also not
included are the substantial displacements
that are resulting as a consequence of the
"systems of monoculture" that are replacing
the ecological diversity along the coasts, on
the lands and in the forests.
Hydroelectric and irrigation projects are
the largest source of displacement and
,destruction of habitat. Other major sources
are mines (particularly open-cast mines),
superthermal and nuclear power plants,
industrial complexes as well as military
installations, weapons testing grounds,
railways and roads, the notification and
expansion of reserved forest areas,
sanctuaries and parks and the use of profit-
improving technologies (causing large-scale
displacement of traditional fisherfolk and
handloom weavers). Most of these
interventions also adversely affect artisanal
communities and other self-employed
people. For instance, since independence,
over 1 ,600 majordams9 and tens of thousands
of medium and smaller irrigation projects
have been built with the attendant canal
1476 Economic and Political Weekly June 15, 1996
systems and the invariable consequences of
waterlogging and soil salinisation. As aresult,
between 100-120 lakh people have been
forcibly displaced. Another estimate places
the number closer to 210 lakhs by these
dams from 1951 till 1985.10
In the absence of firm projectwise data,
the estimates of the total numbers displaced
by planned development interventions from
1951-1990 range from a conservative 1 10
lakhs to an overall figure of 185 lakhs."
These figures do not include the sizeable
number of people who are not acknowledged
as being 'project affected' (i e, by loss of
livelihood caused by natural resource
extraction or degradation), those displaced
in urban areas and those victimised by the
processes of secondary displacement.'2 If
these are tallied, the number of those
displaced since independence would be as
high as four crores.
A significant number of those displaced
are tribals and other economically marginal
rural populations who have historically
depended on the natural resource base,
particularly the commons, for their
subsistence. The 29th Report of the
Commissioner of Scheduled Castes and
Tribes'3 notes that even though tribal people
are roughly 7.5 per cent of the population,
over 40 per cent of those displaced till 1990
came from these communities underscoring
the fact that tribals are disproportionately
affected by developmental displacement.
Walter Fernandes estimates that in the
recent past the proportion of tribals among
those displaced has been increasing.'4 For
example, of the 11.6 lakh persons to be
displaced by 20 representative dams above
50 metres either under construction or being
planned in the 1990s, 59 per cent are tribals.
This figure will obviously increase for dams
planned in predominantly tribal areas
(Suvamarekha, Pollavaram, etc). The Central
WaterCommission's I 990Registerof Large
Dams'" is also instructive. Of the 32 dams
of more than 50 metre height completed
between 1951 and 1970, only nine (22.13
per cent) were in tribal areas. Between 1971
and 1990, 85 additional dams of similar
sizes were either completed or were under
construction. However, by now not only
were they taller and more sophisticated,
around 60 per cent of them were in the tribal
regions.
A recent official report on the rehabilitation
of tribals, based on a comprehensive study
of I 10 projects, concludes that of the 16.94
lakh people displaced by these projects,
almost 50 per cent (8.14 lakhs) were tribals. '6
This scenario is also true for mining. A
majority of mines are located in tribal areas
and in addition to directdisplacement, mining
activity severely affects the livelihoods of
thousands more as water tables get disrupted,
overburden is dumped on fertile agricultural
land, and forests are cut.'7 Not only are com-
munities deprived of their vital subsistence
resources, the long-term sustainability of the
resources themselves is jeopardised.'8 In
Singrauli,'9 which is being developed as the
energy capital of India, (and which has the
largest open-cast coal mine in Asia), the
growing number of super thermal power
plants represent a new trend: instead of
building power stations near industrial and
urban centres, as was the practice in the past,
they build near 'captive' coal mines, and
feed the power into regional or national
grids. Although lower transaction costs is
one obvious reason for this change, the
primary reasons for it are that dispersed and
previously displaced populations are already
fragmented and disempowered, and that,
comparatively, pollution and environmental
degradation remain less 'visible'. These
processes also increase rural displacement,
particularly of tribals, since a majority of
coal mines are in tribal areas.
Experience from across the tribal areas in
the country illustrates the severe difficulties
that displaced tribal communities have had
in dealing with the market economy. Their
low level of modem skills coupled with
almost non-existent official efforts to
facilitate an easier entry into
the
dominant
economy, pushes a majority of tribals into
conditions of servility and bondage. The
need to avoid such large-scale displacement,
particularly of tribals, and in the case of
unavoidable displacement, their ultimate
resettlement on fair and equitable terms,
have become central issues of the
developmental process itself.
For a majority of tribals, geographical
space and an evolved relationship with it has
contributed. to their cultural identity and
their complex patterns of subsistence which
primarily depend on land, forests, water
bodies, and animal and plant life. In addition,
most do not live in discrete nuclear families
but in extended ones that are integrally linked
to a larger community fabric.
Despite the rhetoric to the contrary, best
summed up in Pandit Nehru's famous
statement on tribal policy,2" planning
devalues this complex interrelated integrated
lifestyle and applies reductionist legal and
economic categories to define how, if they
are to be displaced, should they be
compensated. Even for agriculturists, no titles
existed and, as a rule, the letter of the Land
Acquisition Act, 1894 (subsequently
amended in 1984) which only made the state
liable for cash compensation, in the process
legitimising the gross injustice and social
violence in reducing rights and interests into
claims and complex systems into monetary
compensation, was literally the final word.
It also only recognised individual and not
collective orcommunity rights and hereditary
usufruct rights were not even recognised.2'
Additionally, the multiple and season-
specific relationships with the ecosystem
which played a critical role in supporting
their lifestyle was neither recognised nor
compensated (assuming that much of this
can be quantified). In most cases, since there
is a fundamental gap in the lifestyles of the
planner and the tribal, even where resettle-
ment has taken place, little or no efforts have
been made to ensure access to a similar
ecological zone. Effectively, state inter-
vention and the law have primarily served
the interests of injustice rather than justice.
Ironically, much of this is conceded in
official literature. For instance, a report of
the home ministry acknowledged that, "In
the tribal areas, where the displaced persons
are given only cash compensation, the
tendencies to spend the compensation amount
by buying consumer goods and becoming
destitute are common.... In most of the
projects, the tribal oustees become listless
wanderers without a mooring."22 Soon after
independence, the constituent assembly
debates themselves acknowledged their
vulnerability and their rights.23 However,
this recognition has rarely been followed up
by state action that can even be called
mitigatory.
A small caveat, lest there is mis-
understanding: this paperdoes not propagate
the view that no displacementisthe preferred
option or that tribal cultures in a specific
geographical space need to be frozen in that
localised context. After all, the process of
acculturation with Hindu and Muslim
practices and rituals has been a long and
differentiated one, and these cultures have
evolved complex relationships with the
"outside world." What is being argued from
a constitutionalist as well as ecological-
political perspective is that no displacement
is just unless the due process outlined here
is respected and that developmental
interventions need to internalise these social,
economic, ecological and processual
obligations to those who are displaced -
obligations that may require the intervention
itself to be altered or recast.
TRAUMA OF DISPLACEMENT
The experience of the post-independence
period from projects across the country
suggests that the long drawn out process of
displacement has caused widespread
traumatic psychological and socio-cultural
consequences. These include the dismantling
of production systems, desecration of
ancestral sacred zones or graves and temples,
scattering of kinship groups and family
systems, disorganisation of informal social
networks that provide mutual support,
weakening of self-management and social
control, disruption of trade and market links,
etc. Essentially, what is established in the
accumulated evidence in the country suggests
that except in the rarest of rare cases, forced
displacement has resulted in, what Michael
Cernea calls "a spiral of impoverishments."24
Cernea also points out that trade links
between producers and their customer base
(and systems of exchange and barter) are
Economic and Political Weekly June 15, 1996 1477
interrupted and local labour markets are
disrupted. In addition, there is a loss of
complex social relationships which provided
avenues of representation, mediation and
conflict resolution. In essence, the very
cultural identity of the community and the
individual within it is disrupted causing
immense physiological and psychological
stress. In fact, one of the tragedies of forced
displacement is that while in most cases,
persons displaced by natural disasters or
communal violence are able to return to their
original habitat, this choice is not available
to those displaced or those whose livelihoods
are adversely affected.
