Author: Madhurima Ghosh, Jadavpur University
Introduction
I had crossed the Narmada by boat….from where I could see, ranged across the crowns of low, bald hills, the tribal hamlets of Sikka, Surung…. their airy, fragile homes….their fields and the forests…. little children with littler goats… I knew I was looking at a civilisation older than Hinduism, slated – sanctioned (by the highest court in the land) – to be drowned this monsoon when the waters of the Sardar Sarovar reservoir will rise to submerge it.”- Roy (1999)
In addressing the villagers displaced by the Hirakud Dam in 1948, Jawaharlal Nehru declared that if they are to suffer, they should do so in the interest of the country (Roy, 1999). This statement has become the enduring foundation of India’s development ideology, and to a great extent, has normalised the expendability of some lives over others. Within this developmental paradigm, suffering of some for the “greater good” becomes a patriotic duty, and the violence of dispossession is no longer perceived as violence, but as sacrifice. And so millions of displaced people do not exist anymore; when history is written, they will have no part in it (Roy, 1999).
In this context, Hannah Arendt’s concept of “banality of evil,” articulated to interpret the events that transpired in Nazi Germany, offers a more disquieting lens to understand this history. For Arendt (1963), evil does not always arise from a deliberate intention to harm; it can also come from a terrifying normality, a thoughtlessness and remoteness from reality that can wreak more havoc than all evil instincts put together. But one may question whether it is not dramatic to compare India working for her greater good to an event safely buried in history, unthinkable in its scale of atrocity. Yet from 1960 to 2000, it is estimated that more than 50 million people have been displaced in India as a result of various development projects, with more than 40% of them being adivasis (Fernandes, 2023).
Most of the displaced often relocate to urban slums and take up jobs as cheap industrial labour. While they are certainly not taken to concentration camps, handed soap bars and told to step into gas chambers in the name of “showers,” Roy (1999) provocatively compares the living conditions of the displaced communities with the camps of the Third Reich, not to suggest a historical equivalence, but to emphasize the profound administrative indifference that may be legitimized as an acceptable cost of development in appealing to a purportedly greater collective good. No one wants the displaced to suffer. Yet when they do, as a necessary by-product of this development, the response is an administrative shrug by the Government, rendering such violence an acceptable consequence of progress.
THE NORMALCY OF DISPLACEMENT
Displacement is often reduced to an administrative task, even though what is lost is not simply one’s land, but their livelihood, community relationships, traditional knowledge bases, and, importantly, their political autonomy. The general indifference of top-down governance, in shifting from forest-based subsistence to cash compensation, is reflected in the legal framework as well. The Land Acquisition Act of 1894 states that displaced persons are liable to cash compensation, but only if they can prove their land title; however, many adivasis are unable to produce such proof, leading to their impoverishment. This tired pattern of development leading to incomplete rehabilitation, a systemic rendering of powerlessness, as well as a complete fragmentation of communities and livelihoods, can be seen across projects such as Tehri, Narmada, Bokaro, etc. For instance, the Bargi Project on the Narmada submerged far more villages than it initially declared, leading to the displacement of 114,000 people, who were “flushed out like rats” (Roy, 1999).
Unsurprisingly, the plight of women is reflected in the disproportionate impacts of the rehabilitation policies in place. Their economic status within Adivasi communities may be relatively superior to that of dominant Hindu communities, yet it is contingent upon their participation in the community; they often end up losing their livelihood and status, being displaced from the lands, with compensation and employment offered solely to men (Fernandes, 2023). Thus, the existence of widows, deserted women, and unmarried daughters is erased from the very language of the law, a case in point being Uttar Pradesh, which considers a couple with separate land holdings as one unit, providing only one rehabilitation package to the male head of the family (Tripathy, 2024).
This highlights the implicit smugness of modernity and development narratives: a belief in its all-encompassing nature, of it being unquestionably superior to the past. Those living in the cities receive regular water supply, electricity, etc., and understand development as progress. But for the displaced, development becomes an unmaking of their lives, not just a loss of material livelihood, but a profound loss of cultural autonomy, knowledge, and power (Baviskar, 1995).
