By Tanishq Soni
IXth Semester B.A. LL.B (Hons)
Department of Legal Studies and Research, Barkatullah Vishwavidyalaya
In December 2023, when Cyclone Michaung hit the northern coast of Tamil Nadu, the distinction between disaster management and disaster justice became painfully visible. Whilst the national media focused heavily on the urban flooding in Chennai’s IT corridors, a quieter crisis lingered in the fishing hamlets of Ennore and Kasimedu, given the fact that the floodwaters were muddy, and slick with oil from nearby industrial corridors. Also, for these artisanal fisherfolk, the disaster was absolute, as they lost their boats, their nets, and critically, their documentation. Yet, in the aftermath, the state’s rehabilitation machinery prioritized the rejuvenation of industrial supply chains over the reconstruction of the coastal economy. The event serves as an uncomfortable prologue to a crisis affecting over 250 million Indians, which is roughly 3.5% of the global population, as they continue to reside within 50 kilometers of the coastline.
To understand the gravity of the matter at hand, we must look back to 1871. It was the year when first census of the population of India was conducted, and consequently, it was also the year when colonial administration quietly enacted the Criminal Tribes Act, which legally branded entire communities as ‘depraved’ because their nomadic cum forest-dwelling lifestyles defied the colonial state’s need for uniformity (in terms of taxability and other administrative motives). So as to put it in simple words, if one could not be located on a survey map, they were deemed enemies of the order. And today, one hundred and fifty-four years later, a similar sociological phenomenon is occurring on India’s blue frontier.
The premise of this article is simple: whether the Indian state, through its refusal to legally recognize slow-onset climate disasters, is manufacturing a new "Depraved Class." And the basis for this question arises from an assertion that these are the citizens whose very existence is being criminalized as a consequence of the collision of climate change and rigid legal frameworks. The analysis presented henceforth tends to argue that the current policy
framework paves the way for a specific branch of environmental racism, where the farrago of caste, geography, and law reduce the status quo of the coastal populations as the one in which they are invisible to the state.
How does the Exclusion occur?
To understand how this exclusion operates, we must look past the water and at the specific statutes governing the coast. It is asserted that the marginalization is the result of specific legal choices that prioritize the ‘event’ over the ‘process.’
The primary legal instrument for relief is the Disaster Management Act (DMA), 2005, which is operated alongside the National Disaster Management Plan. Despite the updates, the framework remains inefficient toward rapid-onset events like cyclones and tsunamis. Moreover, the problems such as coastal erosion and sea-level rise are rarely notified as disasters eligible for State Disaster Response Funds (SDRF). In brief, the State’s attitude towards this oversight creates a statutory gap where funds exist for the sudden shock of a storm, but not for the slow, agonizing erasure of land.
This legislative blindness is compounded by the the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Notification. For instance, by expanding the definition of Strategic Projects to include certain types of coastal infrastructure (Clause 5.1.2) and by delimiting the No Development Zone (NDZ) protections in the potential tourism clusters, the law is facilitating capital while restricting labor. Also, the state effectively signals that the coast is too valuable to be left to the poor, which in turn is creating a regulatory environment where a massive port is deemed a national necessity, but a fisherman’s hut is classified as an environmental hazard.
Analyzing as to how Depravity comes into existence
Now, the transformation of the coastal resident from a ‘guardian’ to an ‘encroacher’ is a multi-stage process - ranging from (what is termed as) (A) the denial of administrative process, (B) spatial segregation, and (C) the erasure of socio-cultural identity.
The Denial of the Administrative Process: Case Study of Erosion
The first mechanism of manufacturing depravity is the refusal to acknowledge the cause of displacement. Data from the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) indicates that approximately 34% of the Indian coastline is under varying degrees of erosion. The problem arises when, for instance, in states like Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, a village like Satabhaya is
swallowed by the sea over a decade, and it does not fall within the ambit of the legal definition of a ‘disaster,’ but is viewed merely as a natural process. And therefore, consequently, the displaced residents are not ‘victims’ entitled to compensation but merely landless individuals.
It is pertinent to observe that the distinction is pivotal, as when these families migrate to urban settlements, they lack the ‘Disaster-Victim’ certificate that facilitates disaster relief, financial assistance, and rehabilitation. Since these victims fall outside the protections of the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act, 1979, and are without land titles (pattas) that are now underwater, they are unable to prove their respective domicile. This way, the depravity comes into existence.
