PUBLISHED RESEARCH PAPERS FROM CRG
The Calcutta Research Group have Published Nine New Research Papers on International Workshop & Conference in Migration and Forced Migration Studies
2007
Limits of the Humanitarian: Studies in Situations of Forced Migration
While forced migration is the central theme of the three studies presented here, what brings them together between the covers is their discussion of the limits of the humanitarian gaze represented primarily by the national policies followed towards the victims of forced migration and secondarily through the lens of the typical cameraperson who shoots them as a stranger. As “forced migration” turns into a public issue with the beginning of the new millennium – thanks to the efforts of the UN, other multilateral bodies, and various public forums of the victims – the humanitarian gaze becomes overwhelming, in the process making the victim an object of charity and protection. The victim’s transformation into such an object coincides with a surge of national and international policies showered on them. In India for instance at least half a dozen draft national policies of rehabilitation have already been prepared, and a bill to address the problems faced by the victims of displacement induced by communal violence is in the pipeline for ratification by the Indian Parliament. While humanitarian care and protection, as these studies reveal, partly address and alleviate the sufferings of the victims, they also strengthen the power of the caregivers including that of the nation-states, the huge corporate organisations of non-governmental agencies, and the multilateral institutions working like big companies. Care has truly become a new form of power that holds out the promise of delivering the victims into safety, security, and freedom, and reintegrating them into newer and hitherto unknown social bodies. While in the first two studies the discussion remains implicit, the Kolkata case shows how the victims turn the gaze on the cameraperson and the lens of the camera turns into a site of contest between what the stranger constantly seeks to frame and ‘colonize’ and the way the gaze is turned back by the victims. Camera as the study reflects can be more than a mere instrument of colonization: it can serve as an instrument of subversion also. The stranger’s encounter with the victims finally remains what it is – the ‘with’ as an indissoluble remainder.
Essays by Shiva K. Dhungana, Priyanca Mathur Velath, Nanda Kishor and Eeva Puumala
The Draft National Rehabilitation Policy: A Critique
The Draft National Rehabilitation Policy (2006): A Critique is published as part of the 16 Policies and Practices that CRG brings out regularly. It has two sections; Section I traces the evolution of the draft and brings it to its present status under the UPA Government. Under it, The sub-sections i – iii deal with the specificities of NRP 2006. The first sub section argues that the principle of eminent domain has its legal roots in the colonial times. The second subsection focuses more on the draft itself and points out its shortcomings. The third sub section continues with the critique and raises the larger question of political will – or more accurately the lack of it that is held responsible for the shortcomings outlined in the second part. In Section II we have provided a short critique of the Communal Violence (Prevention, Control and Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill, 2005. The study then attempts to conclude the combined critique of the bill and the NRP Policy. Though the bill and the policy are not on the same platform for being different by nature and their potential enforceability, we have included it in this study as both the bill and the policy seek to deal with the question of relief and rehabilitation. More importantly both the drafts, if studied in a comparative way will enlighten the reader about the rationality of nation building and rebuilding and the instrument(s) though which the state makes such attempts according to this logic.
Essays by Walter Fernandes, Priyanca Mathur Velath, Madhuresh Kumar, Ishita Dey, Sanam Roohi and Samir Kumar Das
Conflict, War & Displacement: Accounts of Chhattisgarh & Batticaloa
The two studies presented here are based on a unique understanding of the lives of people displaced due to conflict in Indian subcontinent. Both these studies try to understand the situation of the camps, internal camp politics and issues of right to return and its implications.
Subhas Mohapatra in his study Conflict-Induced Displacement in Chhattisgarh: Analysis and Situation Report on The Displacement Camps tries to understand the condition of the internally displaced persons through an analysis of relief the six relief camps Dornapal, Erabore, Injrem, Konta, Pollampalli and Mariguda. The findings of the study focus on situation of the displaced within the camps and also on situation of those displaced outside the camps. One of the interesting dimensions of the study is how people have been forced to migrate to camps from conflict torn villages and how these camps are become sites of “state” power. Chathuri Jayasooriya in her study The ‘Right to Return’: Commentary on the Return of the IDPs in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka focuses only on the returns which took place to Vaharai in East Batticaloa and Vellaveli in West Batticaloa. Batticaloa is the only Tamil majority district in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka. Over the years, it has been the site of multiple displacements, housing a large number of IDPs on the run for decades, displaced and re-displaced on multiple accounts. In her study, she examines conduciveness of return sites, options presented to the returnees, the psycho-social impacts of displacement, gendering of conflict and post-conflict situations, empowerment of the IDPs and their participation in decision-making processes and various other dimensions.
