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For Anitha K (name changed) of Chennai, the Michaung cyclone in December 2023, brought no surprises. Previous storms in 2015, 2017 and 2021 taught her to store ration, power banks and water in the topmost loft of the second storey in her house. “Every year, we face relentless rains, flooding, contamination of water and food, power outages and job loss. Basic resources, already scarce, vanish during disasters. It is better to stock up,” she says.
Anitha lives in the Perumbakkam resettlement colony, 30 km from the Chennai city centre. Previously, she lived in a thatched-roof house along the Cooum river in Chennai, which was prone to inundation and forced her family to frequently seek shelter in relief camps. Perumbakkam was in fact set up by the Tamil Nadu government to relocate people in flood-prone areas. However, it has proven equally vulnerable given that it is built on low-lying marshland. And most of its inhabitants, including Anitha, are of Scheduled Caste or Dalit communities.
According to the “Chennai Climate Action Plan” published in 2022, some 48 per cent of slum settlements are projected to be at high risk for inundation of 1.5 metres by 2028. Most of the people living in these settlements are from marginalised communities; Tamil Nadu is home to 5.8 million slum dwellers, of which 32 per cent belong to Dalit communities, according to the 2011 Census. Chennai alone has 1.35 million Dalit slum-dwellers.
The caste divide has an impregnable hold on 20 per cent of Tamil Nadu’s Dalit population and 16 per cent of Chennai’s, according to the “District Census Handbook” for Chennai, based on Census 2011 data. Historically, the communities have been denied land rights, equal opportunities in education, employment, access to resources and basic amenities. These pre-existing vulnerabilities continue to be seen today, lowering their adaptive capacity and diminishes their resilience to cope with climate disasters—as I found in a six-month-long qualitative study in Chennai. For this study, I hosted focus groups with Dalit women from the Perumbakkam resettlement colony and Dalit activists from Chennai and Madurai, apart from interviewing climate experts, journalists and state government officials.
The results can be broadly placed under four themes:
“Where people live shapes how they experience climate change. Their ability to cope depends on location, which determines access to resources, livelihood and safety during events like floods,” says Vanessa Peters, a social activist and founder of Information and Resource Centre for the Deprived Urban Communities, a Chennai-based non-profit.
Dalit families leave villages and small towns for cities to overcome caste-based stigma. In most cases, they are only able to find affordable housing in overcrowded slums or in low-lying, flood-prone areas. “During the cyclones Gaja (2017) in Nagapattinam and Vardah (2016) in Chennai, the majority of the affected population were caste minorities who lived in huts and houses made from mud or asbestos sheets. Since safe shelter is not available to them, the impact of climate change is 10 times harsher,” says Palani Kumar M, a documentary photographer who captures the lives of Dalit communities, manual scavengers and slum dwellers in Tamil Nadu.
Despite living in unstable conditions, being inside city limits gives communities access to jobs, basic healthcare, education and transportation. These go away with sudden state-sponsored resettlement—as seen in Perumbakkam and in Semmencheri, Urappakkam and Kannagi Nagar of Chennai. These areas are all away from the city centre, are built on marshlands and lack most amenities. “All the resettlement sites chosen by the government are remote, isolated and unconnected. It is land which is least useful to the government. The perception that slums are Dalit colonies is why the government removes them, relocates them away from the city, essentially ghettoising them. In many affidavits on resettlement colonies, the government has openly labelled the occupants are ‘anti-social elements’ and described their place of settlement as ‘unsafe’ and ‘immoral’,” says Peters.
Take the case of Kumudha (name changed) of Perumbakkam. A decade ago, she lived in Mylapore in the heart of Chennai. “Everything in Mylapore was easily accessible. All my relatives, friends and my place of work were close to my residence. We could temporarily shift to nearby government relief camps during heavy inundation. I could borrow ration and supplies from a known departmental store. These connections came in handy during a crisis,” she says. However, after resettlement, Kumudha has little to no access to work, family, or emergency aid.
Meena (name changed), another resident, reiterates that even when aid comes, it is of poor quality. “The distributed rice and pulses have insects and stones in them and even when cooked, become inedible in a few hours. Children who consume this food fall sick and suffer from food poisoning, diarrhoea and vomiting. During the 2015 floods, I was at a government relief camp in Aminjikarai [a locality in Chennai on the banks of the Cooum], and two children died because of such ailments,” she says.
A 2019 report by the National Sample Survey Office says the average wage of Dalit workers is 17 per cent lower than that of non-Dalit workers Poverty rate among Dalit communities is 31.1 per cent and their rate of unemployment is 8.3 per cent; both higher than the respective national averages.
This disparity snowballs into debt after climate disasters due to loss of jobs and income, along with added expenditure. “In the slums I have worked at, 80 per cent of girls dropped out of school after the 2018 floods as they could not afford to go back to school. They had to focus on rebuilding their houses and getting back their livelihood and health. The cycle of debt they fall into after a disaster is the ultimate vulnerability they face while rebuilding their lives,” Bindhu Bhuma, project associate with ClimACT Chennai, a climate action initative by the think tank India Habitat Forum.
Faced with a lack of equitable land rights due to structural Caste-based exclusion, a majority of Dalit communities do not own collateral such as urban properties or agricultural land. A 2019 report by the National Statistical Office reveals Dalit communities own only 9.5 per cent of total land share, while those classified as Other Backward Castes or dominant castes held 48 per cent and 28 per cent respectively. Census 2011 says 71 per cent of Dalit individuals are landless labourers.
“After a calamity, the government gives compensation to only land-owning communities or those who have cattle. But Dalit people, who are mostly landless labourers, do not benefit from such relief or compensatory aid,” says Beena Pallical, general secretary of the non-profit National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR). A Reserve Bank of India report in 2018 also observes that only 18 per cent of Dalit households could access formal loans from banks compared to 33 per cent of non-Dalit households.
This means that often, the only option available is informal loans with high interest rates. Latha (name changed), a resident of Perumbakkam, informs that her husband has taken multiple informal loans, and the pressure to repay them id distressing the family. She adds that often after disasters, there is news in the colony of five-six men dying by suicide or due to cardiac arrests because they realise they cannot repay informal loans.
Metropolitan cities like Chennai are shrouded in the myth of “castelessness”, propagated by industrialisation and modernisation. However, there is documentation of caste-based stigma and bias during disaster relief efforts.
A 2019 NCDHR report collected lived experiences of over 632 Dalit and 379 Adivasi families in four districts of Kerala, which were affected by major floods, The report says, “Vehicles carrying relief material for Dalits were stopped by people from dominant castes living in Thirumoolapuram, Thiruvalla. In a school-turned relief camp in Panadnad, only six toilets were allotted to 2000 Dalits who were made to live in highly unhygenic conditions with seven people crammed in one small room. Similarly in Aranmula, Alappuzha, 36 Dalit families were given two classrooms, while each dominant caste family was given a classroom each.”
To sum, caste and climate are deeply intertwined, each reinforcing the other to widen existing social and economic divides. Climate change does not create inequalities, but magnifies them, weakening the ability of marginalised communities to adapt and recover. Acknowledging their experience and shaping policies rooted in justice, not just survival, should define the path ahead.
(Madhumitha Viswanath is a former journalist and content marketing and communications specialist. This study was part of her master’s thesis at the University of Kiel, Germany, in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and the Indo-German Centre for Sustainability)
This article was originally published in the February 16-28, 2026 print edition of Down To Earth