what the govt of india has been doing in the name of development would make even a stalin very proud. the scorched earth policy has been given a new and more sinister form by the govt of our nation that has no idea of what the term development means.
genocide is not always gassing people to death or locking them up in concentration camps, cutting people off from their factors of production is also tantamount to crime. it is criminal to take away the lands of people and then speak of compensating them with useless wads of cash that most people especially the indigenous people have no use for.
this needs to be seen in the manner the displacement is so strategically planned and executed with such ruthless efficiency, wherein the wails of people counts for nothing and lost in the entire cacophony of the development war cries sponsored and managed by the govt of our vibrant democracy.....some sort of vibrancy for sure....
as soon as the notification for displacing an area comes up, the area is virtually suffocated in terms of resources and infrastructure development. it is almost as if the area is prepared physically for its systematic annihilation. the stripping of the area and its people becomes a story of untold and unimaginable misery for the people there.
this is classical scorched earth policy where even the basic services are cut off, schools closed, PHC's closed, it is the final nail in the coffin of that area, so when you leave the people with no access, no electricity, no roads, no medical services, seal the handpumps...
So in a way the people are left with no choice but to leave that place for as the prime minister and bharat ratna awardees in our nation speak, for the greater common good of the nation... a nation that abandons them ,takes their home, land away and gifts to some entity, some corporation....
some nation...some democracy....some human rights....some notion of welfare state....
the scale at which this is happening is horrible and it could happen in only an as morally vacous nation and as insensitive and crass a nation like India....
so when the state displaces people, people dont even have the grace of opposition or protesting when they have lost everything....the govt expects them to pose as poster boys and pin up dolls for the project....expected to smile when their lands have been pillaged, houses bulldozed, livestock killed or driven away.....
this is the true price of development, something that would never be covered by the national media that calls displacement as collateral losses in the march to progress, legalises genocide, govt reports that reduce people to nothing but meaningless numbers....
just an after thought....so when the govt displaces, kills and maims...it is termed as development and when the displaced people retort back, they are called as anti development junkies, anti nationalists and terrorists.....and they receive no compensation ...only bullets.....
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