Development-Induced Displacement and Resettlement Project Delay Impacts on Affected People: A Case Study of Diamer Basha Dam Project in Pakistan

The existing literature on Development-Induced Displacement and Resettlement (DIDR) projects focuses on exploring the impacts on affected people before the implementation or after the completion of the projects. There are, however, very limited studies conducted to investigate the impacts experienced by affected people during the delay in DIDR projects. This study aims to assess the impacts of a delay in DIDR projects on potentially displaced affected people, taking the Diamer Basha Dam Project (DBDP) in Pakistan as a case study. This research investigated the psychological, social, economic, political, and development impacts of DIDR project delay on affected people. In order to seek the opinions of the respondents, a designed questionnaire with 30 items was distributed stratified randomly to 425 affected people (household head) of the DBDP. Furthermore, the collected data were analyzed using the statistical tools in SPSS 20. The findings indicate that a delay in DIDR projects leads to an increase in the psychological and development impacts on affected people. From the findings, we suggest that the policymakers and practitioners should focus on the delayed project displacement complexities, and devise measures by following implemented ‘good practices’ to cope with the resettlement issues in order to minimize these impacts on affected people.