This faculty seminar will feature a presentation by Sudheesh R. C., Assistant Professors (Law) at NLSIU, on ‘Framing Urgencies: Disaster Management and the Compression of Space-Time.’

Abstract

Urgency is often assumed in climate disaster responses – swift action is seen as both necessary and inevitable. Yet, such narratives rarely interrogate whose interests are prioritised and what justificatory rhetorics underpin these rapid responses. This paper examines the disaster management and rehabilitation efforts following a major landslide that took place in 2004 in Kerala, India, which claimed over 400 lives. The landslide was attributed to a convergence of climate change, human settlement and historical interventions in a fragile ecological region. Focusing on an ‘ethnography of the interlude’ informed by historical methods, this paper explores how the welfare state responded to citizen demands in the aftermath. It argues that disaster management compresses time and space, demanding swift action in a narrowly defined area while framing state intervention as care. Drawing on participant observation with both affected individuals and state actors, as well as an analysis of policy documents and archival records, the paper demonstrates how climate urgency narratives sidelined Adivasis’ legally protected forest rights. This event also had an important spatial dimension. Although the disaster took place in the Western Ghats, a UNESCO-recognised biodiversity hotspot and the subject of longstanding ecological debates, official responses localised it as an isolated event in a single district, thus avoiding larger structural or ecological accountability. The paper underscores that an anthropology of climate must critically examine how urgency is constructed and operationalised. It reveals how such constructions embed power through narratives that determine not only who gets help, but on what terms, and at what political cost.