ABSTRACT
An Old Story with New Angles The chronicle of the destruction of Rajarhat is also one of a bizarre urbanity that unmade the place. Since the mid-1990s, when the project was first conceptualised, there has been a massive displacement and loss of livelihoods in Rajarhat without any substantial reintegration of the displaced people into the new economy of the new township area, despite the state government’s assurances that provisions would be made for such integration by way of skill development and the like.1 This flies in the face of policy enunciated by the central government in a document authored under its aegis, in which it was enjoined that the 160-odd new urban settlements to be created in various categories throughout the country should try to integrate within them the settlement patterns that had existed earlier (GoI 1989: 46-47, Chapter 4). By this token, however, there is nothing startlingly new about the Rajarhat story. Forcible land acquisition, displacement and the failure of the state to rehabilitate the uprooted have been central to India’s development story since the early years after Independence. There are interesting angles to the story, however, which make Rajarhat worth studying.
