Examine the challenges of rehabilitation and resettlement in large infrastructure projects affecting tribal populations in India.

The Xaxa Committee (2014) noted that tribal communities bear a disproportionate share of development-induced displacement while gaining the least from such projects [4]. Protests around the ₹44,605-crore Ken-Betwa Link Project show that rehabilitation and resettlement (R&R) remains the weakest link in India's infrastructure push [1][5].

Legal and procedural gaps

• The LARR Act, 2013 mandates Social Impact Assessment, consent and a defined R&R entitlement schedule, but exemptions and varying state rules dilute these safeguards in practice [2].
• The Forest Rights Act, 2006 requires recognition of individual and community forest rights before diversion; claims often remain undecided when possession is taken [3].

Inadequate and inequitable compensation

• Awards are cash- and land-title-centric, ignoring commons — grazing land, minor forest produce — that the FRA recognises as livelihood rights [3].
• Differentiated packages breed conflict: in Ken-Betwa, submergence-affected and canal-affected families in Chhatarpur and Panna allege unequal treatment [5].

Livelihood and cultural dislocation

• Forest-dependent households are relocated into cash economies without skills or assets, producing what the Xaxa Committee described as post-displacement impoverishment and loss of social networks [4].
• Land-for-land is rarely feasible near project sites, and sacred groves and kinship ties are simply non-compensable.

Institutional and implementation deficits

• Faulty enumeration excludes tenants, landless labour and adult sons; correction is reactive — at Ken-Betwa, inclusion of left-out families was assured only after a prolonged hunger strike [5].
• R&R lags construction, as engineering milestones under an eight-year completion target dominate review [1].

R&R fails less from absent law than from weak sequencing and ownership. Settling FRA claims and completing resettlement before submergence, offering land-for-land with annuity and project-benefit sharing, and vesting monitoring in Gram Sabhas under PESA can align projects with Article 46 and SDG-10. Water security for Bundelkhand is legitimate; it must not be financed by tribal impoverishment.