Revision summary
Landless and marginal farmers lose fields, commons, and village wages. Compensation follows title, so the landless are structurally excluded. Dalit and Adivasi households are hit hardest. Women’s work and water vanish with the commons. Resettlement that ignores livelihood recreates urban poverty.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
Development displacement hits the rural landless and marginal farmers first because they have the least title and the weakest voice. Dams, mines, highways, and SEZs turn them from poor peasants into informal migrants.
Body
Who loses
- Marginal farmers lose tiny plots and common-property grazing and forest that actually fed them.
- The landless lose wages on those fields and access to commons; compensation usually follows patta, not labour.
- Adivasi and Dalit households are over-represented, as Narmada and coal belts showed.
Effects
- A. R. Desai’s class lens: surplus is nationalised as growth, risk is privatised as poverty.
- Women lose fuel, water, and field work; feminization of poverty follows the move.
- Cities receive slum labour. The village loses a generation of agrarian security.
Policy gap
- Resettlement that counts acres, not livelihoods, fails Thorner’s mazdoor.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD DV[Dam mine SEZ] --> LF[Loss of plot and commons] LF --> MG[Migrant informal labour] LL[Landless no patta] --> MG
Conclusion
Displacement through development proletarianises the already weak. Without commons, wages, and consent, growth is a class project against the landless and the marginal farmer.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Do jobs in the project repair the loss?
A few skilled posts appear. Most displaced become casual labour.
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Is this only an Adivasi issue?
Adivasis are central. Dalit landless and small peasants in plains projects suffer too.
Same topic · past papers
UPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2024 · Q5(e) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
What is your assessment about the recent farmers' movement in India? Elaborate. -
2020 · Q7(c) · Sociology GS 2 · 15 marks
Are the contemporary farmers' movements in India changing their course? Discuss. -
2017 · Q3(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
Indebtedness is one of the serious issues leading to farmers suicides Discuss reasons and suggest solutions -
2015 · Q7(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 15 marks
Discuss the main features of farmers' movements in independent India.
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