Resettlement and Rehabilitation of People: Problems and Concerns!
It is a well-known fact that both natural and human made disasters force people to move out of their land. For example. Tsunami in South Asia in December 2004, Latur and Gujarat earthquake, the Orissa super-cyclone and scores of floods and droughts in other parts of our country have rendered thousands of people homeless and jobless. Disasters, like the Bhopal gas tragedy in Union carbide factory, derailment of trains, are examples of human made disaster.
Strategies for rehabilitation of thus displaced people are in the first place by way of preventive action. For instance, care is taken to build earthquake proof houses, gather advance information about cyclones and arrange for timely evacuation, build appropriate bunds in flood prone areas, maintain bridges that take regular up and down passing of trains/ road transport vehicles on them in order to avert likely disasters.
Secondly, advance preparation on the part of administration and local communities are made to face the consequences of sudden calamities. For both these remedial steps, the primary necessity is that of building awareness among the people in general and among administrative personnel in particular.
The scope for advance planning in the cases of natural and human made calamities is however quite limited and in comparison we can certainly plan better in the cases of development projects which are planned in advance.
Development projects come into existence after a fairly long period of planning and awareness of displacement caused by such projects already exists among those who initiate the projects. The tragedy is that despite this prior knowledge of the extent of displacement, those in-charge of development projects pay little attention to the processes of resettlement and rehabilitation of displaced people.
Development projects instead focus on economic efficiency and not on those who stand to lose all that they have, their land, means of livelihood and stable patterns of social and cultural life. Those who give up substantial portions of their assets for the sake of development projects need to be recognized as stakeholders in development projects. They too need to be a part of development.
The strategies formulated for resettlement and rehabilitation of those displaced by development projects can of course be equally applied to those displaced by natural and human made calamities. As far as our country’s preparation for coping with the impact of natural and human made calamities is concerned, we have begun to feel a little aware of negative impacts of such events because they are now occurring at frequent intervals.
As a result there are some institutional measure have been taken by the government by way of constituting committees at various levels. They exist on paper and their immediate response to the actual events is yet to come in any significant manner.
But we can say that a beginning has been made and we need to further consolidate the initiatives already taken so that such measure can bring some relief to disaster victims by way of their resettlement and rehabilitation. At present, we find that ad hoc relief measures are adopted to cope with the gravity of problems caused by such disasters.