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Usha Ramanathan
The paradigm of development that has found favour with planners makes displacement of large numbers of people,
even whole communities, an unavoidable event. The utilitarian principle of maximum happiness for the maximum
numbers has been inv oked to lend respectability to making the lives of communities into a cost in the public interest.
The law is ill-equipped to counter this attitude and in fact abets it by lending the force of state power.
The Statutes
[LAA].
compulsory acquisition.
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this possibility.
of empirical knowledge.
II
Public Purpose
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of individuals as individuals.
III
Eminent Domain
to compensation.
scapegoats.
the state.
powerlessness.
IV
Compensation
ACQUISITION
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implementation of projects.
lend it enforceability.
alone. The protection against overpopulation may follow, including land for
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of the law.
IMPOVERISHMENT
attitudes.
policy is no substitute.
law.'4
lesson:
injustice of displacement.
LAA.
JUDICIARY ON DISPLACEMENT
of Article 21 is devoid of any merit.'
rehabilitation continued unaddressed.'5
LAA.
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FIGURE
Adequate
2 Forexample, the Interstate Migrant Workmen
ompensation<
(Regulation of Employment and Conditions
Inadequate
of Service) Act 1979, the anti-beggary acts
No compensation
extant in some states, and the illegal status
Displacement
Supreme Court in Olga Tellis v Bombay
protecting the displaced subsistence labour3 The phrase is borrowed from the title of a
level skilled/
book by Guido Calabresi and Phillip Bobbitt,
unskilled
where the authors address the agony of the
T--
trafficking
of the NTPC (May 1993).
Further Institutionalisation
Allahabad High Court in the matter of Gramin
impoverishment
Kalyan Sangharsh Samiti v District
/I,
Magistrate, Sonebhadra (CMWP No 4358 of
\ | I I ~~~~~ ~ ~~~~~~~~I II
Law and Poverty vi (1988).
IN CONCLUSION
SCALE 407.
them.
up the difference.'17
displacement.
2 SCC 327.
Notes
SCALE 683.
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