Forced to part from their lands to make way for progress and development, ordinary people are displaced from their roots. The land that was theirs to till on and live on, is overrun by dams, national parks, factories, SEZs, mines and thermal power plants. Every displaced individual made homeless and rootless by this frenzied growth has his or her own personal saga to reveal.
The book ’A village awaits doomsday’ strings together stories of such affected people. It also analyzes the reasons why and how people react, retort and protest against such acquisitions. Why are the conflicts between the disposed and project creators increasing day by day ? What are the laws the government exercises to achieve this? What are the existing policies for land acquirement, and the rehabilitation and resettlement guidelines; all of these are examined in the book.
Jaideep Hardikar, a Nagpur based journalist, currently works with theTelegraph as the central India correspondent. He has written extensively on the continuing suicides among farmers in the cotton belt of Vidharba, Maharashtra, which motivated the creation of government relief packages for the farming community. He has won several fellowships and awards, including the Sanskriti Award for young journalists in 2003 for his reportage on rural issues.
A TEDx talk by him on the problems affecting rural India, can be viewed below:
Jaideep Hardikar speaks on the rural issues in India ( Source of video: TEDx)
To read more from Jaideep Hardikar’s blog, click here.