Abstract
This is a wide-ranging book on development caused displacement in India by a senior social scientist, having a varied and rich experience in theory and policy formulation on resettlement. The book is subdivided into five parts and 12 chapters on almost every aspect of development caused forced displacement (DFDR) in India, except its subtle effects on land reforms. It contains two useful Appendices on ‘Definitions of the terms used in this book’ (pp. 195–96) and ‘Resettlement in different project types’ (pp. 197–99) respectively, which are usually not included in books on DFDR.
The book begins with an ‘Introduction’ which is a broad overview and covers the basic aspects of displacement and resettlement. Under the fundamental point of this overview, the author critiqued the top-down approach towards development by the state which he identified as the basic cause behind the sufferings of greater number of the poor and that created the dilemma of development since the basic objective of any development project is to improve the living conditions of the economically and socially underprivileged (pp. 4–7). Should we then dismiss the development option? The rest of the book searched the answer to this basic question through an engaging narrative which contains less statistics but a wide array of case studies and scholarly viewpoints as regards displacement, resettlement and rehabilitation.
Part 1 of the book contains three important chapters on displacement caused by urban development projects, mining caused displacement and a general chapter on impoverishment risk reconstruction model as developed by Michael Cernea. The most interesting section of this part of the book is an addition to Cernea’s famous eight impoverishment risks (pp. 43–44). In this section the author cited interesting examples from Rajasthan about how the affluent people turned displacement into a great opportunity to improve their economic condition or landlessness did not occur in case of urban squatters since these people did not own land but were displaced from the place in which they used to live illegally. These are the issues not covered in Cernea’s model.
In the second part of the book titled ‘The policy response’, Mathur dealt with the policy aspect of DFDR in which the World Bank Policy and the National Resettlement Policy Guidelines and the Land Acquisition Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill 2011 in India have been discussed. Unlike the run-of-the-mill treatment of the policies per se, the author looked at both the World Bank and the Government of India policies from a very critical perspective, although he did not mention the underemphasis shown by the law makers towards the local self-governments under ‘Appropriate Government’ in the new bill which finally continued in the new Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013. Being himself a World Bank expert, Hari Mathur candidly narrated by quoting authentic sources how the Bank’s policy faltered time and again during its implementation stage and the Bank even prohibited its own Inspection Panel to make on-site visits in India ‘limiting it to a desk-bound review of Bank documents in Washington’ (p. 58). That good policy is not enough is revealed clearly in Chapter 5 of the book wherein Mathur began with an interesting observation:
[that the] interest the government has shown in resettlement issues in recent years is widely seen, not as a positive step forward, but as a defensive response to the growing protests by farmers against compulsory acquisition of their lands, a political move primarily at containing this antagonism. (p. 63)
Though brief, this chapter has a very interesting section on the Indian states with and without resettlement laws and/or policies. This section should have been more elaborate, particularly it should have contained descriptions of north-eastern states in which land laws are completely different from the rest of India.
Part 3 of the book which is the logical follow-up of the preceding one contains four valuable chapters on (a) social impact assessment, (b) planning for managing resettlement, (c) restoration of livelihood lost by DFDR and (d) gender issues in displacement. This part of the book pursued its subtitle ‘The human cost of development’ to its fullest extent. The chapter on social impact assessment (Chapter 6) in a slightly different form was published as an article in Social Change in 2011. It dealt with the different aspects of SIA putting an emphasis on involving the members of the affected community from the beginning to the end. The next chapter (Chapter 7) covered the identification of vulnerable groups for income restoration and reconstruction of livelihood while the other two chapters (8 and 9) dealt with issues related with various aspects of coping with the vulnerabilities of the affected groups with a special emphasis on women and about how to mitigate these vulnerabilities through proper resettlement planning.
In Part 4 of the book the author has put the whole issue of displacement under the wider context of globalisation with a particular focus on the impact of land acquisition on the tribals in Orissa which gained an incomparable infamy in the recent period. The main emphasis in the two chapters (10 and 11) is not only on governmental land grab in the wake of a liberalised economic order but also on the protests by the people against land expropriation. Both the chapters contain a plethora of information on success stories of resettlement through various innovative ways (for example, benefit sharing and providing development component) other than the payment of cash compensation. Some of these cases were reported earlier in the excellent book Can Compensation Prevent Impoverishment? (2008), edited by Michael Cernea and Hari Mohan Mathur and published by the Oxford University Press.
The last part of the book contains only one chapter (Chapter 12) titled ‘Development for all’ which is the shortest one and raised a vital question. The question is: how are we to judge the effectiveness of sharing the benefits of a project among the affected people? Here the author left the question unanswered and advised us to ‘Wait a little longer’ before coming to any conclusion.
The book is a valuable addition to the already growing rich literature on development caused forced displacement with special focus on India under a global context. This book will be extremely useful not only for development practitioners and but also for the growing number of post graduate departments in the social sciences in Indian Universities which have already introduced DFDR in their curricula. The book however, should have a low priced paperback edition for the large number of students and researchers in India and other third world countries.