Abstract
This article discusses the changing systems of food production among Garhwali resettlers who were forcibly displaced due to the construction of the Tehri Dam in North India. Resettling to a drastically new environment affected their traditional food production strategies and rendered them vulnerable to the vagaries of transition, including the forced adaptation to new cash crop-based farming systems, restricted hunting and fishing areas, and limited access to dairy products. These changes led to an inadequate supply of food and nutrients, especially protein, for these resettlers. Using ethnographic methods, this study illustrates that resettling an agrarian community to a new ecological area significantly changes their food production practices in ways that leave them vulnerable to the potential risk of an impoverished diet.
Acknowledgment
This research was funded by a National Science Foundation grant (SBR-9321818). A version of this article was presented in 2001 at the annual meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology in Merida, Mexico. I would like to thank John van Willigen for his support throughout this research project. I am also grateful to Margaret Kedia, Linda Sadler, Heidi Kenaga, Barrett Brenton, and anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on the earlier version of this article.