[Reader-list] InfoChange Agenda: On the Move

[OISHIK SIRCAR]

The *InfoChange Agenda* issue on Migration and Displacement titled 'On the
Move' is finally out -- after a long long wait.

For those interested, you'll find the online edition at
http://infochangeindia.org/Agenda/On-the-move/<http://www.infochangeindia.org/agenda.jsp>Please
note that the online edition has more number of articles than the
print edition. If you need print copies of the journal write to InfoChange
directly.

*ON THE MOVE -- study of moving populations in the Indian sub-continent—the
displaced, dispossessed, exiled and evicted*
*I**ntroduction: On the move*

More...<http://infochangeindia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7254&Itemid=68>
*The Mavlas of Mulshi: Displacement's earliest victims*

*Anosh Malekar*

In June 1919, the farmers of Mulshi near Pune, Maharashtra, were served
notices for the acquisition of their lands to construct a dam. A satyagraha
led by Senapati Bapat was launched. Close on a century later, the
descendants of what is arguably the oldest development-displaced community
in India are still hoping for compensation
More...<http://infochangeindia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7246&Itemid=68>
*Paying the price for someone else's displacement*

*By Walter Fernandes*

Rough estimates point to 60 million displaced persons and project-affected
persons in India. That's four times the estimated 15 million refugees
exchanged between India and the two wings of Pakistan at the time of
Partition. The majority of the development-displaced are tribals and
landless dalits who live on or off common property resources. And scarcely
20% have been rehabilitated
More...<http://infochangeindia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7245&Itemid=68>
*In Gujarat's ghettos*

*By Deepa A*

Around 250,000 people were estimated to have been displaced by the Gujarat
riots of 2002. Six years later, 4,500 families are still living in 81 relief
colonies. They know they cannot return to the villages where they had homes,
farms or shops. They are struggling to survive in areas often lacking even
basic amenities. There is at least a framework for those displaced by
development projects. There is no policy and no framework of entitlements
for those displaced by sectarian or communal violence
More...<http://infochangeindia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7253&Itemid=68>
*Return from exile*

*By Rashme Sehgal*

Thirty-one Kashmiri Pandit families recently returned to the Kashmir valley
after more than a decade in exile in Jammu's camps. Forty thousand Pandit
families still live in those camps. But even the lucky few who have been
provided government accommodation feel they have returned to a new Kashmir,
one that has lost its Kashmiriyat, where Muslim and Hindu view each other
with suspicion. A special report from Jammu and Kashmir
More...<http://infochangeindia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7252&Itemid=68>
*The original migrants *

*By Anosh Malekar*

The first migrations from Bihar date back to 1834. Every second family in
the state today is sustained by migrant workers who form the backbone of the
country's workforce. But in 2008, thousands of Biharis found themselves
forced to return from Maharashtra following the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena's
sons-of-the-soil campaign. After decades selling bhelpuri on Mumbai's
Chowpatty or working as construction labour, Bihar's migrants were shocked
to find themselves treated like outsiders in their own land
More...<http://infochangeindia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7251&Itemid=68>
*Migrate--or starve*

*By Aditya Malaviya and Sushmita Malaviya*

Tikamgarh, in Madhya Pradesh, has been experiencing its third successive
year of drought. Migration and contract labour is the only option. Some
travel to Delhi or Jammu with only the phone number of a contractor looking
for labour. Others don't have even that, and simply camp outside urban
railway stations until a contractor picks them up. Only the old and the very
young are left in the deserted villages
More...<http://infochangeindia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7244&Itemid=68>
*The dark side of Brand Bangalore*

*By Sanjana*

LR Nagar is only one of Bangalore's estimated 778 slums. But it is located
just a few metres from Koramangala, the posh residential address of
Bangalore's IT employees. The disparity in living conditions, of course,
metaphorically separates the two localities by hundreds of kilometres. And
it is this unequal access to Bangalore's infrastructure, space, government
spending budgets etc that epitomises the problem of urban spaces
More...<http://infochangeindia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7243&Itemid=68>
*The whitewash of Delhi: Where have all the poor gone?*

*By Gautam Bhan*

Around 35,000 families have lived in Yamuna Pushta in Delhi for decades. Now
they are being evicted to make way for a riverside promenade. Some who can
prove their residency are being "voluntarily resettled" in Bawana, 50 km
away. But a study of nearly 3,000 households in Bawana finds that there has
been a systemic and clear impoverishment of those who have been displaced
from Pushta to Bawana. It's not a 'shock' impoverishment that the residents
will be able to overcome; it's a 'permanent poverty' that a whole generation
will be unable to overcome
More...<http://infochangeindia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7250&Itemid=68>
*Unequal burden *

*By Malavika Vartak*

Children are amongst the worst sufferers when entire communities are evicted
from their homes and lands. Surveys of 299 families living in New Harsud
after displacement by the Narmada project, showed that 25% of children had
dropped out of school after displacement
More...<http://infochangeindia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7249&Itemid=68>
*Life at Mumbai's nakas*

