Authored CAPF Paper II worked counter-argument on whether large projects justify displacing people, using the state-concede-turn-conclude structure
Authored practice. Original worked example for this wiki, not a verbatim previous-year question. It follows the four-part structure taught in developing counter arguments: state the claim fairly, concede the grain of truth, turn with reasons strongest first, and conclude with a qualified position.
"If a dam or a highway will benefit millions, the displacement of a few thousand people is a price worth paying, and their objections should not be allowed to block national progress."
It is true that a developing country must build the dams, roads, power plants and industries on which the prosperity of its people depends, and that no large project can be sited without affecting someone, so a rule that any objection could veto any project would paralyse development altogether. The claim rightly recognises that the welfare of millions is a weighty public good, and that infrastructure has lifted vast numbers out of poverty. To that extent it deserves respect.
However, the way the statement frames the matter, as a simple sum in which the many outweigh the few, conceals more than it reveals. The "few thousand" who are displaced are not an abstraction; they are real people, often poor, tribal and already marginal, who lose their land, their homes and their entire way of life, while the benefits flow to others elsewhere. To treat their loss as a mere "price" paid by them for a gain enjoyed by others is to ask the weakest to bear the cost of progress they may never share, which the Constitution's promise of equality and the right to livelihood under Article 21 does not permit. Moreover, displacement without fair rehabilitation has historically bred lasting grievance and even fed extremism, so that riding roughshod over the displaced can undermine the very stability that development is meant to secure. What is more, the choice is not really between progress and the displaced; the law itself, through the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act of 2013, requires consent, fair compensation, social impact assessment and proper resettlement, precisely so that development and justice can advance together.
On balance, the better view is not that objections should be brushed aside but that development should proceed with the genuine consent, fair compensation and full rehabilitation of those it displaces. The real question is not whether to build for the many or protect the few, but how to ensure that those who bear the cost of a project also share in its benefits, for development bought by injustice is neither just nor, in the long run, secure.