REHABILITATION & RESETTLEMENT

Share a few drops of tears for them. Because they are the displaced Give them, a little from your compassion because they are the dispossessed.

Women constitutes almost half the affected and displaced population in the world.

REHABILITATION AND RESETTLEMENT (R&R)

It is a multidimensional issue having complex linkages with gender, livelihood and even governance facets.

Main terms involved in R&R are:

Relief: It means the immediate support offered to the affected persons during a disaster, that disrupts the normal routine of life, causing loss of life and property.

Rehabilitation: Literal meaning of rehabilitation is the restoration of someone to a useful place in society by re- establishing incomes, livelihood, living and social systems. Resettlement: Is used to define the process of starting of a new life in another part of the country.

Together Rehabilitation and Resettlement promote

sustainable development.

Stage 1: Relief

Stage 2: Rehabilitation

Stage 3: Resettlement

Let us see the R&R policy framework:

R&R policy frame work

Good governance policy inputs Output Outcome

Gender and child issues, vulnerable section issues Poverty alleviation, livelihood opportunities Environment issue, Smart Governance

Reduction in inequality and disparity Poverty reduction, livelihood promotion Equitable growth and sustainable development

Positive contribution to Millennium Development Goals (MDG)

How they are displaced?

Infrastructure projects: mainly forced
displacement. Sardar Sarovar Project, construction of roads etc
are examples.

Natural calamities: In the form of earthquake,

cyclones, famines, floods, acid rains etc. Tsunami occurred at the Asian coasts is one of the ferocious that occurred.

Terrorist attacks :A real threat to World peace.

CONTD
Creation of National parks: When some forest area
is covered under a National Park, it is a welcome step for conservation of the natural resources. However, it also has a social aspect associated with it which is often neglected. A major portion of the forest is declared as core-area, where the entry of local dwellers or tribals is prohibited. When these villagers are deprived of their ancestral right or access to the forests, they usually retaliate by starting destructive activities. There is a need to look into their problems and provide them some employment.

Terrorist Attacks:
Our country has witnessed and is witnessing a large number of terrorist attacks. Mumbai bomb blast series, Delhi, Coimbatore bombblasts, ULFA attacks at Assam etc are some of them. The LTTE attacks compel many Tamil families to migrate from Lanka to Tamil coast. The specialty of these attacks is that the innocent people are being murdered or being dispossessed.

Civil outbursts: Internal chaos inside a nation.

Political riots, communal riots and both of these combined. Refugee flow becomes a head ache for the authorities Ex- Service men also should be rehabilitated in civil life after their release from the service on account of their truncated career.

Financially deprived: Number of families displaced due to financial crisis.

CAUSES IN INDIA FOR REHABILITATION .

(i) Tribals are usually the most affected amongst the displaced who are already poor. Displacement further increases their poverty due to loss of land, home, jobs, food insecurity, loss of access to common property assets, increased morbidity and mortality and social isolation.

(ii) Break up of families is an important social issue arising due to displacement in which the women are the worst affected and they are not even given cash/land compensation.

(iii)The tribals are not familiar with the market policies and trends. Even if they get cash compensation, they get alienated in the modern economic set-up.

(iv) The land acquisition laws ignore the communal ownership of property, which is an inbuilt system amongst the tribals. Thus the tribals lose their communitarian basis of economic and cultural existence. They feel like fish out of water.
(v) Kinship systems, marriages, social and cultural functions, their folk-songs, dances and activities vanish with their displacement. Even when they are resettled, it is individual-based resettlement, which totally ignores communal settlement. (vi) Loss of identity and loss of the intimate link between the people and the environment is one of the biggest loss. The age-long indigenous knowledge, which has been inherited and experienced by them about the flora, fauna, their uses etc. gets lost.

What are the problems suffered by the displaced?

Mental problems: Anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, avoidance of total contact with outside world and even suicidal tendency. Physical problems: Untidy refugee camps invite contagious diseases. Pure water will be a dream. Typhoid, cholera, dysentery, diarrhea attack the camps.

Financial problems: The displaced are dispossessed. They reach a camp leaving all their earnings in their native land. No provisions to buy medicine, construct their own shelter or to educate their young ones. Anarchy: IDPs are considered as a burden by the authority. No proper control from the Government for their resettlement lead to anarchy and confusion.

Settlement in unsafe or unfit locations. Forced return to unsafe areas.

How they are resettled?

Government undertakes many organizations to resettle the displaced. Some private or semi-private organizations, referred to as Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) also take fruitful steps.

1) The Directorate General Resettlement. (DGR)

An Interservice organization functioning directly under the Ministry Of Defence. Numerous retired personnel from the Armed Forces are rehabilitated in useful and productive ventures.

2) Office of Refugee Resettlement

ORR takes many constructive as well as creative measures among refugees. ORR is located in US. Build and bridge cultural and information gaps to ensure that the refugees get needed care.

3) Interservice Institution for Ex-service men resettlement.

Undertakes the resettlement of Ex service men by providing re-employment in the organized sector or through self employment. At the Centre, the Ex-Servicemen Welfare Wing acts. The central government provides : 1) Training programs to re-orient retiring defence personnel towards Civil employment. 2) Reservation of posts for providing reemployment chances in Govt./ Semi Govt./ public sector organizations. 3) Schemes for self-employment.

4) Resettlement Plans.
Under ADBs policy on Involuntary Resettlement, Govts. or NGOs shall submit a satisfactory Resettlement Plan. The 11 elements of a satisfactory Resettlement Plan are: 1) Organizational responsibilities. 2) Community participation and integration with host population. 3) Socio- economic Survey. 4) Legal framework.

5) Identification of alternative sites and selection. 6) Valuation of; and compensation for; lost assets. 7) Land ownership, tenure, acquisition and transfer. 8) Access to training, employment and credit. 9) Shelter, infrastructure and social services. 10) Environmental protection and management. 11) Implementation schedule, monitoring and evaluation.

CASE STUDIES
In case of Sardar Sarovar Project, Gujarat Government is formulating its policy through various government resolutions. It has decided that each landed oustee shall be entitled to allotment of irrigable land in the state which he chooses for his resettlement. The area of the land would be equal to that owned by him earlier and the minimum land given to an oustee would be 2 hectares. However, there are problems of landless oustees and those natives who were cultivating forest land. The cut-off date for identifying an adult son in a family has not been fixed. It is important since the adult son is to be treated as a separate family. The people of 20 submerged villages in Gujarat have been resettled at different locations leading to disintegration of joint families.

The case of Pong Dam is different. The dam was constructed on Beas River in Himachal Pradesh in 1960, while it was a part of Punjab. The water is harnessed to irrigate Rajasthan. Rajasthan, therefore, agreed to provide land to the oustees in the command area of Indira Gandhi Canal. However, to carry Beas Water to Rajasthan, another dam had to be built adding 20,722 more families that were displaced and had to be resettled by Rajasthan. Out of 30,000 families uprooted due to Pong dam, only 16,000 were considered eligible for allotment, as only they were bonafide cultivators for whom 2.25 lakh acre land was earmarked. What happened to the rest of the 14,000 families is not answered. Punjab which is one of the beneficiaries of the dam is totally out of the rehabilitation issue. Only Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh are trying to settle the matter. Even those who have been settled, they are in resettlement sites in desert bordering Pakistan, more than thousand kilometers from their native place, thus breaking their kinship ties.

Expand your heart........

Think........... Dont they- the dispossessed- too have the right to live in this world? Just keep this in mind..... They also have the right to breathe the same air that we inhale. So be active in providing the

Rehabilitation and Resettlement for the displaced.....

THANK YOU