Resettlement In India Research Articles

LANGUAGE WITHOUT A LAND: PARTITION, SINDHI REFUGEES, AND THE EIGHTH SCHEDULE OF THE INDIAN CONSTITUTION

Scholars have paid significant attention to the linguistic reorganisation of states in India but there is less consideration of how the demands of linguistic movements to redraw the map of India is linked to the history of partition across the colonial-postcolonial divide as well as of the new minorities that linguistic states created. This article draws attention at first to the unsuccessful pre-partition resistance of Sindhi Hindus to the separation of Sindh from the Bombay Presidency on linguistic lines as separation would make them a religious minority. The article then discusses Sindhi resettlement in India as deterritorialised partition refugees, when they had to claim belonging in the context of reinvigorated calls for the redistribution of boundaries based on linguistic majorities. As an alternative to territorial representation, Sindhi refugees successfully sought inclusion in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, a list of officially supported languages meant originally to enrich Hindi. This history reveals how partition and partition's refugees reshaped constitutional conceptions of minority citizenship in a manner not yet acknowledged. The inclusion of Sindhi in the Eighth Schedule transformed the Schedule's primary purpose from that of augmenting Hindi to additionally conferring protections to a group of minority languages. The Sindhi demand for inclusion paved the way for other minorities whose linguistic identity did not necessarily map neatly on to a geographically defined state to claim recognition in the Schedule. This opened a new but limited option for constitutional safeguards for linguistic minorities without a linguistic state in India.

(Im)mobility at the margins: low-income households’ experiences of peripheral resettlement in India and South Africa

Expanded state-subsidised housing programmes in middle-income countries raise questions about the displacement and socio-spatial marginalisation of poor households. Examining these questions through people’s experiences of resettlement indicates the importance of mobility to their lives. Drawing on a mixed-method comparative study of Ahmedabad, Chennai and Johannesburg, we ask: How does the relocation of low-income households to urban peripheries reshape the links between their physical and socio-economic mobility, and how does this impact on their ability to build secure urban futures? Experiences of families moving to five peripheral settlements indicate two linked challenges to the social and economic mobility of the peripheralised urban poor: first, their immediate and individual ability to be mobile within the city and second, the longer-term social mobility of their households. While trajectories towards secure urban citizenship for all remain a policy aspiration, housing policies and practices are placing this on hold or even reversing this, with mobility constraints locking many low-income groups into marginality.

Tracing Journey of Legislative Processes for Land Acquisition and Resettlement in India from Right’s Perspective

The processes of land acquisition (LA) rehabilitation and resettlement (R&R) in India has progressed to a very contentious extent, as conveyed by series of mass protests, non-cooperation of political parties, and impulsion expressed by the present government and corporates for acceptance of the LARR Ordinance, 2015. Any issue under contention is debated with argument, counter-argument, action and counter-actions. Such process evolves a language of rights—the rights demanded by the citizens, especially the project-affected population, different interest-holders and rights recognised by the state. The article maps out the journey of language of rights in the context of multi-faceted issues of LA, development-induced displacement and R&R (LADRR) over last three decades, that is, 1985 to the present. The right’s perspective focuses on three components—characteristics of rights, how rights are derived and role of state and its institutions in recognising and actualising rights. Based on this mapping, the article examines whether there exist some common grounds for actualisation of rights through existing legislative processes for LARR.

Book Review: Hari Mohan Mathur, Displacement and Resettlement in India: The Human Cost of Development

Book Review: Hari Mohan Mathur, <i>Displacement and Resettlement in India: The Human Cost of Development</i>

Special Issue on Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement in India

Special Issue on Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement in India

Impact of Land alienation, Displacement and Migration on livelihood and its response through Resettlement and Rehabilitation

Development is a phenomenon which is based on equitable opportunity of people to livelihood. As envisaged, development-induced displacement and resettlement in India focusses more on physical amenities‘ availability rather than social, cultural milieu for displaced people, this question always arises whether it is leading to empowerment of masses. The displacement and land alienation brings upheaval in the livelihood pattern of the individuals. Rehabilitation is a process needed by both the Displaced People and the Project Affected Persons. Therefore, this paper seeks to explore the impact of land alienation, displacement, migration on livelihood and tackling of these issues through some good practices of Resettlement and Rehabilitation.

