Destitute of Development

Nandini Basistha

Development is an inalienable comprehensive economic, social, cultural and political process, which aims at the constant improvement of the well being of the entire population. (‘Declaration on the Right to Development’, adopted by General Assembly Resolution (41/128 of 4 Dec 1986) from the book, The Right to Development: A Primer, by Centre for Development and Human Right, Sage Publications, 2004, p 253.)But the governments of most of the third world countries put stress on the process of industrialization and modernization as means of development. For helping such process, governments generally manifest developmental projects, like building of dams, expressways, highways, canals, airports and new towns. Every developmental project requires land. So governments generally encroaches lands from the local inhabitants. The segment of population that is ‘developed’ by the development projects is different from the segment that is ‘displaced’. (An EPW DISCUSSION ON ‘Linking Development to Displacement’, by M. Bharati and R.S. Rao.) Displacement provides a grim scenario of landlessness, homelessness, lack of food, loss of common resources, marginalisation and breakdown of social networks. Sometimes the directly displaced people, who have inhabited the project-sides for generations, get meager amount of compensation from the government. But indirectly displaced, who losses the control over natural and environmental resources, thereby deprives of the traditional means of livelihood, are the forgotten people of governmental rehabilitation and resettlement (R&R) policy. Thus the ‘Displaced’ has to bear the price of development in the larger interest of ‘Nation’. (Globalization, State Policies and Sustainability of Rights, by Madhuresh Kumar, MCRG, 2005,P1.) They are the ‘Destitutes of Development’. (The phrese ‘Destitute of Development’ was quated from a letter to the EPW Edittor on March 6, 2004.)
All of the countries of South Asia (viz. India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Srilanka, Bangladesh and Maldives) are developing countries. So displacement of communities from their ancestral lands has been integral to the developing economics of South Asia. (Quoted from an essay of Atta ur Rehman Sheikh, ‘Pakistan: Development and Disaster’, from the book ‘Internal Displacement in South Asia’, edited by PaulaBanergee, Sabyasachi Basu Roy Choudhury andSamir Kumar Das, Sage Publications, 2005,p63) The heavy emphasis on large scale projects for infrastructure development of the country has laid to the displacement of millions in South Asia. (Ibid, p 63) But the R&R programme of the displaced persons are marginalized in project plans for many reasons.
Firstly, being low-income countries, South Asian states have to accept loans from different international organizations (like World Bank, Asian Development Bank etc.) for fulfilling monetary requirements of the developmental projects. (As stated in World Bank Report, 2000) These large, foreign funded projects had too many aid related conditions, attached by funding agencies. (Development: World Commition on Dams holds South Asia hearing, http://www.sunsonline.org) In most of the cases, there are no recommendations rehabilitation policy.
Secondly, no Govt of South Asia has concrete policy for rehabilitation and resettlement of the displaced people. Even they do not follow the international principles on IDPs and human rights.
Thirdly, sometimes the govt. tries to follow comprehensive rehabilitation and resettlement policy. But for corruption and malpractices of the authorities this good will cannot transform into good effort. According to Dr. Paula Banerjee, "States have rarely produced well thought out policies on relief and rehabilitation of the IDPs and have failed to carry out measures with a long perspective. Whatever has happened as relief measures has been the product of ad hoc steps taken by the state." (‘Internal Displacement in South Asia’, ibid, p16)
For all these reasons, for sake of 'development', thousands of families are displaced and threw in the path of uncertainty. The brunt of displacement sweeps away the separate identities of people. According to one observer, 'When people are uprooted because their land is wanted for economic reasons usually associated with visions of national development, their multiple identities tend to disappear; they become engendered, uprooted.'(ibid, p297)
As in any other kind of displacement women and children are also particularly vulnerable in development - induced displacement. (ibid, p297) Women as marginalized entities within marginalized communities are of ten forced to shoulder the on deal of displacement far more intensely. (ibid, p297) But gender disaggregated data are seldom available in any developmental project involving displacement. (ibid, p297) Women are marginalized even in compensation policy in many ways.
Firstly, as women generally do not own land, they do not get any compensation. But, they have lost their means of livelihood for developmental projects. So they are affected economically.