These social and ecological impacts find
little reflection in project planning and policy
where the economicjustifications of projects
(particularly the cost-benefit analysis) are
essentially reductionist and devalue or ignore
basic socio-cultural and ecological processes
(most of which in any case are non-
quantifiable in conventional neoclassical
economic exercises). How, for instance, do
you value the complex social, cultural and
ecological role of the forest? How can the
cost of the destruction of biodiversity be
quantified? Or the increase in incidence of
reservoir-induced seismicity in many dam
projects? Where do you acknowledge and
respond to the multiple violations of rights
to the displaced? While there may be some
usefulness in evolving a more comprehensive
cost-benefit analysis (making, in the process,
many projects uneconomic), the danger in
relying on this exercise is that even at its
best, it "subordinates human values and
interests to those of the market, and one that
is distorted by vested interests to boot."25
The process of displacement is also
disempowering since it breaks up socio-
political organisations articulating a critique
of the project (and of the development process
itself). In fact, in many cases, this process
is fashioned in such a way that it furthers
disempowerment. Activists of the Tehri
Bandh Virodhi Samiti state that there was
a conscious strategy of the project authorities
and the state government to divide the united
resistance to the Tehri project.26 One group
of those who would be displaced (selected
from among the most active supporters of
the Samiti) was resettled near Dehradun,
almost a 100 kilometres from the dam site.
(Tragically, many of them now face their
second displacement as the lands that they
have painstakingly regenerated are needed
for the expansion of the Dehradun airport).
.While the Samiti was able to maintain some
contact with them at their new settlement,
it was impossible for it to sustain collective
action across geographical space.
The other neglected dimension of
displacement is its adverse impact on women.
Their trauma is compounded by the loss of
access to fuel, fodder and food the collection
of which inevitably requires greater time
and effort. Few resettlement sites have made
provisions for this. This is the experience
even in the "model resettlement villages" (e
g, Malu), which were built for the Gujarat
oustees of the Sardar Sarovar project.
Additionally, when displaced, most women
experience greater pauperisation and get
confined to the margins of the labour market.
Similarly, children are adversely affected
since not only is schooling less accessible,
in most cases there is also a disruption in
the traditional socialisation processes.
APATHETIC PLANNING
An overwhelming majority of planners
invariably see people who happen to live at
or around the siting of a development project,
as impediments to progress, as those who
"must make sacrifices for the development
of the nation."27 Nehru was one of the first
who legitimated this attitude. In a speech a
few months after independence, at the
foundation laying ceremony of India's first
major river-valley project, the Hirakud dam
in Orissa, he said to those facing
displacement, "If you have to suffer, you
should suffer in the interest of the country. "28
Dams and other large projects were, after
all, also legitimated as symbols of
independence and self-sufficiency.
In fact, in several cases, displacement itself
was presented as development. It is this
mindset that justifies the labelling of those
who criticise these projects as not only anti-
project or anti-development but also anti-
national. As a consequence, the democratic
activities of the critics of these projects are
often treated as a public order problem.
Planners and administrators invariably
capitalise on and manipulate the relatively
weaker socio-economic and political position
of most of the people facing displacement.
Their numbers are underestimated, they are
treated indifferently and only minimal cash
compensation, if at all, is paid.29 There is
an extraordinary unwillingness to grant them
clear rights, such as security of tenure on
alternative developed land sites. A graphic
and painful example is again that of the
displaced of Singrauli who are part of the
over two lakh people first displaced by the
Rihand dam in 1964. Tens of thousands who
in the absence of any resettlement
programme, settled on the banks of the
reservoir, cultivating the land which is
exposed when the reservoir recedes in the
summer season. They were subsequently
displaced by thermal power plants, coal
mines, railways, industries and urbanisation
and now face displacement for an
incomprehensible fifth time in a single
generation as their temporary settlements
are to be evicted to make way for urban, road
and rail transport and afforestation projects.
Since the dam was a foregone conclusion
and, anticipating further 'development',
could they not have been permanently
resettled and given clear titles to land in
1964 itself?
Other studies across the country have
documented multiple displacements of
communities who had after a painful and
traumatic period of transition, established a
new lifestyle only to be informed that they
are to be moved again. In addition to the
plight of the oustees of the Tehri project
mentioned above, two other recent examples
are of fishing communities displaced for the
New Mangalore Port in the 1960s and
resettled as agriculturists, who are now being
displaced a second time for the Konkan
railway and those displaced by the Kabini
dam in the 1970s who are being displaced
again for a biosphere reserve.
In an overwhelming numberof cases, there
is an almost arrogant assumption that the
project that has been drawn up for
implementation is socially and economically
the most appropriate and that the
development intervention cannot be
challenged because it has been conceived by
experts and is in the 'public' and 'national'
interest. Alternatives that could have been
more democratically conceived and more
economical as well as more sustainable over
generations have almost never been
considered. Feasibility studies neglect this
dimension. Also, older mentalities of 'doing
development' and bureaucratic routines
inhibit openness and sensitivity to listening,
internalising and acting in the collective
interests of victimised communities. In that
sense we may argue that there continues to
be a class bias in the planning and
implementation process itself, which in turn
sustains and often compounds the economic
gap between the primary beneficiaries of
these developmental interventions and their
victims.
In addition to this, there is also a basic
institutional weakness in comprehensively
addressing the displacement of people. For
instance, there is a continuing inability of
government departments, ministries,
corporations and development authorities to
better co-ordinate their activities. For
communities facing displacement, product-
ive activities is an integrated whole. They
do not separate water resources from
agriculture from energy. The compartment-
alisation of policy or the sectorally informed
decision-making process has played havoc
with this integrated system. Not only is there
a critical lack of machinery to deal with the
complex process of resettlement, in cases
where some co-ordination is attempted, there
are significant interdepartmental conflicts.
One of the most graphic examples is again
of the Singrauli situation where a plethora
of agencies
- Northern Coalfields Limited,
National Thermal Power Corporation, the
Singrauli Area Development Authority as
well as district and state level administrators
from two states - had differing commitments
to the displaced. Almost 30 years after the
building of the Rihand dam and the massive
subsequent expansion of the coal mines,
1478 Economic and Political
Weekly June 15, 1996
power plants and a complex of urban and
industrial developments, this co-ordination
still does not exist.
This reality also points to the urgent need
to institutionalise public hearings as well as
for democratic decision-making coupled with
legislation that facilitates this. It may be
argued that more legislation does not
guarantee the realisation of rights. After all,
even with one of the most progressive
Constitutions (despite critical flaws) and
despite constitutional guarantees, violations
(particularly of the rights of the disadvantaged
and the poor) are galore. Yet, as a first step,
there is no substitute to the more open access
to information and to enlightened public
discourse. This process must be an integral
part of the planning, implementation and
monitoring of the project itself and not an
adjunct that is seen as a 'burden'.
INCOMPATIBILITY OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
AND JUSTICE
While mitigatory strategies may be
devised, it must be recognised that the
scale of displacement and, to a large extent,
the official attitude towards those facing
displacement, is a direct consequence of
the dominant patterns of economic
development whiich continue to depend
quite heavily on the intensive and extensive
utilisation of natural resources. For
communities who depend on these
resources as the primary source of their
livelihood, the extractive processes set into
motion a destructive dynamic that forces
them to either become migrants or move
onto increasingly fragile lands. Despite
growing evidence from projects all over the
country, a host of environmental problems
remain unacknowledged. For instance, this
concentration of large numbers of people
on increasingly fragile eco-systems most
often leads to further unsustainable use of
resources. All this leads to increasing
economic marginalisation and cultural
insecurity which compel most of the
displaced to seek desperate means of
survival - cultivating increasingly fragile
lands, migration, bondage, contract, crime,
even prostitution. The case of the Ukai dam
where tribal women displaced by the project
were regularly soliciting truck drivers on
the national highway from Baroda to
Ahmedabad is not an exception.3"
The experience of the past almost five
decades of planned development demon-
strates that large-scale displacement is inbuilt
in the patterns of economic development
which themselves are incompatible with
social justice and genuine long-term
environmental sustainability. The social
impacts of the recent thrust towards a greater
market-driven economic process point to a
reality that as the national and global
economies penetrate deeper into the interior
areas of the country, the lives, livelihoods
and lifestyles of those who critically depend
on the natural resource base will continue
to be seriously threatened.
