Patel Displacement Orissa

ORISSA’S HIGHLAND CLEARANCES: THE REALITY GAP IN R & R (rehabilitation and resettlement)
FELIX PATEL AND SAMARENDRA DAS
The phenomenon of displacement:

1. The aim in this paper is to draw attention to the problems of ‘development induced
displacement’. Firstly, the authors document the historicity of the phenomenon of
displacement in Orissa. Secondly, it traces the disjunction between policy and practice and
explains why resettlement and rehabilitation always fail to raise the living standards of
displaced people. Thirdly, it understands the cultural genocide that occurs due to
displacement.
2. History:
a. Displacement indicates a clash of ideologies. On the one side, the value systems of
traditional cultures, where relationships with land and community are more
important than money. On the other, an ideology of industrialisation- as-
development, in which market forces and swift financial profit override other values.
b. Displacement during colonial times has a unrecorded history. Numerous
communities were displaced by tea plantations in Assam, Kerala and present
Bangladesh.
c. The divide and rule legacy of British colonialism has resulted in an internal
colonialism carried out through large-scale privatization in resources and takeovers
of huge tracts of cultivated land, by mining and construction companies. The
ideology of indistrialization sweeping Orissa now stems from the same essential
belief system that motivated the industrial revolution in Britain, the USA, USSR,
China etc.
d. In Britain, the Enclosure Acts between 1760 and 1840 started a process of privatising
land that evicted small-scale farmers in vast numbers all over the British Isles.
Britain’s remote northern areas suffered a particular trauma known as the Highland
Clearances. During the 19th century, English rulers persuaded the Scottish zamindars
to make their land more profitable by expelling these crafters in huge numbers—
just as a they persuaded Rajas in Orissa around the same time. Hundreds of
communities were permanently erased and thousands of people died from
starvation and disease. The Highland Clearances in Scotland cleared people from the
land and erased communities but also cleared forests and farmland to make way for
sheep and plantation of foreign trees for timber and paper.
e. In Orissa, many communities have ceased to exist and 100s more are threatened
with extinction. The aluminium companies are entering the Kond region of western
Orissa after the bauxite deposits. They erode the water bearing capacity of the
mountains and thereby threaten the local Konds’ cultivation of millet, maize, ginger,
orange etc. Mining Bauxite from these mountains is also an assault on their religion.
For Kond religion, recognizes mountains as prime sacred entities and sources of life.
3. DISJUNCTION BETWEEN POLICY AND PRACTICE

a. There exists a gulf of understanding between those imposing and suffering
displacement.
b. Displacement tends to be seen as a peripheral aspect of a development projects and
the officials are indifferent to understand this as a highly traumatic process for
nearly everyone undergoing displacement. Most of the people faced with
displacement do not see the projects as development at all, since far from raising
their standard of living, they lower it. Education, health, nutrition and employment
all are significantly lowered in the industrialised tribal areas. Naldo-dominated
Koraput is poorest of all, with 78% of the population below the poverty line and the
perspective of the tribals is completely overlooked in the reporting done for the
displaced.
4. CULTURAL GENOCIDE:
a. The economy is completely changed when people who have essentially cultivators
are removed from the land and turned into an industrial labour force.
b. People’s identity is also altered. From being self sufficient for their basic food wants
and material needs, they become dependent on a hierarchy outside their control for
jobs and every aspect of life. People find themselves at the bottom of a corporate
hierarchy, dependent on a wide range of more powerful people. Displacement,
disempowers villagers and lowers their status especially women. Further, villagers
become dependent on factory-made goods thereby undermining their own material
culture. Religious life is also transformed, since all of the natural habitat they
associate sacred value to is essentially destroyed. In this context, The dances songs
stories and customary ways of behaving that are commonly understood as culture
also lose their meaning and vitality.
c. Thus, the various people in Orissa and other states who are striving to protect their
land from corporate takeover are actually campaigning for much more — to
preserve India’s cultural integrity and independence against the forces of global
finance.
5. Divergent values and beliefs:
a. Dams cause widespread displacement in two other dimensions in addition to their
large-scale displacement. First, through catastrophic floods in times of excessive
rains and second, by reducing canal or river flow that thousands of farmers depend
upon.
b. An example to suggest the spread of polarising tendencies in society was the Hindu
Christian issue in December 2007 by the application of certain Panos (SC) in
kandhamal district to change the status from scheduled caste to scheduled tribe on
the basis that they speak the Kond’s tribal language, ‘Kui’ — an application that
angered Kond and fanned the flames of a double split in society that broke out in
violent attacks between SC (Pano) and ST (Kond) and Hindus and Christians. The
lattice split broke out with renewed ferocity in August 2008 following the murder by
Maoists of the VHP leader Lakshmananda Saraswati whom they held responsible for
instigating communal violence in December August to October 2008 has been the
burning of countless villages and churches and the displacement of tens of
thousands of christians.
c. Thus a polarization exists between those who believe in or promote industrial

development-cum-displacement and those resisting it.
d. The ideology of development has been long supported by capitalists and Maoists.
They believe in industrialisation as a necessary stage of development. They also
shared a belief in violence, as a means to impose their will. This view of human
societies as developing through certain fixed stages of development is known as
social evolutionism. The important aspect of social evolutionism and therefore of
the mainstream values promoting industrial development in india and Orissa today,
involves a set of negative stereotypes about tribal people and other small-scale
farmers : as ‘primitive’, ‘backward’, ‘uneconomic’ and ‘unsustainable’. This has been
the dominant view of tribal cultures since European moderns first encountered
them and causes immense underevaluation of tribal culture, which helps justify
destroying it through the idea that resettlement will aid tribal’s development in the
long run.
6. RULE OF LAW : Villagers who maintain a stance against displacement need the utmost
strength and courage, not just because the power nexus confronting them like gangsters and
mining companies with people in the Government who do secret deals with the companies,
but also because of the manufacturing of consent by the media. (Use any one example from
the reading to substantiate the misuse of law)
7. The contrast between houses before and after displacement demonstrates a far-reaching
difference in values and culture. From the 18 th/19th century Scotland to 20th/21st century
Orissa essentially the same discourse: a view of clansmen and Adivasis as unruly, uncouth,
uneducated, backward and above all uneconomic and standing in the way of progress. Yet
the reality was, and in Orissa still is, that these people grow a large variety of foods on their
land and if the process is labour intensive, it also involves a huge variety of experience and
communication — bathing in stream, complex songs, dances, myths related to the local
landscape, visits between communities, clan feats — and careful preservation of the natural
environment.
Conclusion:
The reckless displacement of the tribal population has resulted in a decline in the living standards. It
has had a negative impact on the food security and replaced self-employment with a dependency on
a supply labouring jobs. The egalitarian social structure has been replaced by a low place in an
extreme hierarchy which has caused splits in the community between people who are in favour and
against project/company. Their everyday activities are disrupted and so is their cultural framework
with the incessant corruption and goondaism. Thus, it is required to establish a sound R & R policy. It
must make a more serious attempt at avoiding displacement, or at least ensure a better standard of
life for the displaced population. People’s voices should be heard and quoted in official discourses to
counteract the proliferation of stereotypes. Simultaneously, social impact assessment should be
required with an attitude to serve the people and be sensitive to their lifestyle, knowledge and
culture.

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ORISSA’S HIGHLAND CLEARANCES: THE REALITY GAP IN R & R (rehabilitation and resettlement)

FELIX PATEL AND SAMARENDRA DAS

The phenomenon of displacement:

3. DISJUNCTION BETWEEN POLICY AND PRACTICE

c. Thus a polarization exists between those who believe in or promote industrial

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