In the recent past, two major policy interventions have been made to resettle and rehabilitate persons displaced as a result of acquisition of land for development projects. While the government of Orissa brought out its policy in 2006, the Central Government notified a new policy in 2007.

This is a study of social mobility over 25 years in six villages in the former Tiruchirapalli district in Tamil Nadu. The two most important external drivers are local industrialisation and social policy in a broad sense.

The widely accepted view that emphasises the negative impact of the decline in common property resources on the village poor generally presumes that village common lands would have been used by all villagers inclusive of the poor without serious differences in the right to access them. Mainly based on