What would seem to follow is that in the name of reducing violence, access to development should be increased and its cost reduced. That indeed is my position. It seems not to be Visvanathan's. Even under the best of circumstances development involves major disruptions in life patterns. Visvanathan is right.
New dams do cause refugees, and increased agricultural productivity causes villagers to relocate.
That is, in addition to increased human well-being, development produces innocent victims, a victimization which represents a moral imperative demanding corrective action. Indeed, it is precisely because development and the benefits associated with it are costly that I believe that the integration of the world economy should be subject to democratic control. Without a democratic politics, the burdens of the development process will fall disproportionately on the disenfranchised. The burden of my review of the Sierra Club collection was that by rejecting economic modernization, its authors consigned themselves to political irrelevance. In an age when globalization promises a rise in standards of living worldwide, those who reject that process cannot be expected to be of much help in efforts to make it more equitable.