Are Resettled Oustees from the Sardar Sarovar Dam Project Better off Today than their Former Neighbors who were not Ousted?

The Sardar Sarovar Dam in Gujarat is arguably the most controversial dam ever built in India, with over a 100,000 displaced people. Most ousted families in Gujarat were resettled in the late 1980s and early 1990s. All oustees were tribals--a term used in India to cover a list of tribes viewed as so backward and historically oppressed that the Indian Constitution in 1950 reserved a quota of seats in education, government jobs, and Parliamentary seats for them. The Gujarat government promised to offer each male adult in the ousted families above the age of 18 five acres of land regardless of their earlier forest holdings. Additional compensation was to be given for loss of houses and livestock. Despite the continuing opposition to the dam from influential NGOs, there is no systematic empirical study of its effects on the long-term wellbeing of the ousted families. Our study investigates: Are resettled oustees from the Sardar Sarovar Dam project better off in 2017, approximately three decades after resettlement, than their former neighbours who were not ousted?