Spatial Apartheid and The 'Blue Economy' Squeeze
The developments in the CRZ tend to have institutionalized what can be described as Spatial Apartheid. The given segment is the most visible in the ongoing conflict surrounding the Vizhinjam International Seaport in Kerala and the coastal highway projects in Karnataka. For example, in Vizhinjam, the Latin Catholic fishing community presented evidence that port breakwaters accelerated coastal erosion that has led to their homes being destroyed. When the community protested and pushed their demand to halt construction, the state invoked the ‘Strategic-Project’ exemption. This paves the way for another interesting concept, the concept of "Occupationalicide", or,s simply put, an organised way to disassemble livelihood. Take another instance, for a Mukkuvar or Koli fisherman, land is a residence, and it is also a factory floor. To move them 10 kilometers inland to make way for ‘blue-economy’ infrastructure limits their opportunity to access the sea, and in turn renders their hyper-specialized skills obsolete and further forces them into the unskilled urban labor market. The jobs created by automated ports do not go to the displaced fisherman but to the skilled engineers, and, in the likelihood of obviousness, the plight leaves the local population destitute.
The Caste and Gender of Environmental Racism
We must also confront the uncomfortable reality that this displacement targets specific identities, which makes it a plausible case of Environmental Racism. Coastal labor is deeply caste-codified, such as communities like the Pattinavars in Tamil Nadu, Mukkuvars in Kerala, Kharvis in Goa, and Kolis in Maharashtra, occupy distinct, often marginal positions.
Their customary rights to "coastal commons", such as those to beaches, creeks, and drying grounds, are rarely codified in revenue records. Unlike the agrarian hinterland where land titles are clear, coastal tenure is fluid. The state uses this lack of "paper ownership" to deny compensation during displacement, mirroring the colonial logic that equated un-propertied tribes with criminality. For another instance, the coastal commons in Tamil Nadu are often termed as Poramboke, or, the ‘wastelands.’ Since the wasteland belongs to the Government, the Government does not find an obligation to acquire it from the fishermen, before transferring the land to the corporation. And since the fishermen do not have titled deeds (pattas) to the beaches, they are best identified as encroachers. The issue at hand also runs deep into the Caste-Environment Studies, because the exclusion affects specific communities falling within the OBC (Other Backward Classes) and the MBC (Most Backward Classes) categories.
However, that is not entirely the face of the issue. There is another hideous and lesser observed fact, i.e., the erasure is equally gendered. Women in these communities, who control the post-harvest economy of drying and selling fish, require access to the open beach. When a corporate project walls-off the shore, or displacement moves a family into a concrete apartment block, women lose their economic independence and as a result, are forced into the unorganized workforce with unarguably higher risks of trafficking and exploitation.
The Documentation Trap: The Crisis of Citizenship
Finally, in the Sundarbans (West Bengal) and Majuli (Assam), the environmental crisis intersects with another intricately woven and constitutional rumpus for identification, i.e., the citizenship. Take for instance, islands like Ghoramara, located in the South of Kolkata, in the Sunderban Delta Complex, are shrinking rapidly due to erosion and sea-level rise. When a family loses their ancestral land to the river or sea, they lose the physical evidence of their lineage. In a political climate obsessed with documentation, the climate refugee (a feasible term to understand the nature of the victims) is viewed with suspicion. The State’s ignorance in recognising these victims and not addressing a specific "Climate Migrant" category, forces these populations to disappear as they stop engaging with the state for fear of detention and hence, effectively become stateless within their own country.
Conclusion: The Case for a Coastal Rights Act
The evidence suggests that the Indian state is repeating the mistakes of 1871. It is treating a mobile and vulnerable population as a logistical nuisance rather than a citizenry in distress. Advocates who support the ignorance fondly argue that infrastructural development is necessary for national growth and that encroachers cannot hold the country back.
However, this argument falls short on very apparent constitutional grounds. Development that violates the Article 21 rights, the right to livelihood and dignity, of a specific caste or class is fundamentally unconstitutional, and, the economic argument is equally flawed, since destroying the artisanal fisheries, which support millions and ensure food security (as per CMFRI data), for the sake of automated ports creates a net loss to national income.
The solution must come through legislative action because of the two reasons. The legislative arbitrariness in 1871 paved the way for criminalisation of unidentifiable communities, and today, legislative inaction is an appeal to ignorance causing a similar effect. India needs an exhaustive framework for the coast dwellers, modeled on the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006. The move can be effectuated by legislations, policy-reforms, and a collective conscience in the light of articles 14, 19, and 21 of the Indian Constitution. The three core issues that are dealt in the premise are:
Recognition of Commons, just as the FRA recognized the rights of forest dwellers to their habitat without paper titles, a framework on Coastal Rights must recognize the customary rights of fisherfolk to the intertidal zone;
Livelihood-Based Rehabilitation, wherein, the rehabilitation must be viewed separately from land ownership and should be anchored in livelihood guarantees; and,
Decriminalization of Migration, which can be ensured by a possible inclusion in The Disaster Management Act (given the aim of the statute falls in purview of the premise as laid down here) to recognize slow-onset migration in a planned way.
Until the law recognizes that the fisherman’s right to the sea is as sacred as the corpsoration’s right to the port, it is imperative that we view the coastal population as the new Depraved Class devoid of the choice to pursue customary livelihood.