In 1988-89, a group of scholars, activists,
lawyers and other concemed people,3" after
consultations with community representatives
and social movements all over the country,
had drafted a National Policy on
Developmental Resettlement. The policy
stated that these development projects,
entail a massive investment in public money
involving decisions on priorities related to
public needs. Such projects not only involve
the harnessing of natural resources such as
land, water, minerals, forests, etc, but also
alter the existing distribution, use, access to
and control over natural resources among
different sections of society raising in the
process, vital issues concerning the fairness,
equity and justice in the allocation and
utilisation of these resources.
What was highlighted was the need to also
do a class-benefit analysis of development
projects, in addition to an analysis of their
economic and ecological impacts. The policy
draft also stated that,
Often the ill effects of displacement raise
doubts about the very viability, desirability
and justifiability of the project.
II
Process of Resettlement
Despite the scale of displacement,
resettlement of those displaced by
developmental projects and processes has
been minimal. Notwithstanding some efforts
by the government and independent groups
over the past decade, data on the number of
people displaced since independence, their
current location and the changes in their
socio-economic status, is almost non-
existent. Some indicative data highlights the
severity of the apathy and indifference of
official agencies and the government to take
responsibility for those who, in an
overwhelming number of cases have been
forced to forgo their ancestral habitats and
have experienced social and cultural
disruption in the past four and a half decades
of planned development. For example, 25
years after the building of the prestigious
Bhakra-Nangal project, only 730 of the 2,108
families displaced in the early 1950s from
the Bilaspur and Una districts of Himachal
Pradesh, had been resettled. A majority of
those displaced by other renowned projects,
like the Hirakud dam in Orissa or the Rihand
dam in Uttar Pradesh, have never been
officially resettled.
The other illustrative example is that of
the oustees of the Pong dam in Himachal
Pradesh, who were displaced in the late
1960s. Out of the 30,000 families or more
that were displaced, only 16,000 were found
eligible for compensation and in the end
only 3,756 were moved hundreds of miles
to a completely different cultural, linguistic
and ecological zone in Rajasthan. Some of
the land meant for their occupation was
already occupied, while most of the other
land was uncultivable. Compounding this,
the host community was not prepared for
their arrival and eventually over 75 per cent
returned to Himachal only to find minimal
support for their re-establishment. They
migrated all over the northern part of the
country, most of them in various stages of
destitution.32
Official indifference and callousness is
also evident in the lack of data regarding the
total numberof persons displaced by different
developmental interventions. The trend has
consistently been one of underestimating or
neglecting altogether the number to be
displaced. Independent studies of the oustees
of Hirakud placed the figure for those
displaced at 1,80,000 while government
figures were 1,10,000. Official data for the
controversial dam on the Narmada river, the
Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) fluctuates
between 10,758 families and 30,1 34 families.
The Morse Committee Report3l citing the
World Bank and other research data places
the figure of those who will be displaced by
the dam and the canals at 1,75,000, while
theNarmadaBachao Andolan has maintained
that over 2,00,000 will be displaced by the
dam and the canals. This figure does not
include the sizeable number of people who
face displacement as a consequence of dam-
related activities, such as the sanctuary at
Shoolpaneshwar, compensatory afforestation,
and those dependent on the sites chosen for
resettlement, etc. If these are included, the
number of displaced persons would be
above 4,00,000.
Compounding Uncertainty and Insecurity:
The time it takes between the decision to
initiate a project, through its design and
implementation, is a period of escalating
uncertainty and insecurity for potential
oustees. Most often they lack even the basic
information on the schedule and the extent
of displacement and are at the mercy of
officials, speculators and a wide variety of
'outsiders' who spread rumours frequently
with the intention of pu..hing the oustee off
the land. The lower the cost of doing this,
the better it is. A climate of uncertainty sets
in, distorting and altering the entire social
milieu.
Additionally, tribals and dalit communities
are extremely vulnerable. Too much is
stacked against them. Even in highly
publicised projects like the Sardar Sarovar,
where years of struggle and public pressure
has brought significant gains in the policy
for resettlement, the actual practice of
resettlement on the ground has been shoddy,
grossly inadequate, and, in several cases
downright insulting (model colonies
notwithstanding)
- and this too over a decade
after construction of the dam began in full
earnest.34
The other policy that has been selectively
applied since 1967 by the central government
is to provide one job per family to those
displaced by industrial projects. While this
sounds minimally just, in practice it has
provided little succour to those displaced.
Most oustees are unskilled and in the absence
of training programmes eventually end up
with the lowest paying and temporary jobs.
Further complications arise when family
sizes are not based on nuclear families, land
records are in the name of an ancestor who
is no longer alive, etc.
Compensation: It would not be an
exaggeration to say that very few resettlement
programmes in the country have adequately
compensated all those who are dispossessed.
The question of how oustees will make a
living after displacement has been a matter
of lowest concern to project planners. The
little interest that is taken is more a
consequence of wider public awareness and
local resistance or the high profile of the
project concerned. In fact, in most cases, the
Land Acquisition Act is used to pay an
insultingly low cash payment that is grossly
inadequate to restore and enhance standards
of living. The experience even with
compensation for potential oustees reflects
persistent ad hocism where the oustees
continue to be perceived as a burden.
Dependency: The low amounts of
compensation and, in rare cases, land-for-
land, reinforce dependency on officials and
official agencies as those who face displace-
ment hope to secure a better altemative. The
trauma of displacement is unfortunately
compounded by the disproportionate amount
of energy and time that the displaced have
to expend in 'dealing' with the agency. It
also makes for a wide range of corrupt
practices where the oustee is exploited by
government officials, lawyers, and even
voluntary agencies. The Srisailam and Ukai
cases adequately reflect what are not unique
cases. It would make for a more sane and
just policy to involve the displaced in the
entire process of their shifting (if the project
is inevitable), handing over clear titles to the
land along with adequate support facilities
(including grants or other forms of aid that
can tide the family over the first period of
the first harvest) that would permit
communities to manage their resettlement in
an open and transparent manner.
This points to the clear need for an
independent institutional arrangement. This
is all the more necessary since the project
implementing agency is, after execution,
keen to move on to the next assignment. This
institutional arrangement should be vested
with the responsibility of ensuring that the
process of resettlement takes place with the
least possible social, economic and
environmental disruption.
Transition Stage: One of the most traumatic
stages of resettlement is the process of
transiting from the original habitat to the
resettlement site. If there is a commitment
to minimising the trauma of the overall
process of displacement and ensuring that
conditions are provided at the resettlement
site where the community can improve its
livelihood, this phase needs the most
attention. Past experience has shown that
this phase is inordinately long, and fraught
with a diversity of 'adjustment' problems."
Again, what requires attention is a strategy
that ensures the social and economic security
of the displaced.
One of the few cases where efforts were
made to implement a land-for-land policy
was with the second of the two dams of the
Upper Krishna Irrigation II Project in
Karnataka. The World Bank funded part of
the project and then realising that pressure
for a better plan was building from local
communities who had seen the experience
of those displaced by the first dam, withheld
its funds pending a detailed resettlement
plan. This led to the involvement of a state-
based social action group, MYRADA, in
two phases of the plan- surveys and
implementation.36 While several families
were provided plots in the command area,
others were resettled on unirrigated land or
given the choice of an income-generating
project. But even here, experience showed
that those with assets and power prior to
displacement cornered most of the benefits
while most of those belonging to poorer
communities were left with unproductive
lands and a few temporary jobs.
