Senior Research Fellow, Anthropological Survey of India, CRC, Nagpur, Email id: madhulika.sahoo@hotmail.co.uk
Displacement is a growing concern in globalized world; it is said that for any development project the cost has to necessarily be borne by the displaced and affected population. In the state of Odisha, particularly where displacement due to development projects are rampant, of late the foreign investors have identified the low, flat-topped mountains buried with some high deposits of the best quality bauxite in the world. According to estimates, the buxite makes more than two trillion dollars, that is, twice the value of India's GDP, $1.243 trillion in 2009 (Padal and Das 2010) Therefore, to construct infrastructural projects such as multipurpose river valley, mining, industrial, sanctuaries, national park etc.) in the forest areas, the state at present has been diverging maximum forest lands, while displacing more than lakhs of age old forest dwellers. They are the ones who pay the price and get displaced from everything attached to them. This paper tries to explore the impact of conservation induced displacement in Simlipal Tiger Reserve and the Resettlement & Rehabilitation practices in the Kapanda Banbasa & Ambadiha resettlement colony using some of the anthropological methods and approaches.