Secondly, the cash compensation generally disempowers women, just because women do not handle cash or for that matter have control over financial resource within the family. (ibid, p85) Therefore, the decision to spend the money lies with the men of the family. (ibid, p85) In many cases, the male member spent the money for their own amusement, not for the family.
Thirdly, the disintegration of social network of the displaced communities and loss of land and common resources compels the women to do domestic work or other jobs for survival. All of these severely impacts on the health and nutrition of women, as well as on their children, who remain without education in most of the cases. (ibid, p85)
Fourthly, even women face severe problems in resettlement sites. These problems start from something as apparently small as no separate toilets for women to bigger problems such as refusal to give women headed households the status of PAF. (ibid, p85)
Now, I like to cite the example of some countries of South Asia, in which development brings disaster for the displaced people.
Pakistan
From the eve of independence in 1947, the government of Pakistan have been considering industrialization and modernization as the panacea of development, as the mere dependence on agriculture produce would not make the state viable and stable. (ibid, p300) Apart from dam building, numerous other projects have been planned, like expressways, highways, roads, canals, water reservoirs and new towns. For these developments it is included among the Newly Industrializing Countries and its growth rate has increased. But this development is not holistic development. Because concern for resettlement of uprooted communities has always been secondary in project plans and the experience has shown that the implementation of resettlement action plans continued to be faulty and poor. (ibid, p63) As a result, Pakistan's record on the scoreboard of forced eviction of the people, lack of comprehensive plans for resettlement and rehabilitation of livelihood, undervalued compensation, delayed payment, relocations and problems of integration of dislocated communities is quite dismal. (ibid, p64) If we critically analyze some developmental projects it can be bitterly understood that development often led to displacement.
Case Studies: Ghazi - Barotha Dam
Large dams have been declared the bedrock of Pakistan's agricultural economy and industrial base from the early decades of its national policy and planning. (ibid, p65) But there dam projects had evolved many controversies as these had ignored community participation and R & R policy.(ibid, p65-66) So, the government of Pakistan cam up with the Ghazi - Barotha Hydropower Project with a comprehensive resettlement plan and minimal environmental and resettlement impacts. (ibid, p69) It was tried to avoid displacement through site selection. But, in spite of that this project affected 21653 persons. (ibid, p70) They include 3412 persons who would loss all of their land. (ibid, p70) It was expected that impact of land acquisition would largely be mitigated by the provision of irrigated land on the spoil banks and by measures of fair and prompt compensation. (ibid, p70) The other 1778 persons that did not own the Regional Development Plan, which would ensure that the project affected families, assured any land but loss livelihood for this project would have a standard of living. At least equal to that which they had before the project.(ibid, p70)
For implementing these proposals, WAPDA has provided Rs. 100 million as seed money with assurance of providing an additional amount of Rs. 176 million. (ibid, p70)A project non-governmental organization (PNGO) would be assist the Environmental and Social Division of the Ghazi-Barotha Project Organization (GBPO) for in monitoring the social aspects of the resettlement action plan including land acquisition and compensation, formation of tube-well users' association and allocation of developed spoil bank. (ibid, p70) Transparency of compensation process, resettlement housing, employment, training and credit schemes and environmental protection under the integrated rural development programme was implemented. (ibid, p70)
This well thought policies cannot be materialized for the irregularities and malpractices of WAPDA officials and landowners. So, the investigators - the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and the Regional Accountability Bureau (NWFP) termed it as the biggest 'Land Acquisition Scam' in South Asia. (ibid, p71) With the connivance of Land Valuation Assessment Committees, Land Acquisition Collectors, officials of Agriculture Development and land owners of the area, the payment of compensation was made at highly inflated rates for low category of land, non-existing facilities, infrastructure and orchards. Investigation is under way and 200 affected people, including 80 women, have been accused of receiving excessive land compensation. (ibid, p71)
Without going into the debate of maltreatment of the Ghazi-Barotha Project, I can clearly say that this type of humanitarian consideration about the destitute of displacement have ushered a new hope for future in which development projects will bring holistic development for all segments of people.
