Statistical concoctions and everyday lives - Queries from Gujarat resettlement sites

The quantitative, statistical analysis of CSS Monitoring and Evaluation Reports, surveying Gujarat-based project-affected peoples 'rehabilitated' from the Sardar Sarovar submergence zone, minimises the stress and difficulty faced by unfavourably endowed resettlement sites and households. Moreover, by asserting that the living standards of the oustees were better in the resettlement sites, the reports evidently consider market-determined monetary values as the norm of 'development' against which the original villages, with their non-monetised inputs of production and consumption, constitute a lack of 'modernity'. On the other hand, the qualitative fieldwork based information reporting conducted by the author at the selective resettlement sites reveals immiserisation of formerly self-sufficient adivasi societies, and creation of new labour nomads in south and central Gujarat.