Development refers to economic, social, political and cultural processes of change in human societies which seeks to satisfy the spiritual and material needs of man. Displacement is an inherent[1] phenomenon of such development. Normally developmental projects are aimed at fighting poverty and their outcome is beneficial; however during last three decades development induced displacement has become an explosive issue worldwide because the improved scientific and technological knowledge has enabled the modern states in concentrating on mega development projects which directly led to the large number of displacement generally of poor and marginalized section of society like tribals, indigenous people, living in forests or rural areas. This issue is of more concern in developing countries like India where due to the lack of proper rehabilitation and resettlement measures as well as restoration of environmental degradation, developmental projects has become a government run instrument of ethnocide.
The present development model is under severe criticism from human rights activists ;They argue that tribals resources are being used as means for feeding the greed of few elites who have hijacked the welfare policy making power of state on a socialist pattern; as a result tribals have become the object of development[2] and the little they have are continuously being exploited by exclusionary policy of government which is now accelerating the gap between those who do not have enough and those who have more than enough; the have-not are miserable and the elite anxious to get more.
Displacement of people generally give rise to severe economic, social and environmental problems; productions are lost; people are relocated to environments where their productive skills are less applicable, greater kinship groups are dispersed; and cultural identity, traditional authority and the potential for mutual help are diminished[3]. The forced displacement is now generating the capital and human resource to the present tribal led Naxal movement which has captured more than 220 districts of country, and ensured a parallel government therein. Despite of several constitutional ,and domestic legal protections, hardly there benefit reaches to such marginalized people .The progress of government on environmental front is also being severely criticized by the environmentalist for giving green signal to several projects without proper environment impact assessment and dilution of several environmental laws to accelerate the industrialization.The scope of this paper is to do an analysis of the present development and resettlement policy of India with primary focus on tribals and environmental issues.
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