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The history of civilisation is also a history of displacement. Human lives are built around sites of production and needs — or aspirations — of consumption. That’s why changes in methods of livelihood, from Harappa to Singur, have been life altering.     

Historian Romila Thapar quotes early Vedic texts separating settlements from backwoods. Even Mahabharata and Ramayana show a dichotomy between the grama (village) and arayanya (forest), Thapar writes in a 2007 paper, citing examples of both harmony and friction. For instance, Buddhists and Jain texts record city dwellers protecting sacred forests even though the woods were often cleared for cities’ expansions. Folklores recount how our ancestors treated livelihoods, cultures, religions and ecologies as parts of a continuum.

As centres of civilisations emerged at the cost of old settlements, new power equations skewed that continuum and the trend goes on. Even today, political ideologues have their own, mostly inconsistent, rationales for backing mega displacements. To author activist Arundhati Roy, advanced capitalism has worsened the individual’s lust for profits. Roy has a large following among activists and NGOs who oppose the uprooting of human beings. Then there are the more radical Naxalites, battling on behalf of the dispossessed.

Economists have their differences too. There are concerns that Special Economic Zones (SEZs) snatch livelihoods, promote unfair trade and subvert labour rights. Amit Bhaduri describes them as part of ‘developmental terrorism.’ Amartya Sen argues in Development as Freedom that an inclusive growth can be achieved by establishing liberal democratic ethos and business ethics. Sen’s prescription: Gautam Buddha’s middle path shown some 2500 years ago.      

Fast track or frenzied?

Millions of people, mostly untouched by India’s impressive GDP growth rate, are facing life-altering displacement. Last year the UPA government cleared 237 SEZs all over the country. (See box, SEZ: for and against) Several mining projects and huge FDI deals are already underway. Also coming up are hydro, thermal and clusters of nuclear power plants, ambitious railway corridors, roads, ports, military installations and even wild life sanctuaries.      

The most consistent fallacy in the debate over displacement versus development is the assumption that social engineering is legitimate if landowners are suitably compensated. It fails to factor that  displacement destroys kinships and livelihoods of fishermen, craftsmen and those who subsist on the margins of village economy or ecosystem.

Then there are voiceless and vote-less nomads whose dependence on seasonal crop cycles has no place in the new scheme of things. For example a large number of tribals from Purulia and Bankura districts of West Bengal depend on six to eight months’ work at Singur’s farmland recently acquired for the Tatas’ one lakh rupees car project.

Sociologist Smitu Kothari says 40 to 50 per cent of people to be displaced since independence belong to India’s 7.5 per cent tribal population. He warns that forced dislocation is eroding India’s cultural pluralism, wiping out some valuable myths that serve as a storehouse of knowledge and memory. Many communities have been displaced a second time while gathering pieces of their lives, says Kothari.

State as a land broker

Behind bloodied Nandigram is a long trend in which a land broker state acts on behalf of private corporations and prevails over dissenting people. In a less publicised incident in Dadri (UP) last year, the police attacked villagers of Bajhera Khurd injuring dozens and looting property, according to the Forum for Democratic Initiatives. The villagers fear that the power company, for whom the government is acquiring disproportionately large tracts of land, may convert their fertile lands into residential property. Farmers in Haryana have the same fears about a SEZ close to Gurgaon. 

After Nandigram many concerned citizens including software tsar N R Narayanmurthy have questioned the forcible acquisition of fertile lands. While the debate goes on, India’s policy makers must answer some simple questions such as do we really need 237 SEZs when the economy is doing fine? Why should the state decide land prices in a free market? Can we save livelihoods through inclusive rehabilitation? And can we make people stakeholders in development?   

Email author: vipulmudgal@hindustantimes.com