Displaced due to conservation and tourism in the heart of India: a review of the relevant policies

Madhya Pradesh (MP) is a central Indian state positioned as the heart of India. The MP tourism board undertakes the responsibility of developing tourism in the state with the aim of promoting sustainable form of tourism. One of the key attractions promoted is the wide range of wildlife destinations in conservation areas, which has displaced many local indigenous communities. The main aim of paper is to review the relevant policies concerning the wildlife tourism product in MP to examine the involvement of the indigenous local communities and highlight their plight due to displacement. This paper utilizes a critical interpretive lens in reviewing the policies and the concerned acts. Findings highlight three areas of concern; firstly, there is a lack of clear information on how wild life tourism would be developed, implemented and governed. Secondly, the relevant policies do not mention the involvement of the lo-cal indigenous community or their issues and finally the policies does not clearly address the displaced indigenous communities’ issues while subsisting to a sustainable tourism vision. Implications for polices are discussed to encourage an inclusive policy framework that addresses displacement

Socialist hydropower governances compared: dams and resettlement as experienced by Dai and Thai societies from the Sino-Vietnamese borderlands

International audienceResearch on hydropower development has shown that a diversity of social and environmental impacts of dams is distributed unevenly among various state and corporate actors and riparian populations. This article analyses how two neighbouring socialist states, China and Vietnam, govern dam-induced resettlement along their respective sections of the Red River Watershed. Our investigation focuses on resettlement villages created during the construction of the Madushan (China) and Ban Chat (Vietnam) reservoirs and testifies that resettlement policies on both sides of the border serve statist modernization agendas that fail to acknowledge Dai (China) and Thai (Vietnam) ethnic minority livelihoods. While local populations endure the greatest impacts from dam-induced changes in water allocation and the ensuing consequences for land resources, the benefits of hydropower development are first and foremost shared among state-owned and/or state-backed energy companies. These companies reap huge profits from their role as power generators for capitalist production, while also benefiting from state authorities underevaluating resettled communities' livelihood assets. A comparison of the two cases reveals that despite the border that separates China and Vietnam, and despite both states emphasizing different resettlement discourses, governance of dam-induced resettlement is strikingly similar