Displacement and People’s Movement: A Study of UAIL Project in Odisha

Battling industrialisation, big dams and other similar development projects are a range of micro-level social movements, which contemporary India is evidencing. India's vast organizations with common aspects demonstrates different stresses and road maps. In India, regarding the usage of natural resources, social justice issues and violation of human rights, the micro-level social movements had to face a wide stretch of battles and wars. In India, the environmental movement led to production, extraction, ownership and control of natural resources. Although the development process demonstrated progress in Odisha, it has caused large-scale dispossession of land, homesteads, forests and denial of livelihood and human rights. With the increase in development in Odisha, the controversy among the state/corporate entities and the people builds up as the contemporary growth model is not defendable and results in irreversible ecological/environmental costs, causing the movement of several population. In rural Odisha, battles had impact on proactively stopping of projects, mining, forcible land, forest and water acquisition fallouts from government/corporate sector. This paper studies the process and underlying dynamics of the UAIL fight in Kashipur block. This also explores the tribal movement against the mining industry and also debate a case of conflict over the issue of land acquisition due to the UAIL project in Kashipur block of Odisha. Based on the environmental movement and development-induced displacement perspective, the article studies the nature and extent of displacement due to the UAIL project in Kashipur block and loss of livelihood caused by the project in addition to destruction of adivasi people.