THE LOGIC OF THOUGHTLESSNESS
But then, if these dire consequences of displacement are well known, why has this pattern persisted ever since the country’s independence? Arendt’s idea of thoughtlessness may shed light on this matter. The officials who enabled land transfers from adivasi landowners to non-adivasis despite protective laws and neglected issues such as alternative livelihoods and fair land pricing were often not acting out of explicit malice towards the adivasi population (Tripathy, 2024). The success of their projects was measured by the megawatts of electricity generated or hectares of land irrigated, not in the restoration of social worlds, and they were thus simply operating according to these institutional rationalities.
The ideology that sustains and rationalises all these practices is the “greater good” of the nation, where India is rendered a Durkheimian social fact, somehow external to and higher than her individual components. In fact, Roy (1999) referred to the displaced as refugees of an unacknowledged war. Thus, the violence induced by displacement is not borne of malice towards a section of society, but is simply normalised as a necessary and ancillary procedural outcome in working towards the development of the nation.
ORDINARY CRUELTIES AND STRUCTURAL EXPENDABILITY
When one thinks of Hitler’s Germany, they imagine gas chambers, war crimes, and a systematic extermination of innocent millions. Can this really be compared to India’s developmental trajectory? The answer would be a prompt “of course not”. But if we were to look closely at the principle, at the banality of evil and the language of India’s development, a deeper understanding may still be unearthed, of evil, not in intent, but as a result of routine administrative procedures that simply happen to deprive one of their very homes, community networks, traditional lands, and livelihoods. For instance, in a public meeting at the submergence zone of the Pong Dam in 1961, Morarji Desai requested the people to move from the houses after the dam came up, or they would release the waters and drown them all (Roy, 1999).
Thus, thoughtlessness itself becomes a tool, consciously or unconsciously rendering entire sections of people structurally expendable in the processes of development. Case in point is the sudden closure of the dam gates at the Rihand Dam, leaving over 50,000 people missing, and the forced eviction of people in the Maan irrigation project of the Narmada valley (Tripathi, 2024). The normalisation of adivasi alienation from their lands renders more precarious an already vulnerable group of people. It leads to assetlessness, unemployment, debt bondage, and even starvation, as they lose their lands not only to project authorities but also non-adivasi outsiders who flock to these areas and seize the lands and their economic opportunities (Tripathi, 2024). Another pertinent account is that of adivasi people displaced by the Nagarjunasagar Dam Project, where some sold their babies to foreign adoption agencies, and while the Government intervened and put the babies in hospitals, six died of neglect (Roy, 1999).
CONCLUSION
In alluding to Adolf Eichmann, one of the top-most Nazi officials and a key figure in the Final Solution to the Jewish Question, Arendt (1965) asserted that many were like him, not sadistic or perverted, but “terribly and terrifyingly normal”; except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all..and this sheer thoughtlessness predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period.
The very image of six infants dying of neglect, even after being “rescued” from processes of development, reveals the contradictions of development and the violence of its operations. It embodies a destruction and uprooting of entire populations, not through hatred or overt cruelty, but by overlooking entire sections of people and the absence of thought within routine administrative procedures and policy frameworks.
Ultimately, rehabilitation is not simply about allocating new land, but involves a complex restoration of cultural, emotional, social, political, and economic conditions lost due to displacement, which should be prioritised over the project causing the deprivation in the first place (Tripathi, 2024). In grasping an abstract national destiny, development cannot be presumed to be morally superior and beyond critique. It urgently needs to be re-anchored to the lived experiences of its people, especially those who bear the costs and in ensuring their dignity and autonomy, in what claims to be the world’s largest democracy.
‘
REFERENCES
Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. Viking Press.
Baviskar, A. (1995). In the belly of the river: Tribal conflicts over development in the Narmada valley. Oxford University Press, New Delhi.
Fernandes, W. (2023). Development-induced displacement in India: Search for alternatives. The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs. 47(2), 77–87.
Roy, A. (1999). The greater common good. India Book Distributor (Bombay) Ltd
Tripathy, S. N. (2024). Development-Induced Displacement: Balancing Progress and Human Rights, Journal of South Asian Research, 2: 1, pp. 47-65.