Reviewing the reportage of land acquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement issues in mainstream Indian Media

Abstract

The study is based on the articles published in the leading news websites on land acquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement (LARR) in India and highlights the need of proper structuring and streamlining of the reportage. The study reveals how most news articles reporting the plights of the people fail to uncover their long term issues like degradation of living conditions at the resettlement site, livelihood loss, negative social impacts, and disregard of gendered issues. This paper contains a quantitative and qualitative thematic analysis of media articles published on the subject of LARR in India over the span of five years. The study derives how media has made conscious efforts to report in support of affected people by mentioning the compensation and land losses they face. However, the desired effect is hindered by lack of consideration of existing imbalance in power dynamics and reporting according to it.