Industrial relocation in Delhi in the mid-1990s and early 2000 was supposed to ensure a pollution-free environment in the capital city. The apex court’s concern for quality of life in Delhi is commendable. However, disproportionate responsibility is placed on those who sell their labour power in order to secure a life of dignity. This article, based on a field study, explores that industrial relocation has badly affected the workers not only economically, but also socially and culturally.

A well-calculated compensation plan eases relocation pain of forest dwellers from the core area of Melghat Tiger Reserve. It’s not the kind of relocation story that one usually hears. Early last year three villages were uprooted from their traditional land in the core area of the Melghat Tiger Reserve to make way for free movement of the big cat. They did not protest, and walked away with their belongings and herds of cattle.

The politics of inclusion in the Sabarmati Riverfront Development project, an urban mega-project in Ahmedabad, has been predicated on a “flexible governing” of the residents of the riverfront informal settlements. Such flexible governing has allowed state authorities to negotiate grass-roots opposition and mobilisation, modify the project to gentrify the riverfront further, and even officially represent the project as inclusive although questions of social justice have been profoundly disregarded over the past decade and continue to be insufficiently addressed.

The effects of global environmental change, including coastal flooding, reduced rainfall in drylands and water scarcity, will almost certainly alter patterns of human migration. Conventional narratives usually cast these displacements in a negative light, with many millions of people forced to move, and tension and conflict the result. Our study suggests that the picture is not so one-sided.