The case of the Jawaharlal Nehru Port in
New Bombay illustrates how lands were
acquired far in excess of what was needed
for the present and future needs of the port,
that these were then sold to private builders
and contractors, that those who had assets
prior to displacement were able to corner
most of the compensation and jobs and that
marginal peasants and fisherfolk received
almost no benefits, even the mandatory one
job per family. The experience of
economically and socially underprivileged
people (sharecroppers, landless labour,
fisherfolk, etc) displaced by the Upper
Krishna project has been identical.
These two cases underscore what is
generally the rule all over the country where
for most fishing communities, the process
of displacement also increases social tensions
as they transit from a predominantly
collective and equitable economic situation
to one where individual based employment
widens economic disparities.37 Dam
reservoirs also adversely affect river-based
fishing communities who are unable to afford
and adapt to reservoir-based fishing.
Communities living downstream are also
adversely affected. For the SSP, for instance,
thousands of downstream families dependent
on fishing will be made destitute as a
consequence of salt water ingress owing to
a reduction in the flow of the river.38
Conflicts with Host Community: A
multitude of problems arising out of conflicts
with the host community have been
encountered at the resettlement sites.
Experiences from the Srisailam, Pong and
Narmada dams, from the Kaiga Nuclear
Power Plant, from Singrauli and elsewhere
have highlighted problems ranging from
conflicts in the sharing of commons,jealousy
of the host communities arising out of the
special services provided to oustees, etc.
Much of this is unavoidable as most sites
of resettlement are in ecologically fragile
areas and in India, where every ecological
niche is occupied or sustains some families
and communities, new populations place
additional pressure. Inevitably what has
resulted is an inability to adjust and manage
and the consequent marginalisation,
compounding the migration towards urban
centres.
Additionally, resettlement, wherever it has
taken place, has always been on lands where
no detailed surveys of the social, ecological
and physical characteristics were made. The
land and water use, socio-economic patterns
as well as access to commons (to name just
three) of the host communities have rarely
been studied, which invariably have led to
conditions of animosity and conflict both
with the government and the host community.
It is precisely this reality that also points to
the need to locate the displacement
prpblematique in an ecological and political
critique.
III
Protests and Resistance
The growing awareness among
communities who face displacement, has
given rise to a wide range of protests all over
the country. This resistance is not new. In
numerous parts of the country, by the middle
of the 19th century itself, communities had
mobilised to oppose colonial policies of
resource extraction. This opposition was
significantly manifest in tribal areas where
these communities did not acquiesce quietly
in the face of external intervention. There
were protests and rebellions against colonial
laws such as the Forest Act of 1876 and tribal
peasants were waging struggles against state
intervention in forest resources based on
their own moral economy. Guha and Gadgil
have aptly described this conflict as between
the political economy of profit and the moral
economy of provision.39
Protests against dams were evident as early
as the 1920s, when, for instance, Senapati
Bapat launched an organised resistance
against dams in Maharashtra. In the post-
independence period, progress, national self-
sufficiency, industrialism, and the large
development project were seen as
synonymous. Carried by the euphoria of
nation building, most 'sacrifices' sought by
the rulers were widely seen as legitimate,
justified as being for the 'national good'.
This is not to say that there were no protests,
no resistance. The firstmajor protests against
displacement as well as against the logic of
large technological interventions in nature
were in the mid-1960s, primarily in tribal
areas arising out of an immediate perceived
threat to their livelihood and lifestyle.
The voices of conscientious engineers like
Kapil Bhattacharya,40 who painstakingly
documented the critical fallacies in the
Damodar Valley Project. inspired other
political activists, including political leaders
like Ram Manohar Lohia, and collective
resistance (at least seeking better
resettlement) grew in several parts of the
country. By the late 1960s and early 1970s,
communities facing displacement were
mobilising and agitations were visible,
particularly in Maharashtra which became
the first state to promulgate an overarching
law protecting some of the rights of the
displaced.4'
However, after nearly three decades of
protests by political parties,42 social
movements and other forums of the displaced,
projects still lack a detailed comprehensive
blueprint for resettlement. A common
question from people facing displacement
is that while precise details exist regarding
the technical and economic aspects of the
projects, backed by scores of professionals,
why is there never a plan for them? Why
are they never consulted, even post-facto?
"If detailed blueprints exist for every bolt
and every bag of cement", why is
comprehensive rehabilitation seen as such
a burden at best to be reluctantly handled
as an act of benevolence?
Today's struggles-from the Narmada
valley to coastal Kerala, from south Bihar
toThane-arepartof this historicaltradition.43
They are contesting the dominant pat-
terns of economic development with their
inherent propensity to displace and uproot
communities from their sources of
subsistence and meaning. They are asserting
the need to both democratise the dominant
patterns of economic development as well
as to seek alternatives to them. They feel
that these patterns which threaten their
cultural and social fabric and which seek
their 'sacrifices' for a 'public good' that is
both disputable and dubious, are
fundamentally flawed. The protests by tribal
and other vulnerable communities are also
challenging the use of development
programmes which sustain dependency on
the governmental apparatus as well as
resettlement exercises which legitimise
greater control by this apparatus over the
lives and livelihoods of those dispersed by
development interventions.
As far as tribal subsistence systems are
concerned, there is also a wider awareness
and recognition that these systems represent
greater community control and collective
management of economic and ecological
resources, with, in most cases, due respect
to and balanced interaction with nature. The
tribal understanding of land has,
encompassed territory, habitat, base of social
organisation, political viability, cultural
identification, myth, symbol and religion,
and included not only the territory but a
living entity with the environment, spirits,
cosmos and all else in a reciprocal
relationship, linking the present with the
past and future generations of humans,
animals and plants."
Threats to this relationship have directly
contributed to tribal militancy to recover
access to land. In many parts of tribal
Maharashtra, for instance, these efforts are
now encompassing struggles to recover
alienated lands or unutilised lands acquired
for projects, reverse the manipulation of
records, regularise the rights over cultivated
forest and government waste land, etc. In
most parts of the country, these protests have
met with either forms of co-option or outright
repression.
In addition to highlighting the extent of
displacement, the inadequacy of resettlement
efforts as well as a critique of development
projects themselves, movements are also
challenging the limited democratisation of
the Indian state where the strategies of nation
building and national security and of
integrating into the national mainstream
continue to be predominant. An entire body
of literature based on communities regaining
control over their lives and life processes has
recently emerged.45
IV
Displacement and the Social Sciences
Historically, social scientists have been
better at recording tragedies and the trauma
of evictions and displacement than at
generating the conditions that would prevent
these from happening. There also has been
an inability of social science research to
acknowledge the full implications of the
processes of displacement primarily since
this has to be grounded in a larger and
structural critique of development. Cemea
argues that,
involuntary population displacement and
resettlement are widespread enough, big
enough, frequent enough, complex and
consequential enough to merit the full
mobilisation of the conceptual, analytical
and operational tools available to address it.
Two areas where there is still considerable
weakness is in the identification of the range
of disruptions and the strategies to deal with
the politics of displacement itself. It is the
contention of this paper that this is primarily
due to the w eakness in defining the deeper
causes and the full range of displacement
in India today.
So while the multiple displacements in
Singrauli are reluctantly acknowledged, the
fact that a complexity of factors militate
against any just resolution for the families
facing these repeated displacements (in a
single generation), receive little attention.
Inevitably therefore, the policies and
strategies suggested are unable and, will
remain unable, to provide lasting security
of livelihood and tenure to the oustees of
Singrauli. This situation prevails in
practically all areas where people have been
displaced by development projects.
Similarly, the range of injustices that are
visited upon people who face displacement
in what one may call the project planning
and pre-implementation period as well as the
variety of disruptions that are caused in the
implementation and the post-implementation
period are inadequately acknowledged.
