Karnataka village may be resettlement model

Orissa is examining ways to deal with resistance to land acquisition.

Tucked away in north Karnataka's Bijapur district is a village called Benal, housing 7,000 rehabilitated people. The village, which came up to resettle some of the 400,000 people displaced by the Upper Krishna Project in 1999, is currently being projected as a model for peaceful resettlement and rehabilitation to be emulated in Orissa.

One of its main architects, SM Jaamdar, the current principal secretary to the revenue department of Karnataka and the then commissioner and secretary in the Upper Krishna Project, is now in Bhubaneswar to advise the Orissa government, which is facing resistance from villagers over land acquisition by steel companies like Posco.

Jaamdar is in Orissa at the invitation of the state and the United Nations Development Programme, one of the key agencies supporting the former in its exercise for implementing the resettlement and rehabilitation adopted in the state in April-May 2006.

The formula used in Benal, he says, was simple ""land in exchange for land. Benal was a typical old village that has been replaced by one with the same name, which was able to accommodate 7,000 people over a span of one-and-a-half years between 1999 and 2002, he explained. Shifting the people took about one month and setting up the new Benal cost Rs 10 crore.

The resettlement and rehabilitation of Benal's villagers took place in two parts and over 300 acres was used for housing the people with all infrastructure.

In the Upper Krishna Project, 400,000 people have been rehabilitated so far from 1995 to 2002 in 136 new villages on 1.5 million acres of acquired land at a cost of Rs 2,700 crore.

The resettlement and rehabilitation with the development of infrastructure facilities for the new villages and setting up of the Upper Krishna Project was at a cost of Rs 15,000 crore. The World Bank initially offered aid of Rs 700 crore spanning 11 years and six months in two phases but withdrew midway.

Conceived in 1964, the Upper Krishna Project made no headway till 1995, when the government took a conscious decision to go ahead with the irrigation and hydro power project. Jaamdar said, "Phase III is on schedule and we shall rehabilitate another 70,000 people in this drive."