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For an equitable rehabilitation policy

Ramaswamy R. Iyer

The draft National Rehabilitation Policy 2006 should be sent back to the drawing board. We need a National Rehabilitation Act, not merely a policy. Those displaced by a project deserve a statutory first claim on its benefits.

THE MINISTRY of Rural Development, Department of Land Resources, has put on its website a draft National Rehabilitation Policy 2006. This represents a revision of the National Resettlement and Rehabilitation Policy 2003, which was notified in February 2004. Perhaps it needs to be explained that the Ministry of Rural Development has for long been the `nodal' Ministry for this subject. `Rehabilitation' here refers to the rehabilitation of people displaced by developmental activities of diverse kinds: dams, industrial or mining projects, highways, and others. What the Ministry has put on its website is a comparative table juxtaposing the provisions of the 2003 Policy and the revised provisions of the 2006 draft. It gave a limited period of seven days for comments by the public. That period expired on October 11. Now the Ministry will presumably finalise the draft and notify it, bringing it into force. That would be unfortunate, as there are many things wrong with the new Policy. The article will not offer a detailed analytical commentary on the draft Policy but will provide a background and highlight some disquieting trends.

A draft of a Rehabilitation Policy, first mooted in 1985 or 1986, was `under consideration' for two decades and went through various vicissitudes. Successive revisions were generally in a retrograde direction but at one stage a fairly good draft emerged under the authorship of N.C. Saxena, then Secretary Rural Development; but it was damaged by subsequent revisions. The subject was then forgotten for some years, but suddenly to everyone's surprise a National Resettlement and Rehabilitation Policy 2003 was notified in February 2004, shortly before the NDA Government went out of office. It was widely debated and found to be good in part but deficient in many respects. Several conferences were held, comments offered, amendments proposed, resolutions adopted, and so on. All this culminated in civil society meetings with the National Advisory Council at which officials of the Ministry were also present. Two members of the NAC (Aruna Roy and N.C. Saxena) undertook to prepare a redraft of the Policy that would take into account all the concerns that had been expressed. They did so. It was unrealistic to expect that such a draft would have an easy passage through the governmental machinery, and soon enough there were reports that the bureaucracy was attempting a fresh draft. This now stands confirmed. The NAC draft seems to have been put aside and a new governmental draft has been put on the website. This completely nullifies the entire consultation process. All the effort that so many all over the country put into this matter over an extended period of time has been rendered pointless. The comparative table should have had three columns: the 2003 Policy, the Aruna Roy draft (which was in effect a civil society draft), and the revised Government Draft; and there should have been a memorandum explaining the rationale of the Government Draft. All of us could then have looked at it with an open mind and tried to understand what the Government has done and why. What the Government has actually done makes a mockery of the consultation process, and shows an indifference to, if not contempt for, civil society.

Leaving the process aside, the new draft is disturbing in many ways. A few will be mentioned here.

Points to ponder:

First, the opening sentence of the new Policy is ominous. It begins with a strident colonial-style re-assertion of the state's prerogatives, legal powers, eminent domain, and so on. This is a retreat from Enlightenment. (This was not there in the 2003 Policy.)

Secondly, a point that had emerged during the meetings and discussions earlier was the following. Uprooting people is in principle unacceptable; it is for the proposers of projects or other activities to establish (a) that the objectives in view are well conceived (b) that there are no reasonably acceptable alternative (less pain-causing) means of achieving the same purposes and (c) that the displacement of people is unavoidable and minimal. In other words, we must avoid development-related displacement to the extent possible, failing which, we must minimise it; and among the available options, we must choose the non-displacing or least-displacing one. This idea was indeed weakly present in the 2003 draft, and while it has disappeared from the Preamble in the 2006 draft, it continues to be weakly present in paragraphs 2.1(a) and 5.5 (i). What I mean by `weakly present' is that while words such as `non-displacing' and `least displacing' are used, there is no ringing assertion that displacement is undesirable and that the first choice should be to avoid it.

There is no such assertion because there is no such conviction in the government. Official thinking in this country is not sympathetic to the kinds of concerns stated above. There is no real sense of regret or guilt at large-scale displacements, no compassion for the sufferings of the project-affected people, and no real desire to find solutions. On the other hand, there is a desire to get ahead with `developmental' projects and impatience with anyone who raises inconvenient concerns. To many, development means dams, highways, flyovers, high-rise buildings, huge apartment blocks, grand shopping malls, and so on: our cities must become as resplendent as Singapore and Beijing. If people have to be pushed around for this, so be it. The argument may go as follows: "Look at China. It decided to build Three Gorges and went ahead and did it, even if it meant displacing over a million people. It was not plagued by criticisms and popular movements as we are."

I am not caricaturing the mainstream position; I have heard remarks of the kind that I have cited. I have permitted myself this digression only to make the point that we cannot assume for sure, as many of us tend to, that there is a shared concern about displacement and shared desire to find just and humane solutions.

Thirdly, displacement (where unavoidable) must take place with the free, prior, informed consent of the people concerned. The people likely to be affected must be taken into confidence and provided with the fullest information about the contemplated project from the earliest stages. As soon as a broad project concept is available, a public hearing must be held. The people of the area must be participants in the decision-making, and must accept the rationale of the displacement. Forced displacement must be avoided. This principle of `free, prior, informed consent' is clearly unacceptable to the Government. It did not figure in the 2003 Policy and it is not there in the 2006 draft. Governments may talk about `consultation' and `participation' but it goes against the grain for them to give people a role in decision-making.

Land acquisition

Fourthly, for a long time now, it has been widely accepted that the Land Acquisition Act 1894 must be thoroughly overhauled or another route adopted for acquiring land. In tribal areas, the requirement of consultation with the gram sabha under PESA must be scrupulously observed. The acquisition of land needs to be made (a) contestable (not merely in regard to compensation, but also in relation to `public purpose') (b) procedurally more humane and equitable and (c) more just in terms of compensation, with due regard to the amount needed for buying land or property (house, shop) in the resettlement area. The Policy draft is silent on the Land Acquisition Act. In fact, that Act is implicitly present behind the Policy.

Fifthly, the rehabilitation measures or `package' envisaged in the Policy fall short of the packages already adopted in certain Projects. This calls for a detailed examination that cannot be attempted here.

Sixthly, we need a National Rehabilitation Act, not merely a Policy. If statutory clearances are needed for felling trees and interference with the environment, there should also be a statutory clearance for displacing people; and the affected people need to be granted a statutory first claim on the benefits of the project for which they are displaced, with resettlement (in the case of dam projects) preferably in the command area of the project. To give the necessary clearances under such an Act, and to monitor the actual implementation, there should be a National Rehabilitation Commission. Some of these ideas had come up in the discussions earlier. None of them figures either in the 2003 Policy or in the new Policy draft, evidently because they are unacceptable to the Government. Indeed, in the prevailing atmosphere of globalisation, liberalisation and the pursuit of eight per cent or ten per cent economic growth, these may seem a plea for a return to old-fashioned ideas. They are, however, placed before the reader in all earnestness.

There are indeed enlightened elements in the 2006 draft: for instance, the idea of a Social Impact Assessment. However, the real difficulty with this draft is that even when it is good, it is essentially top-down. All responsibility and powers are with the bureaucracy. The Policy is non-participatory, though lip service is paid to the idea of participation. If this draft becomes the National Rehabilitation Policy 2006, it will take its place alongside of the National Environment Policy as one more retrogressive step driven by the prevailing economic philosophy. It needs to go back to the drawing board, but who will push it there?

(The writer is a former Union Water Resources Secretary.)

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