With the State Government fiddling rehabilitation of project-affected people/displaced persons, there is every risk of even State’s development projects like irrigation outreach, road and rail network expansion getting stopped on its track in future.
The latest CAG report nails how the Resettlement and Rehabilitation (R&R) Plan of the State for industrial projects is only a facade. This expose rings an alarm bell as Odisha figures in the top-5 States in the country with a large displaced population for over eleven projects implemented for the period 1999 - 2014.
According to the data available with the Government, the R&R Plan cleared for 11 projects in the State would witness displacement of over 64,674 persons including around 42, 000 tribals. However, organisations dispute the displaced number claimed by the Government.
Social activist and NAPM convenor Prafulla Samantaray rubbished the official number. He recalled the misplaced policy of the Government since Independence vis-a-vis displacement of people and cited the case of Hirakud reservoir. The official displaced affected list then didn’t include the people living in the common property resources (CPR) or say forest lands, he claimed.
It’s pertinent to mention that even many international studies including one by World Bank have shed light on the yawning gap between official list and the actual affected populace in Odisha. One such study for the period from 1947 to 2000 reveals that over 1 million people stand displaced from their homes in Odisha officially. A majority of them were affected by irrigation/water related projects followed by mines, industrial projects and forests. The same study put the actual displaced persons at 3 million in Odisha for the simple reason that the displaced list has kept the dependent population on revenue land and CPR out of the project affected populace purview.
The study’s prediction somewhat proved prophetically true when the 2014 CAG report exposes how the State Government turned a blind eye with regard to seven industrial projects acquiring private land in around 19 villages without conducting socio-economic survey - a mandatory provision in State’s R&R Plan. The CAG then went on to add that this significant gloss over by the State has greatly hindered in identifying the actual number of affected population by the projects.
It also has nailed the State’s lackadaisical attitude by observing that even the district administration doesn’t have the complete database of project affected populace. This could prove a powder keg for the State in future as data suggests that of the total land acquired for various projects till date, around 42 per cent is private land.
More so, the brewing resentment against land acquisition in State sounds apparently justified, when CAG in its audit stumbled upon the fact that in over 15 of the 32 projects it checked, the Rehabilitation and Periphery Development Advisory Committee (RPDAC) had neither approved the socio-economic survey report nor the R&R Plan for the affected people. The bizarre Government functioning proving how much detrimental to State’s genuine development needs is well amplified when CAG to its dismay discovered how over 111 families listed in first SES displaced persons report finally were excluded from the final beneficiaries list thereby rendering them unable to avail R&R benefits.
The glaring omission CAG noticed is though ORRP 2006 provisioned linking of rehabilitation grant to Wholesale Price Index (WPI) reviewed by the Government every 2-year, but project authorities in one case delivered payments at pre-revised rates despite the revised WPI thereby by resulting in short payment to the tune of around Rs 6.7 crore to project affected families.