Impoverishment risks are the predictable forms of loss that forced displacement inflicts, set out by Michael Cernea in his impoverishment risks and reconstruction model. Cernea's argument is that displacement is not an unfortunate side effect to be compensated in cash, but a process that systematically dismantles the productive systems and social arrangements on which people live. Because the losses recur across dams, mines, highways and urban projects, they can be anticipated — and if they can be anticipated, they can be planned against.
How it works
The model names eight risks. Landlessness removes the foundation of productive systems and identity. Joblessness follows for wage workers, artisans and service providers whose customers disperse. Homelessness may be temporary or become a lasting loss of place. Marginalisation occurs as families slide down the economic ladder and suffer a loss of social standing and confidence. Food insecurity follows the interruption of cultivation and income. Increased morbidity and mortality arise from the stress of relocation, unsafe water and crowded transit settlements. Loss of access to common property — forests, grazing land, water bodies, fisheries — hits the poorest hardest, because commons are precisely the resources of those without title. Social disarticulation disperses kin groups, neighbourhoods and mutual-help networks, destroying the social capital that made survival possible.
Each risk implies its own reversal: land-based resettlement rather than cash, re-employment, house reconstruction, social inclusion, restored nutrition, better health services, restoration of common-property access, and rebuilding of communities as units rather than resettling households individually.
Why it matters
The model reframed resettlement policy internationally, and supplied the vocabulary for Indian critiques of project displacement — the loss of commons and of unrecorded rights explains why tribal populations bear a disproportionate share of displacement while receiving least compensation.
For the UPSC answer
Name Cernea and list the eight risks accurately; the list itself is the marks. Then make the analytical point that the model shifts displacement from a compensation question to a question of reconstructing livelihoods and social organisation, and use loss of common property and social disarticulation to explain why cash awards leave the displaced poorer than before.
References & further reading
- Cernea, M. M. (2000). Risks, Safeguards and Reconstruction: A Model for Population Displacement and Resettlement. Economic and Political Weekly.
- Cernea, M. M. and McDowell, C. (eds.) (2000). Risks and Reconstruction: Experiences of Resettlers and Refugees. World Bank.
- Scudder, T. (2005). The Future of Large Dams. Earthscan.