Besides the Ghazi-Barotha Hydropower Project, the government of Pakistan have completed Mangla Dam, Tarbela Dam, Islamabad Capital Territory, National Motorway Lyari Expressway, Cholistan Dam and Gawadar Port in which millions of people plan displaced. Now, without having a comprehensive plan for development of rehabilitation and resettlement, the government of Pakistan has launched another controversial and ambitions hydropower project named "Vision 2025', which is likely to add to the number of displaced in the country. (ibid, p65) Being aware of the cost of development, now many civil society organizations and political parties are now protesting united these projects. So, the government of Pakistan needs to develop comprehensive plans for R & R of the displaced before initiating other developmental projects.
India
India has one of the highest development-induced displacements in the world. (ibid, p297) As a result of the developmental projects like mines, dams, industries, wildlife sanctuaries and others about 21 million people were internally displaced in India. (ibid, p116)
Table – 1
Statistics of Displaced Persons (DPs) and Project Affected Persons (PAPs) for some Developmental Projects

Source for 1 – 19: Ministry of Home Affair,s 1985: 18 – 19 ; Subrata De 1998 : 145; CWC 1996.
Source for 20: The essay of Subir Bhawmik, ‘India’s Northeast: Nobody ‘s People in No – Man’s – Land’ in the book, “Internal Displacement in South Asia, ibid, p147.
Source for 21: The essay of Samir Kumar Das, ‘India: Homelessness at Home’ in the book, ‘Internal Displacement in South Asia’, ibid, p.137.
With 4300 dams in place, India is one world's major dam building countries for which about 37500 square kilometer areas was submerged and at least 42 million people have displaced. (International River Network, http://www.irn.org/programs/India) In the Indian context, it is of interest to note that most of the developmental projects are located in the most backward areas and populated by various small nationalities - otherwise called tribals. (Globalization, State Policies and Sustainability of Rights, by Madhuresh Kumar, MCRG, 2005, P26) While the tribal form only 7 percent of the country's population, they account for almost 40 percent of the country's displaced population. (Internal Displacement in South Asia’, ibid, p138)

Case Study: The Narmada Valley Development Project
The Narmada Valley Development Project (NVDP) is supposed to be the most ambitions river valley development project in the world. (ibid, p299)It envisages building 3200 dams that will reconstitute the Narmada and her 419 tributaries into a series of step-reservoirs. (ibid, p299) Two of them the Sardar. Sarovar in Gujarat and the Bargi dam in Madhya Pradesh have already been built. This project is important for many reasons.
Firstly, the NVDP was described as ‘The world’s greatest planned environmental disaster’. (ibid, p116) According to one report, ‘the Narmada Valley Development Project will affect the lives of 25 million people who live in the valley and will alter the ecology of an entire river basin. (ibid, p299)
Secondly, the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), which was spearheaded by a women activist. Medha Patkar, revealed systematically for the first time how building dams can result in total dislocation of tribal societies. (ibid, p297) The Sardar Sarovar Project, often described as one of the most flawed projects, displaced largely the Tadvis, Vasavas, Bhils and the Bhilalas, but very few caste Hindus. (ibid, p15) Whereas the beneficiaries of the dam are meant to be large landowners, tribal people are paying the price.
Thirdly, the official figure has not counted people who will lose their livelihood as a result of the NVDP as project-affected families (PAFs). (ibid, p299)
Fourthly, the women from the affected tribal communities are the worst affected. The governmental relief programmes tend to overlook women’s crucial roles as producers, providers and organizers and have delivered assistance directly to male heads of households, whether it is food, seeds and tools or training. (ibid, p297) The reduces women’s influence over areas previously controlled by them such as the production and provision of food-undermining their position within the household and the community. (ibid, p297)In Sardar Sarovar Project women with land titles (Patta) were not given land for land. (ibid, p297)
Fifthly, Govt. of India had shown extreme negligence in time of rehabilitation and resettlement of the displaced in NVDP.