*By Svati P Shah*

Thousands of migrants come to Mumbai every year. Most end up working in the
city's informal sector, seeking daily wage labour at the many nakas, or
street corners, that function as public labour markets every morning. Women
at the Malad naka say that when they cannot find construction or other work
they solicit paid sex. But can migration, human trafficking and prostitution
be conflated in the bodies of poor female migrants?
More...<http://infochangeindia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7242&Itemid=68>
*Rehabilitation before displacement*

*By Priyanca Mathur Velath*

Although the 2007 National Policy for Rehabilitation and Resettlement lays
down the principle of 'minimising displacement' there have been no visible
attempts to implement it. The policy fails to examine the process of
displacement, which is taken for granted. The draft makes no attempt to
question the need for displacement in the first place, or to seek out and
actively promote non-displacing or least-displacing alternatives
More...<http://infochangeindia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7235&Itemid=68>
*Beyond the Sphere standards*

*By Bikram Jeet Batra*

There are international guidelines for emergency relief measures, such as
the Sphere standards. But there are no internationally-accepted guidelines
for longer-term resettlement and rehabilitation. This often leads to what
one disaster expert calls paternalistic programmes that end up serving the
needs of the donors and agencies rather than the victims
More...<http://infochangeindia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7248&Itemid=68>
*Shadow diaspora*

*By Sharika Thiranagama*

For many northern and eastern Sri Lankan Tamils, Colombo is a transient
city, a place where Tamils wait to find a way out of the country. But some
have been waiting for over 10 years. They are the unacknowledged part of the
Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora, the shadow diaspora who cannot leave Sri Lanka
but whose dreams of migrating to a better life remain as potent as those of
the people who do manage to leave
More...<http://infochangeindia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7241&Itemid=68>
*'For us, only the camp is home'*

*By Vineetha Mokkil*

Sixty years after Partition, 40% of the refugees who fled Pakistan Occupied
Kashmir continue to live in camps scattered across Jammu. Entire generations
have grown up here on ad hoc relief packages, minus quality education and
employment. Lacking the official status of refugees because PoK is not
considered foreign soil, they have been deprived of compensation and all the
benefits accorded to refugees under national and international law
More...<http://infochangeindia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7240&Itemid=68>
* Born in exile *

*By Rashme Sehgal*

There are around 300,000 Tibetan refugees in India, some of whom came in the
initial exodus of 1959, and many second- and third-generation Tibetans born
in India. Refugee status allows Tibetans to live, be employed and travel
across India and abroad. But they are still between countries, denied
citizenship and the right to vote or own property in India, and dreaming of
a homeland many have never seen
More...<http://infochangeindia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7239&Itemid=68>
*Lhotshampas: Evicted from Bhutan*

*By Jenelle Eli*

Over 100,000 ethnic Nepalese, who had settled in Bhutan since the 19th
century, were evicted from Bhutan in the 1990s, following a movement to
protect the Bhutanese cultural identity. They now live in seven refugee
camps in Nepal. Seventeen years of poverty and statelessness have given way
to violence and hopelessness, and youth are increasingly joining violent
political movements
More...<http://infochangeindia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7238&Itemid=68>
*The Muhajirs in the promised land*

*By Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed*

The Muhajirs of Pakistan were the Muslims who migrated to Pakistan after
Partition. They were going not as refugees but as citizens of a promised
homeland – a country for Muslims where they would not face political or
religious discrimination. How then did the Muhajirs of Pakistan, four
decades later, find themselves moved from the core to the periphery,
marginalised and divided by ethnic conflict?
More...<http://infochangeindia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7237&Itemid=68>
*Partitions of the mind*

*By Priyanka Nandy, Garga Chatterjee and Somnath Mukherji*

More than 60 years after Partition, and close on a century after East
Bengalis first began to migrate to West Bengal, the gulf between the
displaced Bangals and the local Ghoti Bengalis in Kolkata has not been
bridged. Bracketed together within the collective ethnic identity of
'Bengali', the 'provincial' Bangals and the 'urbane' Ghotis retain fiercely
the markers of their identity -- in terms of language, culture and cuisine.
These are three narratives of the deep and cryptic traumas that accompany
displacement More...<http://infochangeindia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7236&Itemid=68>
*UNHCR's role in refugee protection in India*

*By Ipshita Sengupta*

Although India is not a party to the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees,
asylum-seekers who are not offered direct protection by the Indian
government can get refugee status from the UNHCR in a de facto system of
refugee protection in India. But in the recent past, refugees under UNHCR
protection have begun losing faith in a system plagued by insensitivity and
inefficiency More...<http://infochangeindia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7247&Itemid=68>



-- 
OISHIK SIRCAR

Scholar in Women's Rights
Faculty of Law, University of Toronto

oishiksircar at gmail.com
oishik.sircar at utoronto.ca





-- 
OISHIK SIRCAR

Scholar in Women's Rights
Faculty of Law, University of Toronto

oishiksircar at gmail.com
oishik.sircar at utoronto.ca





-- 
OISHIK SIRCAR

Scholar in Women's Rights
Faculty of Law, University of Toronto

oishiksircar at gmail.com
oishik.sircar at utoronto.ca