On Whose Behalf is Mapithel Dam? A Case Study of the Effects of the Mapithel Dam on Indigenous Tangkhul Nagas in Ukhrul District Manipur

Abstract

The study discusses the social work discourse on the significance of development and the cost of its implication. By analyzing development policy and philosophy viz. isolation, assimilation, and integration to understand the social dynamics of tribals in Northeast India. Development in the context of large projects like the dam is understood as affecting the social institutions in the place they situate. The study narrates the lived experiences of the communities affected by the construction of a dam. The study conducted by qualitative and purposive sampling, reveals a tragic response to dam projects due to state's negligence to handle resettlement and rehabilitation plan. The study also reveals an emerging attitude to development projects as infringement and it should provoke a strong urgency to review the academic discourse on development. This travesty of justice by state development agency makes one relook at the whole discourse and ask on whose behalf is development? As studies pointed out compensation assessments are not rooted in the values of the local socio-culture and economy, the research finds that cultural, social identity and traditional rights of the indigenous community are snatched away with the coming of dams. This finding is true in the context of the affected Tangkhul Nagas by the Mapithel dam, Thoubal Multipurpose Project