Land Rights as Social Rights: A Micro-Level Study

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Displacement constitutes a major human problem in India. It dislocates People from their home, land & environment & has traumatic consequences for their lives. Displacement can be caused by natural calamities such as flood, cyclone, tsunami, earthquake & manmade factors such as political conflict, wars & social strife. Development process, also man-made, has been added to the third source. While the first two causes have been a recurring phenomenon in the evolution of civilization, the third cause has emerged from the efforts of governments to modernize traditional societies. Of the three, the first two categories of displacement are unplanned & usually unanticipated. The third category of displacement, however, is the result of prior & conscious planning & therefore anticipated. Of the two categories of unplanned displacement, the one that is due to natural calamities is usually of a shorter duration while the rather arising out of war, political conflict, & social strife may have a little longer duration &, in some situations, even of a permanent nature if the issues giving rise to it do not set satisfactorily resolved. But displacement from development projects such as open cast coal mining is invariably permanent. This is because contemporary development is associated with big projects requiring huge areas of land, such as dams, airports, extraction of minerals, industrial plants, provisions of social service, housing etc. Present study finds the multifaceted problems of land acquisition for expansion of existing coal mines as well as establishment of new mining establishment in West Burdwan district of West Bengal, India.