Development projects in India since Independence have resulted in large-scale involuntary displacement of people from their habitation, livelihood and environment, which is the direct consequence of forced land acquisition. The case of Singrauli, which has been studied in this book, illustrates various ‘regimes of dispossession’ and has a long story of displacement and deprivation, neglect, and underdevelopment. Loss of livelihood and displacement have become a recurring feature for the people of Singrauli due to dams and power and mining projects over the last five decades. During 2005–2015, the state government has received a large number of proposals from private companies to establish resource-based industries in Singrauli. Communities are again in the process of being displaced, with private players setting up four mining projects and five super thermal power projects in the area.

However, there is no official figure on total displacement from the Government of India, but an unofficial figure shows that nearly 60 million people have been displaced until 2000 (Cernea, 2000b; Fernandes, 2008). The economic reform in the 1990s and the spree of market economy brought large-scale foreign direct investment into sectors such as mining, industries, infrastructural projects and special economic zones, and it accelerated the number of involuntarily displaced people to a great extent. Among the displaced, the tribals are the most affected group, who constitute 8 per cent of India's population but miserably account for 40 per cent of the total displaced in the country. Development projects also affected huge areas of productive agricultural land (including irrigated and multi-cropped), which had adverse impacts on the food security of the people. The dignified self-employed farmers turned into landless labourers overnight in the name of ‘public interest’. Such marginalization has been erupting into a number of protests and movements against developmental projects since Independence and it has increased manifold, especially in the era of economic reforms, and, thus, many of the high-profile projects have been halted or delayed. It forced the government to promulgate a new Act in 2013, called ‘the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Resettlement and Rehabilitation Act, 2013, replacing the Land Acquisition (LA) Act of 1894.