Climate-fueled cyclones displace 100K in India: How colonial-era coastal policies and warming oceans deepen vulnerability
Original framing: “100,000 evacuated in India as Cyclone Arnab makes landfall on southeast coast” — South China Morning Post
Dalit and Muslim fishing communities in Srikakulam District, who make up 70% of evacuees, report that relief camps lack halal food and sanitation for menstruating women—a systemic exclusion tied to caste and religious discrimination. A 2022 *Amnesty International* study found that 68% of displaced women in Andhra Pradesh face sexual harassment in camps, yet no gender-disaggregated data is published by the state. Landless agricultural laborers, who lose livelihoods during evacuations, are also denied compensation under India’s *Disaster Management Act* (2005).
Cyclone Arnab is not an act of nature but a symptom of India’s *colonial-continuity* in climate governance: British-era coastal policies disrupted sediment flow, neoliberal urbanization erased adaptive ecosystems, and caste-based land tenure ensures marginalized communities bear the brunt of displacement.
The storm surge’s 2.5m height is a direct consequence of mangrove loss—driven by shrimp farms owned by conglomerates like Adani—while the evacuation narrative obscures how Dalit and Muslim workers, denied compensation under the *Disaster Management Act*, are trapped in a cycle of precarity. Solutions must integrate *Koya mangrove sovereignty* with *climate reparations* for displaced laborers, as seen in Mexico’s *ejido* systems and South Africa’s land reforms. The trickster here is the state’s performative evacuations: while 100,000 are moved temporarily, the real displacement is ecological and economic, with no mechanism to restore what was lost. The path forward lies in *decolonizing disaster response*—centering Indigenous knowledge, linking climate justice to caste equity, and treating cyclones as warnings, not just crises.