The Demography of Dispossession: Who Really Bears Kerala’s Climate Burden?

Floods do not just swallow land - they trace forgotten histories. Landslides do not just destroy homes - they unearth centuries of injustice. In Kerala, every monsoon carries more than rain; it carries memories - of caste, of displacement, of a land divided long before disaster struck.

Between 2010 and 2025, Kerala has faced a relentless cascade of climate catastrophes: from the devastating 2018 floods to the landslides in Wayanad and Kavalappara and cyclones like Tauktae. But these are not simply ‘natural’ disasters. They follow a map - drawn not by nature, but by history.

This blog traces that scary map. It asks - Why do disasters always seem to find the same people, in the same places? Why is it always the hills, the wetlands and the coasts that collapse and why are these terrains mostly inhabited by adivasis, dalits and fisherfolk?

This is not coincidence. It is political geography, colonial legacy and caste apartheid embedded deep in Kerala’s social psyche. This is not just a climate crisis. It is climate injustice. And it is time we called it by its name.

When floods swallow homes, when hills crumble, when waves erase coastlines - do not just ask what happened. Ask to whom it happened.

In a span of 15 years from 2010 to 2025, Kerala has faced repeated climate catastrophes - the flood of 2018 that affected 13 out of the 14 districts of the state, the landslide of 2019 in Kavalappara, the cyclone Tauktae of 2021 in Chellanam and more recently, the landslide of 2024 in Wayanad. Climate change may be global, but its impact is local — and deeply unequal.

In Kerala, environmental collapse follows faultlines drawn by caste, colonialism and capital.

Climate Chaos is Not a Great Equaliser

We are told that climate does not discriminate. But reality paints a different picture.

Repeated disasters have ravaged

• The hilly terrains of Wayanad, Kavalappara and Idukki

• The low-lying wetlands of Kuttanad

• The coastal belts of Chellanam, Vypin, Alappuzha, and Thiruvananthapuram

What do these regions share?

They are ecologically fragile and demographically subaltern.

Who inhabits these disaster-prone zones?

The hilly terrains of Wayanad, Idukki and Kavalappara are home to several indigenous communities who have lived in close relationship with the land for generations. The low-lying wetlands of Kuttanad are predominantly occupied by dalit agricultural labourers, while Kerala’s long coastline shelters traditional fishing communities, many of whom belong to historically marginalised OBC and dalit groups.

These are not just geographic details - they are demographic markers of structural neglect. The regions most vulnerable to floods, landslides and sea erosion are consistently the ones inhabited by communities who have long been pushed to the margins of land ownership, governance and visibility.

This is not a coincidence. It is geographic discrimination.

Caste, Land and the Spatial Injustice of Disaster

The political ecology of caste and land in Kerala has a long history. It begins with the arrival of Aryan brahmins, who institutionalised chaturvarnya, transforming the land into a ritualised economy of control.

Temples became centres of power, fed by land donations - often from dalit communities like the pulayas and kuravas, according to Ilamkulam Kunjan Pillai1. Subsequently, they were pushed out of ownership and into bonded agricultural labour.

As feudalism tightened its grip, land ownership consolidated in the hands of brahmins and the upper castes.

Then came the British - and made it worse.

From Custom to Commodity: How Colonialism Rewrote Land

Under colonial rule, customary land tenure systems (jenmam) were overridden by legal codification. The British legalised the rights of jenmis (landlords, usually nairs and namboothiris), while tenants - mostly dalits - were rendered invisible.

As William Logan noted in Malabar Manual, while Kerala’s indigenous practices focused on ‘the people on the land,’ the British legal system cared for ‘the land in itself.’ This shift commodified land, facilitating its alienation and subsequent capitalist exploitation.

Land Reforms: Revolution With Blind Spots

Kerala's land reform laws (1961, 1964, 1969) are often celebrated - but they systematically excluded dalits and adivasis

• The Ezhavas, Christians and Muslims improved their economic standing through access to redistributed land.

• Dalits received marginal, non-marketable plots - often in degraded or peripheral zones.

• Adivasis received virtually nothing. Why? Because they lacked ‘papers’ — the colonial state never recognised their community oriented, non-proprietary relationship to land.

Meanwhile, real estate business boomed with Gulf remittances. Agricultural lands were  converted to dry lands for construction purposes. Dalits, mostly labourers, lost their livelihood. The landless became lifeless statistics.

Adivasis and the Criminalisation of Ecology

For the adivasis, land was never property. It was kin, ancestor and life-force. But capitalism had no vocabulary for this.

The Indian Forest Act (1865) turned forests into state assets. The colonial category of ‘forest’ made adivasi lifeworlds illegal, subjecting them to surveillance, eviction and displacement. Later, massive internal migrations - mostly from Travancore - turned Malabar region into a zone of settler colonialism,  turning adivasis into minorities on their own land.

The post-Independence land reforms further ignored the adivasis.  Even the communist vision of agrarian justice had its blind spots. E.M.S. Namboodiripad, the first Chief Minister of Kerala, acknowledged the need to accommodate entrepreneurial interests of capitalist landlords within the framework of land reforms: "...capitalism in agriculture, like capitalism in industry, is an advance on the present situation in a semi-colonial, semi-feudal country2.” This was a reflection of the party's position that capitalism in agriculture must be encouraged in a semi-feudal economy3, thereby leading to the erasure of adivasi cosmologies.

Disaster as Development’s Dirty Secret

Today, adivasis and dalits are pushed into zones of risk

• Hills that crumble with landslides

• Wetlands that flood every monsoon

• Coastal stretches where the sea claims land inch by inch

These are sacrificial geographies - created by a state that protects capital and marginalises life.

The fisherfolk face their own apocalypse. The sea is both a livelihood and a death trap. Sea erosion, cyclones, and chemical spills (like the recent cargo ship accidents) are treated as breaking news, not humanitarian crises.

Despite recurring trauma, there are no long-term solutions; only temporary relief camps and empty promises.

Resistance From the Margins

This story does not end in victimhood.

From Muthanga (2003) to Chengara (2007–2010) and Arippa (2012–present), adivasis and dalits in Kerala have reclaimed the discourse of land and justice.

The struggles of these communities in Kerala force us to ask 

• Who defines ‘development’?

• Who gets to live on stable ground?

• Whose lives are expendable in the name of economic progress?

Climate Crisis is Caste Crisis

Environmental disasters do not just reveal ecological vulnerability. They expose structural injustice.

If dalits, adivasis, and fisherfolk are more affected by climate crises, it is not because they live closer to ‘danger zones.’ It is because danger was mapped onto their lives - through centuries of caste, colonialism and capitalism.

Where the Waters Remember and the Earth Refuses to Forget

Demography is not destiny. It is the politics of  caste and power written into the land. These disasters do not fall from the sky - they rise from centuries of exclusion. The floodwaters know where the pulaya lives. The landslide knows where the adivasi sleeps. The sea knows which homes are too poor to matter. Every disaster is a reminder - not of nature’s unpredictability, but of  the social architecture of oppression.

Works Cited

1Oommen, M.A. (1971). Land Reforms and Socio-economic Change in Kerala: An Introductory Study. Bangalore: The Christian Literary Society.

2Herring, Ronald J.  (1983). Land to the Tiller: Politics of Agrarian Reform in South Asia. Yale University Press.  p..165.

3Namboodiripad, E M S (1952): On the Agrarian Question in India. Bombay: People’s Publishing House. p.49, 61.