While it is not possible to dwell on these
issues at length here, it is important to
recogni se some ground realities that continue
to be neglected. The list below is not
exhaustive but only indicative of the
complexity of the developmental process
and the social and cultural trauma that oustees
face. In the pre-implementation phase, we
may point to:
1 The desirability and justifiability of the
project or developmental intervention itself.
Therefore, at the outset, the need to ensure
a debate on the patterns of development that
are le-,itimated by the intervention concerned
and whether the intervention is the mostjust,
appropriate and sustainable. To also
simultaneously demand and work towards
ensuring transparency and access to
information about the intervention.
2 Consultation with representatives of the
local population, particularly and
predominantly those who are more
vulnerable and the institutionalisation of
this process.
3 The justifiability of reducing or winding
down development programmes and
resources for the area facing submergence
(or occupation or acquisition).
4 The harassment, intimidation and
repression of potential oustees.
5 If displacement is inevitable, then the full
participation of the affected communities in
defining a comprehensive rehabilitation
package.
In the implementation phase some of the
neglected impacts are:
1 Efforts to bribe community leaders with
the intention of seeking the consent of the
community;
2 A wide range of human rights violations
including threats, harassment, police actions,
firings on peaceful protesters, forced entry
into villages and homes, destruction of private
property, etc;
3 The disruption of nomadic routes which
are crucial to the survival of nomadic
communities, and
4 Land acquisition that in turn displaces
those dependent on the acquired land.
The post-implementation stage which, for
those displaced, is among the most traumatic
and undocumented experiences, since project
authorities 'move on' to the next assignment
and government machineries are not oriented
to undertake long-term monitoring. Here we
can point to:
1 The condition of the displaced in the
existing resettlement sites;
2 Tracing those who were paid cash
compensation and who dispersed over a vast
geographical area (as was the case with some
of the Pong dam oustees).
3 Responsibility to those who were displaced
by earlier projects but who continue to face
a grim economic and social predicament.
4 The displacement caused by the intensive
developmental activity that inevitably
follows an initial developmental intervention.
Considering that the development,
displacement and resettlement processes have
complex political, economic and social
dimensions that most often transcend the
local context, there is a need for greater and
more sustained multidisciplinary social
science intervention that goes beyond the
recording of the trauma that displaced persons
face in a specific locale.
This challenge is even more urgent since
the New Economic Policies are going to
impel a greater demand for land, in turn
compounding the displacement of people.
FALSE SHORTAGE OF LAND
One of the main contentions of planners
is the paucity of land available for resettling
the thousands of people displaced by
developmental interventions. An ecological
and political approach demonstrates how the
often heard claim that 'land is not available'
is just a part of the official attitude of evading
responsibility towards the less powerful.
Over half of India's land, capable of biotic
production is in various forms of
degradation.46 Whileasubstantial proportion
of it is still used, the paucity of water and
other resources for maintenance, result not
just in productivity remaining acutely low
but in some of it going out of production.
In addition, there are substantial lands under
the forest department which are critically
degraded.
The acquisition, distribution and
regeneration of this land could play a dual
role: of giving the displaced community
clear titles to land that can become productive
and of gradually restoring degraded
ecosystems (which would also mean bringing
degraded land fully back into production or
regenerating forest lands).
Secondly, in almost all parts of the country,
landowners hold lands that are in excess of
ceiling or are managed in absentee situations.
Surveys in the command area of the Sardar
Sarovar Project in Gujarat have shown that
a significant amount of land is available with
absentee landlords (primarily patidar) whose
offsprings have moved to industry. However,
this land is both expensive and often hard
to acquire owing to the political clout of the
patidar and other powerful landowning
communities who want to either retain control
or charge extremely high rates. The only
explanation for the lack of any effort in this
direction by the Gujarat government is that
they lack political will, or do not want to
set a precedent.
Project authorities across the country have
also acquired land that is far in excess of
their requirements on the plea that it is
required for future expansion plans.
Significant lands would be released if the
land held in excess which has not been used
despite expansion is distributed among the
oustees. For instance, the NTPC in Singrauli
has lands under its control that can adequately
resettle displaced populations. What must
be held illegal is the practice of selling these
lands to private builders and contractors as
the already mentioned case of the Jawaharlal
Nehru Port47 so graphically illustrates.
If major gains are going to accrue from
the project concerned, those who will be
adversely affected need to be given a share
of the benefits. For instance, in the case of
dam projects, clear titles should be given in
the command area. This is rarely done since
lands become perennially irrigated and the
dominant interests want to retain control. In
Ukai, for instance, the Patidar farmers
benefited substantially as a result of the
transition from labour intensive rain-fed
coarse grain cultivation to cash crops.
Employment opportunities declined for the
traditional landless and marginal peasant
both because of the new agricultural practices
and an escalation of competition with the
arrival in the area of the oustees of the dam.
WORLD BANK POLICY
As a direct consequence of growing
protests, popular resistance and criticisms of
its insensitivity to social and cultural impacts
of the projects it has supported, the World
Bank has, over the past 15 years,
acknowledged the scale of displacements
and tried to define a comprehensive policy.48
With the notable exception of the
International Labour Organisation's policy
for tribal and indigenous people, no other
international organisation has attempted to
spell out and define policy regarding the
complex socio-cultural impacts of
displacement. A recent institutionwide
review, was also completed last year. It
acknowledges that:
When people are forcibly moved, production
systems may be dismantled, long-established
residential settlements are disorganised, and
kinship groups are scattered. Many jobs and
assets are lost. Informal social networks that
are part of daily sustenance systems
-
providing mutual help in childcare, food
security, revenue transfers, labour exchange
and other basic sources of socio-economic
support
-
collapse because of territorial
dispersion. Health care tends to deteriorate.
Links between producers and their
consumers are often severed, and local labour
markets are disrupted. Local organisations
and formal and informal associations
disappear because of the sudden departure
of their members, often in different
directions. Traditional authority and
management systems can lose leaders.
Symbolic markers, such as ancestral shrines
and graves, are abandoned, breaking links
with the past and with peoples' cultural
identity. Not always visible or quantifiable,
these processes are nonetheless real. The
cumulative effect is that the social fabric and
economy are torn apart.49
The report also accepts that, comparatively,
women are more adversely affected than
men, "...since they are more likely to earn
their living from small businesses located
at or near their residences. Woman may also
be affected disproportionately in rural areas
since they are more often dependent on
common property resources". When
compensation is paid to heads of households,
most of whom are assumed to be men, it
converts, "the collective assets of the family
to cash in male hands".5"
Other policies adopted by the Bank allow
for the retention of a large measure of tribal
autonomy and cultural choice.
Such a policy of self-determination
emphasises the choice of tribal groups to
their own way of life and seeks, therefore,
to minimise the imposition of different social
or economic systems...
This policy also stresses that,
...national governments and international
organisations must support rights to land
used or occupied by tribal people, to their
ethnic identity, and to cultural autonomy
and that national governments or non-tribal
neighbours should not compete with the
tribal society on its own lands for its
resources.
More recently, anthropologists and
sociologists have accompanied Bank
missions and have identified the wide range
of immediate impacts on communities
displaced.5'
While there has undeniably been progress
in policy statements and efforts to seek the
compliance of governments, there has been
a critical lack of implementation on the
ground. Thus, there remains a wide gap
between intent and implementation. It is
evident that this is primarily due to a much
weaker recognition of the structural causes
of displacement and the systemic constraints
to ensuring that a comprehensive resettlement
plan is drawn up and implemented.
