Organised dispossession and development as disaster: analysing caste and gender in disaster policymaking

Disasters are often constructed as unique and extraordinary events. Such accounts ignore the social histories and inequalities that render specific communities/regions prone to disaster. In this paper, we focus on how coloniality and caste function together to produce dispossession among Dalits, Bahujans, and Adivasis (DBAs) through continuous violence and illegal appropriation of land and resources from ‘lower’-caste people, particularly DBA women, thereby forcing them into further disaster vulnerability. In line with decolonial and intersectional studies of disaster, we posit that greater attention should be paid to historical injustices and ongoing development-induced dispossession of marginalised communities that ultimately create and reproduce vulnerabilities for women/communities belonging to oppressed castes. We analyse 19 disasters and disaster management reports by multilateral institutions (such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) and anti-caste organisations. Using a ‘problematisation approach’, we ask what is the ‘problem’ of disaster risk represented to be, what is ‘left out’ of the ‘problem’ statement, and what are the policy silences – aspects that the policy does not include in its problematisations? Our analysis illustrates how extant disaster policymaking reproduces gendered caste-coloniality through the nature–social binaries and technical and dehistoricised characterisation of disasters, which often operate through the development-induced displacement of marginalised communities. At the administration and policy implementation levels, there is a policy vacuum regarding the communication and co-ordination between agencies on disaster and human rights and donor/development agencies. Further, there is a lack of an intersectional approach – specifically to bringing caste and gender into disaster policymaking – in both national- and international-level governance structures. Without problematising processes which recognise organised or systematic dispossession of ‘lower’-caste communities, building resilient communities remains a utopian and unattainable ideal. We argue that addressing the historical disaster vulnerability of caste-marginalised communities requires abatement of land dispossession, development of innovative legal arbitration tools, and integration of intersectionality at multiple levels.