Socio - Economic Implications on Southern Highway Project Special Reference to Evicted People

Abstract

In developing countries, development related population displacement has grown rapidly over the past few decades due to the compelling need for infrastructure as a result of fast growing population densities. Those displaced due to development projects are resettled by project planners, but have to face specific socio economic issues in their newly relocated areas. This study focuses on identifying social, cultural and economic implications of evicted persons. The Southern Highway, the main development project was selected to examine this problem. Both primary and secondary data sources were used to achieve the objective of this research. To collect the primary data from the units of sample the researcher used structured interviews and semi structured interviews. Guideline questionnaire along with the IRR Model was used to conduct the interviews. Other than this, researcher was able to carry out number of observations as prior to prepare the questionnaire as well as to check its accuracy of the answers given by the respondents. Study Population of this study was 40 families which consist of 70 families who were living in that period. Study samples have identified eight risks; Homelessness, Landlessness, Unemployment, Marginalization, Food insecurity, Increased morbidity and Mortality, Loss of common property and Services and Social disarticulation. In relation to that, the issues faced by resettled community can be divided three categories based on depth of problems. Most affected problems were Physical Marginalization and Psychological Marginalization, Loss of Social and Cultural Value of ancestral home, Social Insecurity, Social Stress, Social Disarticulation, Landlessness, Deprivation of Social Capital. Breakdown the livelihoods, Loss of access to common property were the marginally effected problems and less effected problems were food insecurity and morbidity. The broad ranges of problems are not only the economic risks, but also the social and cultural problems also contribute. Those are inter-related problems and doesn't affect to the community equally therefore the dimensions of issues are differentiating from one another. One might think that the severances are high with the economic risks, but on the contrary social risks are severe than the economic ones. Due to the development projects, the environment in which the people lived in was subjected to harsh changes, the people lost their familiar environment and this can't be evaluated through the scales of economy.