Book Review: Hari Mohan Mathur, Displacement and Resettlement in India: The Human Cost of Development

Hari Mohan Mathur, Displacement and Resettlement in India: The Human Cost of Development, London, Routledge, 2013, xix + 227 pp., £85.

Changing Facets of Involuntary Displacement and Resettlement in India

Among several issues that Indian society confronts today, involuntary displacement of people by government due to taking away of their agricultural lands and other assets (homestead etc.) for development projects—both in public or private sectors—has emerged as one of the highly debated and disputed issue. Several of these development projects have faced stiff resistance and even violent agitations against the appropriation of affected people’s assets under the compulsive Land Acquisition Act, 1894. In the earlier decades (since India’s independence in 1947), government succeeded in acquiring vast lands from people for creating such infrastructure, irrigation, mining and heavy industry projects, mostly in the public sector, due to people’s ignorance of their rights, and also their faith in the political system. However, with the growing intensity of involuntary displacement and eroding ‘public interest’ in pushing industrial/mining projects by government, the affected people and civil society groups started challenging the ‘eminent domain’ used by a sovereign state in imposing developmentalism, without restoring meagre sources of sustenance of the affected people. This is now more relevant in the context of market-driven Indian economy, where government’s decision of approving over 400 ‘special economic zones’ (SEZs) has resulted in direct confrontation between the ‘shining India’ and highly vulnerable agrarian communities. The present article presents a critique of over five decades of such involuntary displacement in India with its possible fallout on the role of state for ‘public cause’.

In‐dependence: Otto Koenigsberger and modernist urban resettlement in India

This article investigates the universalist problematic in Modern Movement town planning predominantly through the Indian phase of the career of Otto Koenigsberger (1909–99). Educated in Germany during the Weimar Republic but subjected to Nazi persecution, Koenigsberger migrated via Egypt to Bangalore and employment by the Tata Dynasty in 1939. Upon independence, he was appointed to Director of Housing in charge of New Town Development across India, including the organization of the Chandigarh commission. Koenigsberger’s architecture and town planning, in particular for Jamshedpur, mobilized current transatlantic modernist practice. It was predicated on the potential of abstract aesthetic and functionalist form to embody radical socio‐political change that surmounted both pre‐colonial and imperial conventions. While accommodating some features of Indian architectural tradition, Koenigsberger espoused non‐sectarian and standard solution, especially for housing. This thinking was most evident in his partially realized scheme for pan‐regional prefabricated dwelling units. The failure of this enterprise and ensuing political controversy caused him to resign and move to London. It is argued here that Koenigsberger’s experience in India informed his inauguration in 1957 of the School of Tropical Architectures at the Architectural Association and the department of Development Planning at University College London in 1972; these teaching posts coincided with successive reconsideration of his concept of urban design that culminated in the locally conditioned concept of Action Planning. The analytic is discursive, reading shifts in design thought out of Koenigsberger’s photographic and textual archive as well as his architectural and urban design work in India.

Managing Resettlement in India: Approaches, Issues, Experiences

Managing Resettlement in India: Approaches, Issues, Experiences

The development dilemma: displacement in India

List of tables Abbreviations Glossary Acknowledgements Introduction: Development's Painful Social Costs M.M.Cernea Development, Displacement and Resettlement in India Assessing the Impact of Displacement Resettlement and Rehabilitation Policy in Practice Displacement Due to the Durgapur Steel Plant Displacement Due to the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Displacement Due to the Bolani Iron Ore Mines Displacement Due to the Maharashtra II Irrigation Project Displacement Due to the Upper Krishna Irrigation Project Displacement Due to the Sardar Sarovar Project The Consequences of Displacement for Women The Narmada Movement Conclusions Notes References Index

The demographic upheaval of partition: Refugees and agricultural resettlement in India, 1947–67

(1995). The demographic upheaval of partition: Refugees and agricultural resettlement in India, 1947–67. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies: Vol. 18, North India: Partition and Independence, pp. 73-94.