Articles by Renu Modi

Contemporary India and South Africa: Legacies, Identities and Dilemmas edited by Sujata Patel and Tina Uys, New Delhi and UK, Routledge, 2012; pp x+ 318, Rs 795.

South Africa and India: Shaping the Global South edited by Isabel Hofmeyer and Michelle Williams, 2011; Johannesburg, Wits University Press, pp vii-328, Rands 243.

The World Bank's policy on involuntary resettlement carries a heavy rural bias as does the Indian draft rehabilitation and resettlement policy. The Maharashtra government's policy on the relocation and rehabilitation of those displaced by the Mumbai Urban Transport Project (partly financed by the World Bank) is therefore significant since it has evolved over the past few years in response to the protests about its initial inadequacies. The lessons learnt from its implementation are relevant not only for large infrastructure projects in densely populated urban areas in India but also in other parts of the world.

Dislodged from their ancestral lands and a self-sufficient lifestyle, the oustees of the Sardar Sarovar Project, a large number of them tribals, now scrounge for a living as wage earners. The numerous shortcomings in the implementation of resettlement policies and a lack of benefit sharing have left the displaced persons, especially women, worse off than before.