Page No: ,185-194
Raghubir Singh Pirta, Nitin Chandel, and Chhaya Pirta
Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla
Resolution of social dilemmas during decision making favors the greater common good,
justifi es development, but leaves a minority to grieve for loss of home. We questioned
the period for which this process of grieving goes on among the displacees. Bowlby’s
attachment theory, drawing from ethology, control systems and cognitive psychology,
predicts long-term effects of early age unwilling separations. The Bhakra Dam, a large
hydro-power project in India, drowned as many as 256 villages, along with the town of
Bilaspur (Himachal Pradesh), in the dammed water of river Sutlej in 1963. In this third
report, we compare the past memory of 50 displaced peasants with an equal number
of non-displaced peasants from Bilaspur by giving two types of retrieval cues—relevant
and neutral. The relevant cue evoked greater number of memories of lost homes in
comparison to a neutral cue. Furthermore, the relevant cue evoked as many memories
of lost home from the displacees as from the normal persons. Though these fi ndings
strengthen the hypothesis based on attachment theory, the retrieval cue also has
signifi cance.