Report cites Niyamgiri bauxite project as one of the $179 billion worth of projects in India to be affected by land disputes

According to a latest report by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), a global coalition of non-profit organisations, and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), almost 80% of land conflicts arise out of development and industrialisation processes.

Over US $179 billion worth of projects in India gets disrupted or halted due to conflicts around land acquisition.

According to the report, 3.2 million people are directly affected by land-related conflicts. The report has analysed 289 ongoing cases after drawing a conclusion and these projects comprise an estimated 25-40% of active and substantive land conflicts in the country.


The second report by RRI titled 'Land Disputes and Stalled Investments in India, co- authored by the the Indian School of Business (ISB),  concludes that 5,780 of the more than 40,000 projects announced from January 2000 to October 2016 were stalled due to issues related to land acquisition and that makes about 14% of the projects.

"While less than 15% of the country's districts are affected by Left Wing Extremism (Naxalite-Maoist insurgency), they comprise 26% of all ongoing land conflicts and 32% of land-conflict-affected population," the report said.

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The report considers environmental impacts and unfair or low compensation are the major factors to drive the land disputes in these investments projects.

The report cites the Vedanta's bauxite mining project in Odisha's Niyamgiri Hills and Posco's $12 billion Odisha steel project as some of the big projects that are being stalled due to land conflicts.

"Land conflicts are impacting communities across the country, threatening their lives and livelihood...At the same time that they impact development and infrastructure projects, a part of the solution to many of these conflicts already exists in the statutes the Forest Rights Act (FRA) and the Panchayati Raj Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA). The only way to ensure India's continued development will be to effectively implement these laws and remove the anomalies in property rights regimes." explained Dr Geetanjoy Sahu, one of the authors and a professor from TTIS.