Abstract
Rehabilitation and Resettlement(R & R) is a model of development which enforces certain technical and economic options before masses. The success of any developmental programme cannot be judged in merely their effect on income and employment opportunities but more specifically on welfare of displaced people through their participation in decision making process of development project and proper resettlement. Therefore, the major question which arises here is ‘what is successful resettlement and rehabilitation programme’. In the discourse of rehabilitation and resettlement programme, there are two distinct processes: the first, resettlement, is a one-time event of physical relocation. The second, rehabilitation, is a long-time process that involves rebuilding people’s physical and economic livelihood, their assets, their cultural and social links, and psychological acceptance of the changed situation. Rehabilitation is a process needed by both the Displaced People and the Project Affected Persons, and it must begin long before physical displacement or deprivation (Fernandes, Walter). Having perception of all these prerequisites of a successful resettlement and rehabilitation program, the World Bank has played a very pivotal role. In addition to its success, the R & R programme faces lots of impediments also like forced displacement of masses to inappropriate habitations, involuntary displacement, and neglect of social, economic, cultural rights of displaced persons, absence of gender consideration in rehabilitation programme and lack of transparency in flow of information from project authority to displaced community. Therefore, this paper seeks to explore these impediments in the path of Resettlement and Rehabilitation programme and adoption of some good practices for ensuring successful R & R programme through review of R & R programmes of some of its projects in China.
Highlights
Resettlement and Rehabilitation(R & R) keeps an important position
The terminology ‘Displacement’ which is seen as the result of a model of development that enforces certain technical and economic choices without giving any serious consideration to social cost, originates the essentiality for resettlement and rehabilitation
Rehabilitation has always been equated with physical relocation which stresses more on availability of physical amenities to masses than their inclusive adaptation to new milieu
Summary
The terminology ‘Displacement’ which is seen as the result of a model of development that enforces certain technical and economic choices without giving any serious consideration to social cost, originates the essentiality for resettlement and rehabilitation. There are a very few chances that displaced people have been given any scope in their proper rehabilitation. Rehabilitation has always been equated with physical relocation which stresses more on availability of physical amenities to masses than their inclusive adaptation to new milieu. Forced relocation usually results in people being transplanted from a social ecology in which they were primary actors to one in which they are aliens; they are very vulnerable and end up in most cases as an underclass in their new socio-cultural milieu (WCD Thematic Review, 2000). Cernea identifies certain risks related to resettlement and rehabilitation as landlessness, joblessness, homelessness, marginalisation, increased morbidity and mortality, food insecurity, loss of access to common property and services, and social disarticulation (ibid)
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