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Not the Same Storm: Caste, Calamity, and the Ethics of Rescue

Not the Same Storm: Caste, Calamity, and the Ethics of Rescue

By Niyati Annette Joshi

Natural Disasters do not discriminate in their origin! A cyclone does not consult the caste census before it makes landfall, and a flood does not check birth certificates before it engulfs a home. Yet, when the waters rise or the winds blow, the suffering that follows is anything but equal. In India, where caste remains a structuring force in everyday life, disasters often serve not only as acts of nature but as devastating reminders of social cruelty. They tear through the land and in doing so, they expose the fault lines we have long tried to bury under rhetoric and denial.
Time and again, it is Dalits, who bear the brunt of nature’s fury, not because of fate or geography alone, but because caste has already placed them in harm’s way. It is not just that Dalits live on fragile land or in fragile homes. It is that they are forced to, by poverty, by exclusion and by centuries of denial. And when the waters flow, they are left to fend for themselves while help flows elsewhere.
Despite constitutional safeguards, legal protections and a robust disaster management framework, caste continues to define not just everyday life but also life during emergencies. It shapes who gets warned, who gets rescued, who gets access to shelters and who is remembered in relief efforts. For Dalits, disaster is not an exceptional event, it is the intensification of a daily struggle for dignity, visibility and survival.

The 2015 Tamil Nadu Floods: A Case of Exclusion

The 2015 floods in Tamil Nadu, particularly in Cuddalore district, offered a grim case study in caste-based exclusion during disaster. Here, as across India, Dalit settlements are pushed to the physical edges of villages – low-lying lands, near riverbanks with no proper roads, drainage or sanitation. In Alamelumangapuram and Sirukalur, Dalit households were submerged in rising waters, yet no rescue teams arrived. Instead, state relief operations prioritised better-connected dominant caste areas. Roads to Dalit colonies were declared inaccessible, but strangely, roads to adjacent caste Hindu neighborhoods were open enough for relief convoys.
A survey by National Dalit Watch reveals an asymmetry. Although Dalits made up only 41% of the population surveyed, they accounted for 90% of the injured and 95% of the homes destroyed. Their livestock, often their sole economic asset, was wiped out. Yet relief packages were delayed or denied. Ten days after the floods, any Dalit families still hadn’t received basic ration supplies from the Public Distribution System. In some places, dominant caste groups even blocked access to water sources, deepening the deprivation.
And the discrimination didn’t end with the floods. In Chennai, as the water receded, it was Dalit sanitation workers who were summoned to clean up the filth. Many had lost their own homes in the same disaster, but they were expected to work without gloves, masks or adequate clothing. They were paid far below minimum wage, transported in garbage trucks and housed in crowded halls with broken toilets and no privacy. This wasn’t just neglect. It was dehumanization of Dalits as bodies made for suffering, for cleaning, for serving even when they themselves were in need.

Odisha’s Cyclone Fani: History Repeats Itself

The story repeated itself in Odisha when Cyclone Fani struck in 2019. In districts like Puri and Khordha, many Dalit hamlets received no early warnings. While over 90% of general populations were alerted in time, large sections of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes were informed mere hours before the storm hit. Some had no time to leave, others had nowhere to go.
In a Dalit-majority hamlet, families who tried to take refuge in public shelters were attacked and turned away. Dominant caste villagers, having occupied the space first, barred their entry. In some cases, Dalits were physically assaulted, pelted with stones and driven out. Entire families had to sleep under trees during a cyclone.
Post-disaster rehabilitation was equally brutal in its exclusion. Many Dalits live on temple and monastery land, or on informal plots without legal titles. As a result, they were denied housing compensation. Relief programs tied assistance to land ownership, filtering out the very people who needed help the most. Even basic sanitation and water access was shaped by caste. Dalit hamlets were forced to rely on tube wells in dominant caste areas, only to be denied access. In relief shelters, dalits were given separate toilets (if any) or made to defecate in the open.
These stories are not aberrations. They are patterns. Patterns built on centuries of social exclusion and legitimised by silence.

Organized Abandonment and the Path Forward

Disasters expose the hollow centre of India’s development promises. We speak of “climate resilience” and “inclusive recovery”, yet the frameworks we use to plan for emergencies reproduce the same caste hierarchies we claim to dismantle. Relief distribution relies on panchayats, shelter is located in temples or schools and aid is processed through documentation that the poor and landless do not possess. And at every level, the voices of the most affected are ignored in decision-making processes.
Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s idea of “organised abandonment” captures this reality with precision. It is not just the state that forgets to help, it actively builds systems that ensure some lives matter less. And in contexts of disasters, that abandonment becomes deadly.
Yet, even in the bleakest moments, Dalit communities have not been passive. Grassroot organisations, community leaders and independent networks have documented caste-based disaster injustices, protested exclusion and organised local relief. These efforts demand attention. Not as heroic footnotes, but as central to how we understand resilience and justice. The call is not for charity, it is for transformation. We do not need more shelters built on caste-blind assumptions. We need reimagined disaster governance that places equity, justice and historical accountability at its core.
Every monsoon, every cyclone, every flood reminds us that caste is not just a relic of the past. It is a living system of exclusion, woven into every layer of society, including disaster relief. For Dalits, each ecological event is a crisis compounded by history.
Until then, every monsoon may wash away homes, but it will also unearth our deepest inequities. And in that flooded mirror, we must ask ourselves: who do we save first, and why?

References

Niyati Annette Joshi

Niyati Annette Joshi is an undergraduate student of History at St. Stephen's College, University of Delhi. Their work and interests lie at the intersection of political memory, visual culture, and art history.

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