Additionally, the Bank's structural
adjustment policies as well as its support to
a wide range of displacement generating
projects and policies overwhelmingly
contradict its stated commitments to those
who aredisplaced. The 1994 review indicates
that globally, over two million people are
threatened by B ank-funded projects. In India,
the study on resettlement conducted by its
Operations Evaluation Department, states
that, 'The overall record is poor to the extent
of being unacceptable."52 It can be argued
th.at an institution that has been responsible
Ior so much social nieglect should not interfere
in domestic policy-making. Furthermore,
the primary responsibility for citizens of an
individual country, is to seek accountability
from the government in power. Nonetheless,
given that global economic institutions are
increasingly playing a central role in defining
economic and other policy, it has become
incumbent on representatives of the affected
communities as well as other concerned
people to demand and secure the
accountability from both the government as
well as, in alliance with citizens groups in
other countries, global institutions.53
It is also clear from the experience with
other World Bank funded projects that the
degree of its capacity to enforce its policy
is linked to the nature of the regime in power,
the strength of the economic and political
interests behind the regime, the nature of the
countervailing pressure of organisations of
the affected people as well as the Bank's
own structural incapabilities. These are
interlinked factors. For instance, strong
vested interests prevail over community
mobilisation as in the SSP, in spite of the
widespread local, national, and international
support for the Narmada Bachao Andolan.
On the other hand, the Krishna Project in
Karnataka was more effective in
rehabilitation because the regime was
amenable. In the context of the SSP, during
the period that the Bank was directly
involved,54 the furthest it went was to push
for the implementation of the resettlement
policy on a pari passu basis - as and when
displacement was imminent. The Bank has
recently argued that if it had not withdrawn
from the SSP, its presence would have
facilitated better resettlement.55 For an
institution that abets destruction through
displacement on such a large scale, this is
indeed a poor public relations statement that
exposes an objectionable desire to play a
moral and policing role in countries like
India.
ABSENCE OF A RESESTLEMENT POLICY
Despite the magnitude of displacement
and the longevity of the multiple trauma that
most oustees face, one of the most glaring
examples of successive central governments
shunning their constitutional responsibility
has been, till recently, the lack ol a national
policy for those that have to be forcibly
displaced "in the national interest".
In the past two years, there has been a
virtual flurry of policies56 and even though
the "policy of tribals displaced by
development projects" has been in the
drafting stage for the past five years, it is
only now that a range of different policies
have emerged. Some like the National
Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) and
Coal India Policy have been prepared with
a view to serve as a guiding document across
their range of operations.
All these policies, assume that since
displacement is inevitable, the need is to
"deal" with the trauma, not to question the
project or the process that is causing the
displacement. In addition, many officials (as
well as academics) have argued that
communities and individuals have a
remarkable system of adaptability, a
resilience that can see them through a period
of temporary loss. Still others have stated
that development projects that generate
displacement play a useful social role in that
they irelease labour for industry and other
'usefuil' jobs.57
Undoubtedly, there is an urgent need for
a national policy and, more importantly,
a national legislation. Some concern has
been expressed that expending energy in
securinig the formulation and adoption of
these official documents may detract
from the more important task of ensuring
that a lublic debate or the viability and
justiciability of projects themselves be
held. Ini fact, this is precisely why what
has bec-ome urgent is the process of
formulaiting and drafting a policy and
legislati on - a means to engage a wider
cross-se,ction of society to debate, not just
the proc esses of displacement and resettle-
ment, b ut the very patterns of economic
develop ment.
The recent policy drafts acknowledge
the importance of a land-for-land approach.
Howeve r, there are so many escape clauses
that the (Irafts end up ensuring the provision
of land in only the rarest of cases.
Histor-ically, the trajectory of the land-
for-land policy has followed an inversecourse
to that of the economic value of land. The
more thob value of land (and the per capita
pressure on it), the more reticent officials
have bee n in providing land for resettlement.
In the ye ars after independence, land was
providedi in several instances though in
most cas es it was dry land which the oustees
had to i urture and expend resources on
towards its upgradation. In the process,
many be came paupers. In most cases, only
those go t land who either made a collective
claim or who used political patronage. By
the 197()s, even this became rare as the
normal o fficial propensity was to avoid the
land ques;tion altogether and offer cash
compens;ation instead.
By the ir;id- 1 970s, however, wider public
awareness, the demand for greater
transpare ney in project implementation, as
well as thie more organised movements of
the midd1le farmer as well as the landless
and marg-inal peasants grew, making the
land-for-landl demand more urgent. The
new poli(y di afts acknowledge this urgency
but shirc away from making any direct
commitrnent. In fact, it can be demonstrated
that the.se policies seriously violate the
Constitu,tion since they do not guarantee
an alternlative l hat ensures the right to life
with dignity.58
CONCLUSION
The extent and range of displacement, the
signal failure to comprehensively rehabilitate
those displaced by development as well as
the critical inability of policy-makers to
successfully provide higher levels of social
security underscores two levels of addressing
the situation - palliative and structural. If
any intent of the government has to be taken
seriously, it must immediately take the
following palliative steps: comprehensively
resettle those who have been displaced in
the past as well as those whose displacement
is imminent. Land-for-land needs to be
provided as a rule while also offering the
choice of skill upgradation and permanent
absorption in the projects that are displacing
them.
So far, the dominant thinking in govern-
ment has been that legislative consent or
discussion (on projects and lands that are
acquired for them) is not required or even
thought to be necessary since all decisions
are within the sphere of executive authority.
In the context of development projects and
displacement and the politics of development
itself, the crucial issue that needs to be more
sharply raised is: should such broad powers
be vested in the executive? This issue gains
all the more importance since we now have
almost half a century of project planning
and, as is conceded in several governmental
evaluations themselves, the experience of so
many public projects that have proven to be
economic, social and ecological failures or
near failures.
In the context of the recent policy drafts,
while several detailed critiques are
available,59 let us highlight some basic
principles that must be reflected in any
exercise to frame national or state legislation.
First of all, these exercises have to be based
on the question of accountability - both
public and judicial. Also, beyond the
palliative and, as argued throughout this
paper, the primary decisions to build projects
are developmental. Displacement and
resettlement follow. Therefore, legislation
must have the capacity to challenge the
constitutionality of projects themselves - the
projects and the process of resettlement must
meet the constitutional guarantees of ensuring
the right to life with dignity of those who
are adversely affected by the developmental
intervention.
The need is for creating conditions where
if displacement is inevitable, resettlement
can become an opportunity, a mandate for
reconstructing production systems, raising
standards of living, restoring community
and kinship relations and minimising the
conflict with the host community.
Resettlement must also take place in the
same ecosystem and in a similar cultural-
linguistic zone. It must take place without
breaking the community as a cluster of
villages representing crucial kinship
relations. The experience so far has been the
fragmenting of communities and families
themselves sometime across hundreds of
kilometres. It is only such a comprehensive
approach which guarantees resettlement in
a similar socio-cultural-ecological space that
can minimise the trauma of displacement.
The commitment therefore has to be not
just for resettlement but for rehabilitation
which should be an entitlement and not an
act of reluctant generosity. In case of
irrigation and hydroelectric projects, there
should be clear strategies so that those who
have had to give up so much are able to
substantially share the benefits of the
developmental intervention.6"
Giventhegrossly unequal powerexercised
by the planners, politicians and the nexus
of interests that develops around any large
project - compounded now with the advent
of the New Economic Policies - it would
require a clear institutional commitment on
the part of the governments and project
authorities to be transparent and accountable.
Projects and processes that cause
displacement must be open for public debate.
This would also facilitate those potentially
facing displacement to make informed
choices. For future projects, it is imperative
that the full costs of rehabilitation be
internalised into the project cost. More
comprehensive means of compensating non-
quantifiabte losses will also have to be
devised. Finally, alternatives that cause
minimal displacement, that benefit a majority
and that are ecologically sustainable will
have to be sought. If, afterdue public process,
displacement is inevitable, a comprehensive
package that will enhance the social and
economic security of displaced communities
is the least that should be offered to those
who are being forced to forgo and sacrifice
so much.
Notes
[This
paper was presented at a workshop on
"Displacement and Resettlement", held at the
Delhi School of Economics on January 21-23,
1995. I am grateful for the comments received
at the Workshop on 'Displacement and
Resettlement: Towards a National Policy,'
organised by the Centre for Development
Economics in Delhi from January 21-23, 1995
where this paper was first presented. I am also
grateful for the personal comments of Usha
Ramanathan, K G Kannabiran and Jean Dreze.
