In a resource starved and crowded world, tens of millions are forced to make way for land-based development projects. More numerous than those who flee across borders to escape war and famine, these are unknown victims. It is difficult to grasp the magnitude of the problem. Scholars, developers and activists are still uncertain even as what to call the victims. Oustees? Involuntary resettled? Or development-displaced? Normally, we hear about these people in tidbits - one project at a time. And, save a handful of critical long-term studies, historical depth has been missing. Depriving the Underprivileged for Development by Balaji Pandey fills the void (1998, Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India, 189 pages, 61 tables, 20 maps - see note 1 below). And, given events unfolding, its publication launches timely scientific evidence into a storm of international policy controversy.

Pandey examines 44 years of involuntary resettlements in the Eastern Indian state of Orissa (1950-1994). During this period, development projects displaced 81,176 families in 1446 villages. While state industry prospered, the oustees lost 622,463 hectares of land. The projects included major dams (Machkund, Hirakud, Rengali, Upper Kolab, Indravati, Balimela, Subarnarekha, and Sslandi), thermal power stations (2,426 families in 73 villages), coal mining (3,143 families from 79 villages) steel plants, and ordinance factories. Eighty percent were displaced by dams. Pandey's team from the Institute of Socio-Economic Development, under a grant from the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa, surveyed a sample of 1977 households in 52 villages. The book is organized around a conceptual model of impoverishment risks and reconstruction, first identified by Michael Cernea, Senior Social Policy Advisor to the World Bank, and subsequently used in the 1994 Bankwide review of resettlement operations in its portfolio. This study steps beyond Bank financed projects and reveals broader dimensions of the problem.

The resettlement operational policy directive of the World Bank has become the de facto international standard for the rights of the resettled and the obligations of those responsible. In the Spring of 1998, a revision of the policy was opened to public comment. In June, I joined a delegation of Past and Present Presidents of Society for Applied Anthropology who met with the Executive Board, managers and resettlement staff of the World Bank to discuss the on-going redrafting. The professional society was concerned that the proposed revisions ignored a broad range of socio-cultural and economic research. The argued this represented a retreat of the Bank from its earlier use of the risk and reconstruction model. Rather than building better policy on the scaffolding of scientific research and bank lessons learned, the revised draft policy simply ignored the risks. This was an indefensible position to be taken by agency and employees charged with assessment of the risks associated with international loans. In the meeting, the consultant responsible for international training in resettlement dismissed risk studies and related research as irrelevant to policy. Nothing could be further from the truth. The delegation argued that narrowing the policy, ignoring the risks, does not exculpate those responsible from their moral and financial obligations. It simply covers up the issues and exposes investors to undisclosed liabilities.

Pandey's work shows that a pattern of unmitigated socio-cultural and economic risks not only haunt Bank projects, but threaten peoples in non-Bank projects sponsored by public and private sectors. He details the positive evolution of the resettlement legal frameworks, changes in the institutional capacity of those responsible for resettlement, and the projects' compensation components.

He emphasizes the detrimental impact of resettlement on different socio-economic groups and land holding classes, as well as by occupations. Particular attention is paid to the impact of displacement of the most vulnerable, women and children. Issues of rehabilitation, stakeholder access to information, resistance and protest movements, reactions to new habitats, perceptions of post-resettlement life, and the relationship of oustees to host populations are also measured.

The profile painted by Pandey is sobering, unquestionably reaffirming that people who are subjegated to involuntary resettlement are at grave risk of multidimensional impoverishment. The involuntarily resettled showed an increase in nuclear families and preponderance of females within the household, an increase in illiteracy, and a greater dependency ratio. As a result of displacement, landlessness among resettlement populations increased from two to five fold (See Table 1). And land impoverishment was further exacerbated by excluding affected peoples who were unable to document proof of ownership and a rapid increase in land values associated with local level market distortions. The risk of homelessness increased, as none of the 7 projects surveyed paid for houses at their replacement value.

% Landless among displaced families