Abstract
In India, development and related buzz words, such as, industrialisation, modernisation and urbanisation, have been addressed with both excitement and contention by media, scholars, bureaucrats and politicians. The two books by Nilsen and Mehta critically address the meaning and impact of development programmes and policies in India, with a focus on citizen rights, gender and subaltern groups. Relevant to the book’s central argument is the problem of imposition of development as a one directional model that is often adopted and championed by the elites to further their own class interests.
In Dispossession and Resistance in India, Nilsen carefully traces the history and the beginning of the Narmada dam controversy from colonial times. Theoretically situating the research in social movements, in Chapter 1, Nilsen presents the emergence of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) from isolated protests by small action groups in the 1980s to a pan state organisation that achieved remarkable successes in some areas, which included withdrawal of World Bank funding from the project. While the movement was not able to stop the Sardar Sarovar Project (of which the Narmada Dam Project was a part), the history of NBA is of much interest to scholars of social movements as its story is a narrative of success in many respects. Tracing the trajectory of the NBA over nine chapters, Nilsen demonstrates how coalition building in social movements is vital for a movement’s survival within a difficult environment of social and political threats. While coalition formation has always been of interest to social movement scholars (Dyke and McCammon 2010; McCammon and Campbell 2002), Dispossession and Resistance in India is a unique example of how alliance formation takes place on both sides of the protest. On one side are the small Hindu caste farming groups, adivasi groups, small action groups who mobilised together and advanced the common goals of the anti-dam protest. As a result of this coalition formation, the activist of the NBA changed practices, promoted consciousness and knowledge of the impact of displacement as the result of the dam, and developed strategies in the context of changing political demands. On the other side of the protest is the powerful nexus of rich famers, industrialists and politicians playing a huge role in support for the dam and furthering specific class interests. Chapter 2 presents a detailed explanation on the push towards agriculture and industrialisation in Gujarat, the support of the Hindu right wing political parties and the emergence of the agro-industrial elites as a powerful class in Gujarat. It was this group who built coalitions and lobbied for Narmada water in South Gujarat. Nilsen calls this coalition of powerful elites a social movement from the above, who strategically used the state to further their class interests (p. 46). While the bulk of the book discusses the politics of dispossession, resettlement and rehabilitation of communities, and their struggles with the state, the local governing bodies and the corruption of the system, Nilsen simultaneously engages in a conversation on how the social movement from below (NBA) is involved in an ongoing non-violent struggle with the movement from above (the state, political and economic elites). Of particular interest were chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6 that presented a detailed account of how the adivasi groups were mobilised, the cycles of protests, strategies used by the NBA against opposition and so on.
While Nilsen’s book refers to the macro effects of development, displacement and resettlement, Mehta’s edited book, Displaced by Development, brings in the issue of gender in the discussion of development and displacement politics. Despite much discussion on the inclusion of gender in development debates, gendered analysis of impacts on such programmes and policies are time and time again ignored, dismissed or often added as an afterthought. This critical collection of essays is powerful and timely for the following reasons: displacement, resettlement and rehabilitation have devastating effects on people and the environment in a nation where policies and actual practice are often disparate. Despite having hazardous impacts, women always experience the severe effects of these policies more than the men. For example, in the chapter on ‘Displacing Gender from Displacement’, Mitra and Rao caution against essentialising men and women together in discourses on displacement. Through a thoughtful assessment of land displacement of adivasis in Santhal Parganas in Jharkhand, they argue how rehabilitation packages (although rarely received by displaced groups) are insensitive to women’s traditional land rights, creating further challenges in adivasi women’s claim on land.
Mehta also brings forward the problem of ‘oustees’ or displaced populations who often end up as urban migrants, employed in construction sites or in unskilled economy. This group has many names: squatters, encroachers of public space, and are always vulnerable to brutalities of the state and police. Mehta argues how in an irony of sorts, this displaced group, whose land was taken over in the name of development by the state, becomes a symbol of obstruction to urban development, clean air and greenery with their ‘illegal’ occupation of urban lands. Amita Baviskar in the chapter on ‘Breaking Homes, Making Cities’ points towards the lack of mobilisation or protest because the consensus is that perhaps ‘migrants constitute a lost cause and that there is little that public action can do to address their conditions of being’ (p. 64). Similarly, other chapters in the volume (see chapters 6–10) point towards the role of the state and other international bodies towards legitimising displacement. The final chapters discuss how displaced women administer agency in the discourse on rehabilitation and resettlement, by focusing on the activism that is taking place at the grassroots.
Both books offer insightful critiques of development and should be of interest to scholars on development, social movements, gender, social justice and environmental social change.