Finally, I would like to express my deep gratitude
to the several mass movements which I have had
the privilege of interacting with and whose
struggles have given me many of the insights
presented here.]
1 Quoted in Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Worster's book is also an important
contribution towards explicating the
correlation between the evolution of hydraulic
societies and the domination of political power
by an elite.
: 2 Letter from Indira Gandhi to Baba Amte,
August 30, 1984. Cited in Edward Goldsmith
and Nicholas Hildyard (eds), The Social and
Environmental Effects of Large Dams, Vol II,
p 245.
3 The power of eminent domain confers on the
government the right to take private property
for a "public purpose." This power has been
described as the "highest and most exact idea
of property remaining in the government, or
in the aggregate body of the people in their
sovereign capacity". For a more detailed
explanation see, Black's Law Dictionary (6th
edition), p 523, 1990.
4 Ram Chand vs Union of India, I SCC 44,
pp 49-50.
5 In fact, courts have held that public purpose
is not even a justiciable issue. See, e g,
Jagaveera Rama Muthukumara Zamindar of
Ettayapuram vs State of Madras, SCR 761,
1954.
6 Nehru was among the first who elevated
massive technological interventions in Nature
from the profane to the sacred. In what has
now become an oft-repeated quote, he said
while inaugurating the Nagarjunsager dam in
Andhra Pradesh, that, "... .dams are the temples
of modern India."
7 Clarence Maloney, 'Environmental and
Project Displacement of Population In India,
Part I: Development and Deracination',
Universities Field Staff International, Field
Staff Report No 14, 1991. Also see Smitu
Kothari, 'Vikas Aur Visthapan', Udvasit 2,
Lokayan, 1988.
8 It also does not include displacements caused
by communal and other conflicts as well as
natural disasters though some of the latter
may be engendered by developmental
degradation. It is important to recognise that
in some cases, communal and social conflicts
have their roots in the loss of livelihood and
the resultant insecurities caused by iniquitous
economic development.
9 During the First Five-Year Plan period,
projects costing more than Rs 5 crore were
classified as major. This level was maintained
in the Fourth Plan document while projects
costing between Rs 25 lakh and Rs 5 crore
were classified as medium with those costing
less than Rs 25 lakh being called minor.
Another classification of large dams is that
they have a cultivable command area (CCA)
of more than 10,000 hectares while medium
dams have a CCA between 400 and 10,000
ha.
10 Vijay Paranjpye, High Dams on the Narmada:
A Holistic Analysis of the River Valley
Projects, New Delhi: Indian National Trust
for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH),
1990. For an overview of the social impacts
of large dams see, Smitu Kothari, "The
Damming of the Narmada and the Politics of
Development' inWillian Fisher (ed), Working
Towards Sustainable Development: The
Damming of the Narmada River, Boston:
Cambridge University Press, 1995. Also see,
Society for Participatory Research in Asia
(ed), People and Dams, 1989.
I 1 For detailed tables see, Walter Fernandes and
Enakshi Thukral (eds), Development,
DisplacementandRehabilitation, New Delhi:
Indian Social Institute, 1989 and Clarence
Maloney, op cit. The present author's own
estimates made on the basis of extrapolating
data from state and central governments places
the number of displaced by development
projects, since 1950, at over 20 million.
12 Secondary displacement refers to those whose
livelihoods are adversely affected either as a
direct or indirect or as a short-term and long-
term consequence of the developmental
intervention but who are not acknowledged
as "project affected people (PAPs)". In several
cases, their numbers exceed officially
recognised PAPs.
13 Twenty-ninth Report
qf
the Conmmissioner of
Scheduled Castes and Tribes, New Delhi:
Government of India Press, 1990. Also see
B D Sharma, 'Scheduled Castes and Tribes:
A Status Report', Lokayan Bulletin 8:6, pp
27-38, 1990.
14 Walter Fernandes, 'Power and Powerlessness:
Development Projects and Displacement of
Tribals', Social Action 41, pp 243-70, 1991.
15 Central WaterCommission, Registerof Large
Dams in India, New Delhi: CWC, 1990.
16 Government of India, Working Group on
Development and Welfare of Scheduled Tribes
during the Eighth Five-Year Plan (1990-95),
1993.
17 For a recent account of the process of tribal
displacement, disempowerment and
impoverishment see, Carol Sherman, The
People 's Story: A Report on the Social Impact
of the Australian-Financed Piparwar Coal
Mine, Bihar, India, Sydney: AID/WATCH,
1993. Also see, L K Mahapatra, 'Development
for Whom?: Depriving the Dispossessed
Tribals', Social Action 41, pp 271-87, 1991.
18 Smitu Kothari and Pramod Parajuli, 'No
Nature Without Social Justice: A Plea for
Cultural and Ecological Pluralism in India'
in Wolfgang Sachs, Global Ecology, London:
Zed Books, 1994.
19 Deriving its geo-cultural identity from the
once princely state of the same name, Singrauli
is a long stretch of valleys surrounded by the
Kaimur hills that lie between Sidhi district
in Madhya Pradesh and Mirzapur district in
Uttar Pradesh.
20 "We must approach the tribal people with
affection and friendliness and come to them
as a liberating force. We must let them feel
that we have come to give and not to take
something away from them. That is the kind
of psychological integration India needs. If,
on the other hand, they feel you have come
to impose yourselves upon them or that we
go to them in order to try to change their
methods of living, to take away their land and
to encourage businessmen to exploit them,
then the fault is ours, for it only means that
our approach to the tribal people is wholly
wrong.. .The Government of India is
determined to help the tribal people to grow
according to their own genius and tradition."
Jawaharlal Nehru cited in The Tribal People
of India, Government of India Press, 1973,
p 5.
21 While the 1984 amendment streamlined the
procedures for the payment of compensation
and gave a few additional rights to those to
be displaced, it strengthened the power of the
government to displace people in the interest
of "public purpose." In case of urgency, such
acquisition could be done with a 15-day notice
with courts having no right to question the
merits of the urgency. For a detailed critique
of the implications of the Act see, Multiple
Action Research Group, The LandAcquisition
Act and You, New Delhi: MARG, 1991. Also
see the discussion of the Act in the 'Draft
Policy on Developmental Resettlement,' op
cit. For a more conventional and detailed
critique, see, V G Ramachandran, The Law
on Land Acquisition and Compensaltion.
Vol 1, 1 990.
22 Government of India, Report of the Committee
on Rehabilitation of Displaced Tribals due
to Development Projects, New Delhi: Ministry
of Home Affairs, 1985. This important study
is almost impossible to get. (For copies, write
to Lokayan, 13 Alipur Road, Delhi 110054).
23 CGonstituentAssemrbly Debates, Book IV, p 975.
24 Michael M Cernea (ed), 'Involuntary
Resettlement: Social Research, Policy, and
Planning' in Putting People First:
Sociological Variables in Rural Development,
New York: Oxford University Press, 2nd
edition, 1991, p 195.
25 Philip Hirsch, Dammed or Damned?, in
Society for Participatory Research in Asia,
op cit.
26 Personal communication with Sundarlal
Bahuguna and V D Saklani, both office-bearers
of the Samiti. This has also been recorded in
the petition of the Samiti filed in the Supreme
Court in 1985.
27 Government of India, op cit, 1985.
28 The Bomnbay Chronicle, April 12, 1948.
29 The people to be displaced, at times in the
hundreds of thousands, are almost always
missing from the detailed feasibility reports,
project reports, evaluation reports, even the
official National Directory of Dams.
30 Personal communication with Ashok
Choudhry, an activist working among the
displaced communities of Ukai.
31 The decision to form the National Working
Group on Displacement was taken at a
gathering of activists, academics and policy-
makers organised by Lokayan in 1988 in
Chitrakut, UP. The group, under the joint
convenorship of Medha Patkar and Smitu
Kothari subsequently held a number of
consultations in different parts of the country.
