Forms of population movement in the third world 51
Projects, Washington, DC: World Bank Technical Paper No. 80. many people have benefited from the irrigation and energy supplies which these schemes provided, the displaced farmers have experienced great difficulty in adapting to their new ecological and economic surroundings. In contrast to the case of refugees, however, it is generally accepted that it is the government's responsibility to do what it can to assist the reservoir evacuee in adapting to life in a new location. Indeed, the World Bank - a major funding agency for these infrastructural projects - now insists that adequate provision must be made for evacuees before funding is provided. However, because of the vast cost involved in resettling evacuees and short-falls in government funding. resettlement has often resulted in a significant deterioration in living standards for those involved. In part, this is symptomatic of the tendency for evacuees to be seen as a problem to be dealt with as quickly and cheaply as possible, with no real concern for their longer-term welfare. Seldom have relocatees become materially and socially better off than before their move. Whereas political refugees may leave behind all their worldly possessions, reservoir evacuees may at least be compensated financially for the loss of their land. Farmers and shifting cultivators affected by the Batang Ai hydroelectric power project in Sarawak, East Malaysia, were given quite large amounts of compensation which helped to overcome their misgivings at having to cede their ancestral land to the project. Some 90 per cent of the people displaced by the Damodar Valley projects in India opted for independent resettlement, using the compensation provided by the government to set themselves up in new locations. In the case of the Volta and Aswan dam projects in Africa, however, quite large numbers of displaced people eventually left the official resettlement areas, providing further evidence of the shortcomings of official resettlement programmes. s