Paper details

Paper authors	Madhusmita Jena
In panel on	Managing governance of forced displacement and refugee crises: can lessons be learned from the host communities?
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

India did not have the opportunity and challenge of bouts of refugee influxes prior to addressing the problem of Partition refugees. Neither did it have any prototype model to examine and adapt. India took the conventional humanitarian assistance design to a development paradigm, which was unheard at that point of time and much later too. GOI viewed refugees as human beings with capabilities, will and aspiration to better their lives. In no way they were considered different from other normal human beings. Rather they represent groups of “new-normal” people who can better their life opportunities with development inputs. With this realisation in view, GOI quickly shifted from simplistic humanitarian assistance to development-linked empowerment of refugees. This proved enormously effective.
Resettlement was linked with development and rehabilitation with reconstruction. Guided by the commonly held assumption that development-based approaches should only be introduced after the emergency phase of a refugee situation, GOI followed this pattern. The refugees were empowered, through several capability-building schemes, to be active agents of the nation-building programme of the state. Expansion of “freedoms” and “choices” for empowerment was the priority of priorities. It was a move to take refugees from a state of total dependency to a state of total autonomy to meaningfully reconstruct their distressed lives. This exceptionalism of Government of India offers a form of ‘Laboratory’ and ‘innovative entrepreneurship’ which has an enormous vector worthy of replication in case of other groups of refugees not only in India but in different parts of the globe..

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