Udvasit, a journal on the politics of
displacement and rehabilitation, was published
by Lokayan and a legal subgroup with Girish
Patel, B D Sharma and others drafted the
"National Policy on Developmental
Resettlement" which was then discussed at
several workshops. The various government
drafts have selectively drawn from this but
have refrained from including aspects that
challenge conventional developmental
practice. For a partial text of the draft see
Fernandes and Thukral, op cit, 1989.
32 For acase study see, Renu Bhanotand Mridula
Singh, 'The Oustees of Pong Dam: Their
Search for a Home' in Enakshi Thukral. Big
Dam'ts, Displaced People: Rivers of Sorrow,
Rivers of Chanige, New Delhi: Sage
Publications, 1992.
33 Resource Futures International, Sardar
Sarovar: The Report of the Independent
Review, 1992.
34 Extensive empirical studies of the resettlement
sites are now available. The single-most
comprehensive documentation was presented
by the Narmada Bachao Andolan as well as
independent researchers and activists to the
Review Committee set up by the Ministry of
Water Resources in 1994, whose Report was
made public by the Supreme Court in
December 1994.
35 Scudder, Thayer, 'A Sociological Framework
for the Analysis of New Land Settlements'
in Michael Cernea, op cit, pp 148-87.
36 J P Nayak, 'Resettlement Anthropology and
the Upper Krishna Irrigation Projects', Current
Science 59:2, 1990.
37 S Parasuraman and C Sengupta, 'Socio-
economic Condition of People Displaced by
Jawaharlal Nehru Port', Report for the JNP
Trust, 1992.
38 This was the experience in dams all over the
country. For case studies from Bihar, see
Ganga Mukti Andolan, Ganga Ko Aviral
Behne Do, 1989; for Kamataka, see the various
studies of the social impacts of the Upper
Krishna projects; for the Narmada river see
the extensive documentation on the Bargi,
Tawa and the Sardar Sarovar dams.
39 Madhav Gadgil and Ramchandra Guha, This
Fissured Land: An EcologicalHistory ofIndia,
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992.
40 For two excellent documents on the
destructiveness of large technological
interventions in the water regimes of Bihar,
both of which also document the signal
contribution of Bhattacharya, see, Lok
Jagriti Kendra, Jab Nadi Badhin, 1990 and
Ganga Mukti Andolan, Ganga Ko Aviral
Behne D(;, 1990.
41 The Maharashtra Project Displaced Persons
Rehabilitation Act, 1976, amended in 1986.
Madhya Pradesh also enacted a legislation
and while both these laws are primarily
intended for dam oustees, they have been
applied to other projects. However, ironically,
in the Sardar Sarovar Project, even though
there is displacement in Maharashtra and
Madhya Pradesh, these laws do not apply
since they are not valid for inter-state projects.
The Karnataka Assembly passed a bill in
1987. It is still awaiting the president's
approval. It needs to be acknowledged that
other legislation preceded the Maharashtra
Act which also addressed the rights of those
displaced by specific projects. See, for
instance, the Nagarjunsagar Project
(Acquisition of Land) Act, 1956.
42 Among the earliest post-independence protests
against developmental displacement were the
agitations led by Ram Manohar Lohia in the
late 1 950s and 1 960s. One of the most notable
struggles soughtjustice for the 3,00,000 people
to be displaced by the Rihand dam. A day
before submergence, over a 100 political
activists and community leaders were picked
up and imprisoned. There was no effort to
rehabilitate those displaced and the fate of
over 70 per cent is not known while the
remaining have faced the repeated trauma of
multiple displacement. For more detailed
studies on Singrauli see, Vikas Ki Kimat, New
Delhi and Ahmedabad: Lokayan-SETU
Publication, 1986 and The Price of Power,
Delhi: PIRG, 1994.
43 For a representative listing of the range of
these initiatives located in a historical and
political context, see, Gail Omvedt,
Reinventing Revolution, M E Sharpe, 1994.
Also see, Smitu Kothari, 'Social Movements
and the Redefinition of Democracy' in Philip
Oldenburg, India Briefing, Westview Press,
1993.
44 Kashtakari Sangathna, Fifteen Years of
Struggle, unpublished manuscript, 1994.
45 See perspective documents and recent
statements issued by Jan Vikas Andolan,
Bharat Jan Andolan, Kashtakari Sangathna
and the Indian Council of Indigenous and
Tribal Peoples.
46 B B Vohra, Land and Water: Towards a
Policy for Lift-Support Systems, New Delhi:
INTACH, Second Impression, 1988.
47 H S Verma, 'Land as a Resource for Develop-
ing a New City: Rhetoric, Operationalisation
and Lessons from New Bombay', National
Institute of Rural Development, Nagarlok,
13:3, 1994.
48 William Partridge, Design andlmplementation
Considerations for Human Resettlement in
the Narmada SagarProject, MadhyaPradesh,
India, World Bank, 1984.
49 World Bank, Resettlement and Development.
The Bankwide Review of Projects Involving
Involuntary Displacement, 1986-1993,
Environment Department, April 8, 1994,
pp iii-iv.
50 Ibid, pp 2/9.
51 See, World Bank, Early Experience with
Involuntary Resettlement: Overview, and the
projectwise assessments, in particular, the
assessment of the Maharashtra Irrigation and
Karnataka Irrigation Projects, Operations
Evaluation Department, June 30, 1993.
52 Ibid, p 2.
53 This point has been developed at greater
length in the editorial of the Special Issue of
the Lokayan Bulletin, 'Enough! Fifty Years
of Bretton Woods Institutions', II:3/4, 1994.
54 Despite its withdrawal in 1993, it is still
legally bound to the project since the
government has yet to pay back the loan
amounts that had already been disbursed.
55 See the text of the speech made by the president
of the World Bank, Lewis Preston, in Madrid
on the occasion of the fifty year 'celebrations'
of the Bretton Woods institutions,
Washington: World Bank, 1994.
56 Government of India, Ministry of Rural
Development, Note for Cabinet: National
PolicyforRehabilitation of'PersonsDisplaced
as a Consequence of Acquisition of Land,
1994; Government of India, Ministry of Water
Resources, Draft National Policy for
Resettlement and Rehabilitation of Persons
AffectedbyReservoirProjects, 1994; National
Thermal Power Corporation, Resettlementand
Rehabilitation Policy, May 1993, and, Coal
India, Resettlement andRehabilitation Policy,
undated. Only the NTPC document is also
available in Hindi.
57 This view was reiterated recently by officials
of the Central Water Commission at a
conference on alternatives to the SSP held at
the Nehru Memorial Library, New Delhi.
58 For a detailed analysis of the policies in the
context of the Constitution see, Smitu Kothari,
'Developmental Displacement and Official
Policies: A Critical Review', prepared for
the National Workshop on Rehabilitation
Policy, Delhi, February 19-21, 1995 and
Usha Ramanathan, 'Displacement and
Rehabilitation: Towards a National Policy',
paper presented at the Workshop on National
Policy on Rehabilitation, Centre for
Development Economics, 1995.
59 Smitu Kothari, op cit and Walter Fernandes
and Samyadip Chatterji, 'A Critique of the
Draft National Policy for Rehabilitation of
Persons Displaced as a Consequence of
Acquisition of Land', both prepared for the
National Workshop on Rehabilitation Policy,
Delhi, February 19-21, 1995; Usha
Ramanathan, op cit, and Jai Sen, 'National
Rehabilitation Policy: A Critique', EPW,
Vol XXX, No 5, February 4, 1995.
60 This was one of the main recommendations
of one of the few academic-activist-policy-
maker dialogues held in India on the issue
of displacementand resettlement. See, Institute
for Social and Economic Change, Workshop
on Rehabilitatifon of Persons Displaced by
Development Projects, Bangalore: ISEC, 1990.

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