Gender Analysis of Post Resettlement Transformation in Livelihood Opportunities at Sardar Sarovar Project Resettlement Sites, India

Abstract

A gender perspective on displacement and associated resettlement is less common, since the traditional discourse has categorised the development refugees to be a homogenous undifferentiated people—without gender, age or other defining characteristics except ethnicity. Many studies are being done to analyse the impacts of displacement caused by development projects on the resettled communities. But the differential impacts of displacement on men and women have only been considered very recently. Gender has been missing in the impact assessments of large development projects like dams. This article, based on an ongoing research work, is an attempt in this direction to analyse some post resettlement impacts of the Sardar Sarovar Project on tribal communities from a gender lens. The first part of the article dwells upon the post resettlement changes in livelihood opportunities. The second part of the manuscript is a gender analysis showing the impacts of post resettlement transformations upon men and women at the new sites. We ultimately attempt to highlight the transformations in gender roles and gender relations due to displacement and resettlement by providing empirical evidence from the resettlement sites. The research has adopted qualitative methods in data collection. Data have been collected through household surveys, focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with key informants.