Thus, the catchall promises of development in India hide a shuffling mass of hundreds of thousands of families displaced by the inexorable engines of progress. (Pawns in the Development, by Walter Fernandes) Studies indicate that development – induced displacement has been one of the major causes of deprival of livelihood of the people in India. (Why Displaced Persons Reject Project Resettlement Colonies, by Mohammad Asif) According to one of the Indian leader,” If displacement is bad, not creating storage to avoid displacement of tribal communities is worse.” This is said by Reddy,quoted from http://www.sunsonline.org) However, I am not against development. But, as a human being, I want holistic development for the entire population. For this, government of India must manifest R&R policy fully and properly.
Nepal
Nepal seemed to be lesser affected by the problem of development-induced displacement. Moreover, the absence of the records of the displacement helped in hiding the exact feature. However, there are displacement due to road construction, irrigation projects, airports, promulgation of national parks and watershed management projects. (‘Internal Displacement in South Asia’, ibid, p237) For example, I can refer to three projects-viz. Rara National Park, Kulekheni Hydroelectric Project and Marsyangdi Hydroelectric Project-which had displaced a number of peoples –viz. 331, 450 and 222 households. (ibid, p238-239)
Unlike other South Asian states, displaced people of Nepal got proper R&R. The affected people of Rara National Park project were compensated with land in Terrain plains in the south and additionally provided with facilities like food for a certain period, timber for construction of houses and there were provisions for tube wells and schools. (ibid, p238) Even after leaving the resettlement site, the displaced people got governmental support. In 1989 Harka Gurung found that those displaced from the area around the Rara Lake were better off economically at their new location with multisectoral governmental support. (ibid, p238)
However, government of Nepal cannot hold this good will in later projects. It gave the option of cash or land compensation in the Kulekhani Hydroelectric Project. (ibid, p238) But the affected households had become poorer than before even after getting compensation because the compensation was not at prevailing market price nor was the permanent loss of potential resources and the loss of production taken into consideration ((ibid, p238). Though the Govt. of Nepal had given compensation close to the market price in the Marsyangdi Hydroelectric Project, the majority of affected remain unaware of their legal right. (ibid, p238) Even the recommendations of the project consultants – like 15 percent disturbance allowance, special assistance to hardship cases, priority for employment on the project work and assistance to increase production on remaining land-was never implemented. (ibid, p239)
Nepal has a big potential for water resource development, for which development-related displacement is and will be a regular feature in the country. (ibid, p194) So the Govt. of Nepal must retains its good will and effort for the displaced with proper R&R policy in the future.
Bangladesh
The country of Bangladesh is very remarkable in development-induced displacement. Though the Govt. of Bangladesh has not started any major developmental project, here we see some distinguish features of displacement.
Firstly, Bangladesh is a classic example of economic displacement. With the assistance of government, Bangladesh is gradually succumbing to monoculture of shrimp cultivation. (ibid, p194) As the shrimp cultivators do not use local labour for their farms, the indigenous people lost their livelihood. (ibid, p194) All of these are affecting not only the poor in the region, but more specially the women. (ibid, p201-203)
Secondly, here we see how the areas of developmental displacement can converted into the areas of conflict. The displacement of indigenous people from the CHT has been started from the construction of the Kaptai dam. But now CHT have become the volatile area of conflict between the Bengalees and indigenous people. Now, to minimize the power of the local people, government has been wooing the Bengalisation process as part of ‘development’ programme.
Thirdly, now the Govt. of Bangladesh is thinking to clean the urban areas. So it has started to evict the slums and the brothels. For example, I can refer to the forced eviction of the slums of Agargoan and brothels of Tanbazaar and Nimtoli.
As these developmental activities are not proper projects, the Govt. of Bangladesh is not giving R&R to the affected peoples. But the trauma and economic instability of the affected peoples is not lesser than those who are displaced by developmental projects. If Govt. of Bangladesh can understand this, it will be better for all Bangladeshis.
Conclusion
Thus we see how development often led to displacement in these South Asian countries. There are no records on development-induced displacement in other countries. But, surprisingly, there are developmental projects in all South Asian states. Academics of South Asia must research on that. All the states must develop proper R&R policy to give a better life to the displaced people. In next SAARC meetings if all the South Asian states develop a principle (like the Guiding Principles), which will give proper direction for the R&R policy for the displaced, it will be better for all South Asians.
[This paper was originally written as term paper assignment for the Third CRG Annual Winter Course on Forced Migration]