SINGUR, India — Barely a month before Tata, one of India’s most powerful conglomerates, was due to roll out the world’s cheapest car from a new factory on these former potato and rice fields, a peasant uprising has forced....for full story click link below.  Thank you New York Times!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/world/asia/17india.html?ref=world&pagewanted=all

Management of the Asian Development Bank is proposing an update to its 1995 involuntary resettlement policy. Ted Downing and Ted Scudder sent an expert opinion to the ADB Board of Director stating the social policy upgrade (SPU) would increase impoverishment.  Incredibly, the ADB policy unit decided NOT to publish or respond to these comments-response matrix.  This means the Downing-Scudder concerns may not be addressed in the new consultation.  Now the letter is really worth reviewing - as it obviously hit a sensitive nerve in the policy.

Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meeting
Memphis, Tennessee, USA.  March 25-28, 2008.

In celebration of its 7th birthday, the International Network on Displacement and Resettlement hosted a very special conclave of involuntary resettlement and displacement specialists at the 2008 meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology in Memphis, Tennessee, USA.  March 25-28, 2008.  (Info about annual meeting is on www.SfAA.net). The  SfAA theme, "The Public Sphere and Engaged Scholarship: Opportunities and Challenges for Applied Anthropology" -- was perfectly suited to examining the current "hot issues," growing in importance worldwide, in the anthropology of displacement and resettlement.

See the full program - 16 sessions!

Can Compensation Prevent Impoverishment?, has been printed and will be in bookstores next week. We attach to this email a flier printed by the Oxford UP advertising the volume, with the book's attractive cover and endorsements. See its brochure.

The Asian Development Bank is soliciting comments on its revised ("consolidated") safeguard policies, which includes its involuntary resettlement policy.  Download it and comment on it in the INDR Forum (members only).