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very year about 10 million people globally are displaced by dams, E highways, ports, urban improvements, mines, pipelines and petrochemical plants industrial and other such development projects. (Cernea: 2000a) In India alone involuntary resettlement is estimated to have affected about 50 million people in the last five decades. (Roy: 1999) The sheer magnitude ofthe numbers involved is mind boggling. Experience shows that most people who are forced to relocate often end up worse off than before. (de Wet: 2005) Three-fourths of those displaced in India over five decades still face an uncertain future. (Cernea: 2000a)

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Projects undertaken without the knowledge of their likely social impacts tend to produce unintended hardships for the local population. In order to preempt such failures, planning agencies, especially international aid agencies, insist on a prior assessment of possible harmful consequences of development interventions, so that corrective actions could be taken well in time. In India, the new National R&R policy 2007 has also mandated that a SIA be carried out whenever either a new project or expansion of an existing project is undertaken. This article provides a short history of the concept, discusses the causes and types of impacts commonly encountered, and then proceeds to describe the SIA process and the participatory social research methodology used in conducting a comprehensive SIA study. The author concludes that despite the many known advantages of SIA, its potential for informed decision-making still remains to be fully realised.