Essays by Subash Mohapatra and Chathuri Jayasooriya
Towards a New Consideration-Justice for the Minorities
It examines the protective strategy of the Indian State with regard to minorities and shows, how such a strategy of protection quickly transforms into another policy of governing the people. This issue containing three articles shows in the process, how situations of marginality produce incipient demands for justice. Finally it suggests the necessity of a new charter on minority rights. It emphasises the need for a dialogic and right-based approach as distinct from a protection based approach.
Essays by Samir Kumar Das, Paula Banerjee and Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury
Weapons of the Weak-Field Studies on Claims to Social Justice in Bihar and Orissa
In Globalisation, Patriarchal Development, and the Protesting Voices in Orissa Amrita M Patel tries to show that since the 1990s, with the advent of the New Economic Policy, one continuous premise that has been put forward by the Government is that Orissa needs rapid ‘industrialization’ to mitigate its poverty. Banking on the state’s huge mineral resources (90% of India’s chrome ore and nickle reserves; 70% of bauxite; and 24% of coal reserves), the government thinks that mining based industries can alleviate poverty of the state. The mines are now being leased out to private investment. This understanding has led to a faulty analysis of the whole situation leading to a skewed process of development in Orissa. As the majority of the women in Orissa live in rural areas, their lives and livelihood and living conditions depend on traditional activities like agriculture, forestry and fishing. Besides wage disparities, there is also unequal distribution of activities and workload as well as in access to and control of resources. Women are involved in jobs involving maximum drudgery such as transplantation but they are deprived of ownership and control of resources and technical knowledge. Against such a back ground, Orissa has been the pioneer in many of the social protest movements such as the Balco protest, Gandhamardan protection movement, Tata movement, Chilika Bacchao Andolan, Mada Mukti Andolan, Utkal Alumina protest which have been aimed at the ‘developmental projects’ These movements have been spread in all parts of the state in Sambalpur, Gopalpur, Kashipur, Banpur etc
In Gulamiya Ab Hum Nahi Bajeibo: Peoples’ Expressions for Justice in Jehanabad, Manish K. Jha talks about the the district of Jehanabad which is an apt example of almost unshakable nexus between feudal peasantry, political leaders, criminal gangs and police forces. Over the decades the productivity in the area declined which increased exploitation of landless labourers through low wages and small share of produce for sharecroppers and many were also denied rights over gairmazarua (government or public commons) land and all other common village resources. Gradually the victimised labourers felt the need of organising themselves and they rallied around left organisations like Indian Peoples’ front, an erstwhile political outfit of CPI (ML) Liberation. As the locale of Jehnabad shows such expressions of violence ironically in the name of securing justice and fight for dignity exposed the shallowness of state’s institutional justice system. Willful erosion of state’s institutional structures does not naturally mean the withering away of the cravings for a just life amongst people and thus organising new institutions such as the Jan-adalat (people’s court) around the issues of sexual oppression, low wages and land issues. The consciousness of social reality and assertion of social justice undoubtedly have helped people in enhancing their social power, even when their economic status has remained by and large unchanged. Despite the fact that the image of Bihar is generally under siege, one cannot refute that the language of politics as also the power discourse have transformed significantly in the last two decades.
Essays by Amrita M Patel and Manish K. Jha
A Status Report on Displacement in Assam & Manipur
While inter-ethnic conflicts have by no means been rare in India’s Northeast, population displacement induced by such conflicts is sharply on the rise particularly since the 1980s. Conflicts and violence confined in the past mainly to the armed groups and the security forces of the state seldom triggered off population displacement of such scale and magnitude as one notices now. It is important that we take note of the changing dynamics of conflicts and violence in the region. Conflicts today have acquired a truly mass character in the sense that they show an alarming propensity of engulfing an ever-greater number of people involved in them. In this situation, it is ironic that the two rights of home and homeland run at cross-purposes. This has its implications for the politics, ecology and topography of the region. Mixed areas with historically practised exchanges and transactions between communities are at peril. And, thus for instance, never before in its history has Manipur been so much divided as it is now. Internal displacements sparked off by conflicts are a product of many a hidden partition in the society seldom officially acknowledged. This study on fifty years of population displacement in Manipur tells us the story of a society that has hit almost a blind alley with little clue as to how to cross the divides and negotiate its rapidly changing ethnic landscape. We need to complement it with many other stories. As various stories marked by these divides unfold, they reveal a surprisingly similar structure – a structure that constantly reminds us of how violence once initiated eventually gathers its own momentum and takes its toll on each one of us – big or small, powerful or powerless. The essay on Assam prods us to think in terms of formulating an agenda that takes us beyond the given fault lines. It underlines the need for dialogues as a means of addressing the issues of rights and justice. We cannot ignore the fact that the development-induced displacement against this backdrop of ethnic tensions has complicated the problem related to rights and justice in India’s Northeast even more.
Essays by Monirul Hussain and Pradip Phanjoubam