The social and ecological effects of industrialisation in a tribal region: The case of the Rourkela Steel Plant

Abstract

Learningfrom the Western experience of economic development, the developing countries of the world, after their liberation from colonial rule in the 1940s and 1950s, pinned their hopes on industry and urbanisation to stimulate accelerated economic growth and the social transformation of backward regions. However, in many cases industrialisation of backward regions has generated unintended social and ecological consequences resulting in the involuntary displacement of human populations, the loss of traditional sustainable livelihoods, the marginalisation of the locals, especially the tribals, and the increasing environmental pollution of the region. As the process of development is usually designed at the top, it mostly serves the social and economic interests of the elite and privileged sections of society at the cost of the poor and downtrodden. The present art icle analyses the processes of industrialisation and economic development as causal factors in ecological degradation in Rourkela, the site of the India's first public sector steel plant and a region which, in the past, was predominantly inhabited by indigenous peoples.