|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Displaced by Development: Confronting Marginalisation and Gender Injustice I expect women will be the last thing civilised by man. — George Meredith BOTH nature and woman have refused to fall in line with man’s ideals. Man’s agenda of ‘civilising’ the world involves, in a large part, cutting down forests, building large dams and exploiting natural resources in the process—to all of which, women have put up stiff resistance. It is what has led to women cling to trees and choose to be axed down in ‘chipko movements’ rather than letting men strip their forests in the name of development. Displaced by Development is a take on the increasing marginalisation of women on the path of so-called development.
It doesn’t help that archaic laws refuse to transfer compensated land to women so that divorced, separated or widowed women and other female-headed households are left with fewer options for survival than ever. Moreover, gender biases in resettlement and rehabilitation programmes deny women jobs in the new projects. The book engages the issue of gender with other identities such as age, class, tribe and ethnicity. It reinforces the need for a gender perspective in policy and academic debates. It brings forth many examples where women were neither silent spectators in the displacement process (i.e. they chose to resist it) nor mere victims (i.e. they voiced their protests). It also documents the self-transformation the women undergo in the process and the resultant re-ordering of social and gender relations. Feminists, in this compilation, unpack the aggregate notions of the ‘common good’. As also the equation of development with economic growth, exclusion of diverse perspectives and alternate paths to development and not taking into account the agency of the local people who are not only considered dispensable but also a block to development. It challenges the hegemony of the state and its complicity in the subversion of rehabilitation measures. It questions the neglect of the basic citizenship rights of certain groups of people in the mad race for development. It also offers solutions in the form of gender checklists for alternate inclusive policies of development that would truly serve the interests of the targets of development as well as those displaced. With inputs from eminent scholar-activists, the work stands the concept of development on its head—the most prominent among them being that all displacement is forced. It will appeal to a cross-section of policy makers, NGOs concerned with displacement and migration issues and to the scholars of economics, sociology, environment, and gender and South Asian studies.
|
With
the majority of contributors being hardcore social/tribal activists as
well as scholars and researchers in related fields, the book offers
incisive theoretical and practical perspectives on the issues ignored by
those who undertake ‘Mission Development’. There are no reliable
statistics available as to the number of people who are uprooted
whenever a project is undertaken with the belief of ‘greatest good for
the greatest number’. That is because only those who are displaced are
taken into account and not those who ‘voluntarily migrate’, a number
of times sometimes, because the alternate land/means of livelihood
provided don’t adequately sustain them. And those displaced are
impoverished in more ways than one. First of all, not everyone is
sustained by land alone. There are those who earn their keep by
practicing certain arts and crafts that are relevant to the village
community alone, e.g., makers of traditional agricultural equipments,
entertainers, those who practice healing by herbs, etc. Also, those who
live by selling produce from the forest, river and peripheral and/or
community land are left high and dry. Women comprise a majority of these
sections.