Liquid disaster and frigid response: Disaster and social exclusion

Introduction

It is increasingly evident that disasters have become recurrent features of social life across the world, and they indeed continue to pose risks to the very social world in which they are located. The structural, class and gender aspects of disaster response have been emphasized through intervention and research (Pentaraki, 2012; Pittaway et al., 2007). The response of the social work discipline to disaster situations has mostly been guided by the professional values of human dignity, social justice and human rights. Social workers have been engaged in addressing the specific needs and requirements of vulnerable groups affected by disasters during the response phase (Dominelli, 2009; Javadian, 2007; Jha, 2012). As the core of social work has mostly been defined through an attempt to challenge exclusion, discrimination and inequalities, the inclination and preparedness of social workers to factor in structural approaches in disaster response become crucial. The engagement of social work students and scholars in disaster response provides a rich repository for research and intervention as it gives sound understanding of social systems, structure and exclusionary processes. This reflection on the issues and challenges to social work’s response to disaster situations becomes all the more important in a stratified and diverse society like India.

Historically, social workers have been engaged in disaster recovery plans, including at the micro, mezzo and macro levels, organizing a community’s recovery, searching out benefit programmes, writing grants and advocating for government programmes (Cooke, 1993; Dodds and Nuehring, 1996). In India, professional social work has registered its presence, both through its institutions for social work education and the agencies employing professional staff. The engagement of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) (the first Social Work Institute established in India in the year 1936) in disaster response dates back to 1947 when a team of social work students and faculty members worked in the camps of Kurukshetra, where streams of refugees were coming in from Pakistan as a result of the partition of India that same year. Since then, social workers have been at the forefront of all major disaster interventions in the country. Through the engagement in rescue, relief and rehabilitation processes, social workers have aided vulnerable communities and ensured socially inclusive support for them. Following social work’s conventional commitment to respond to situations of natural disaster and calamities, social work professionals, educators and students responded to one of the worst floods in Bihar (India), which was triggered by the breach in the barrage of the river Kosi in 2008. The state of Bihar is one of the most backward states ¹ in India, with a history of caste-based violence along with the periodic ravages by the river Kosi, which has earned the epithet ‘the sorrow of Bihar’. In view of the unique socio-cultural terrain of Bihar, the historicity of floods and unprecedented response of humanitarian organizations and social work educators and practitioners to the Kosi floods of 2008, it seemed pertinent to document both the narratives of the affected people and the experiences of the social workers who responded to this disaster.

This article attempts to examine the progression of vulnerability to floods in Bihar and its differential impact on people on the margins who are further discriminated during the disaster rescue, relief and rehabilitation processes. Using a social exclusion perspective, it is endeavoured to interpret and articulate the sufferings of the marginalized due to disaster and the experiences of social workers in locating exclusion in disaster rescue, relief and rehabilitation processes and challenges in making disaster response inclusive. Social exclusion perspective provides ‘an anchor upon which to secure the idea of social work’ (Sheppard, 2006). This article factors in structural issues related to power, caste and patriarchy and demonstrates that disaster situations raise fundamental questions on normative social order and structural inequalities which need to be reckoned with for any inclusive disaster response. By social exclusion, the article implies experiences of discrimination, deprivation and denial based on caste and gender in disaster response. The meaning and manifestation of social exclusion are deeply ingrained in a rigid social stratification system of India (De Haan, 2007; Thorat, 2009), which keeps certain caste groups, religious communities and women at the margins of society. Social exclusion perspective provides an analytical gaze to understand complex realities and examine the challenges and scope for social work’s response in disaster situations.

Aim and methodology

The article aims to examine the impact and experiences of disaster on the marginalized dalit ² caste in rural Bihar. Dalits represent a caste group that is already marginalized as a result of caste-based discrimination and inequalities. The observations and analysis are based on direct field engagement by social work educators and students. Immediately after massive flooding (of the river Kosi) on 18 August 2008, the author made a reconnaissance visit to the affected areas for 7 days. Based on preliminary observation, field conditions and support required by the government and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), a plan was made to engage in disaster response in an organized manner. A 2-month long relief and rehabilitation support was undertaken by a team of social work students and faculty members from TISS, Mumbai (India). The team undertook vulnerability analysis and needs assessment in the relief camps and affected villages. During the field engagement, the social work team documented the narratives of affected people on the process of disaster rescue, relief and rehabilitation and made efforts to ensure the relief and rehabilitation work were inclusive. Reflecting on these experiences, this article addresses the issues of exclusion of marginalized caste groups which are further exacerbated in the event of disasters like the Kosi floods. It highlights the challenges of social workers in making disaster response inclusive in a stratified society like Bihar (India).

The data for the study were triangulated from the following sources: (1) field observation and documentation during disaster response; (2) in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with flood-affected people in relief camps and villages in affected districts; (3) in-depth interviews with key informants such as community leaders, staff of humanitarian aid agencies/organizations/institutions, political leaders and government officials; (4) analysis of reports from local newspapers, government policy briefs, and disaster preparedness and response modules. Special efforts were made to include women and vulnerable groups such as SCs, ³ OBCs ⁴ and minorities in the process of disaster response and data collection. The social exclusion perspective helps in understanding how disasters magnify previously entrenched hierarchies based on gender and caste background. In addition, it exposes how the excluded communities are often neglected by their governments: ‘recovery efforts too easily can fall prey to apathy, “disaster fatigue,” political manipulations, or even outright discrimination or economic expediency’ (Lewis, 2006: 12). The range of literature on disaster response has illustrated the political economy and social dimension of disaster for decades (Cohen and Werker, 2008; Olson, 2000; Platt, 1999). Drawing from the experiences of intervention, the article captures socio-political context and traces the gaps and challenges encountered by the social work profession in responding to disaster situations and making it inclusive.

The article is divided into five sections. Following this introductory section, the section titled ‘Trajectory of flood, barrage and breach’ gives a brief trajectory of the Kosi flood, barrage and breach. The section ‘Floods, society and social exclusion’ illustrates the dynamics of society and social exclusion exacerbated by the Kosi floods and the meaning-making of disaster rescue, relief and rehabilitation processes for the vulnerable communities. The section ‘Discussion’ reviews the experiences, implications and lessons learnt from the social workers’ engagement in disaster response. The last section concludes the argument with an emphasis on the necessity of a profoundly inclusive disaster response in a hierarchical society.

Trajectory of flood, barrage and breach

Floods are an annual feature in the Kosi region of Bihar (India) ⁵ where people have learnt to cope and live with flooding (Jha, 2012; Mishra, 2008b). The Kosi region refers to areas consistently affected by the river Kosi floods represented by five major districts: namely, Araria, Madhepura, Purnia, Saharsa and Supaul (Figure 1).

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Figure 1.

Flood Affected Areas of Bihar (with permisison from CHILDLINE India Foundation).

However, the catastrophe brought by floods in the year 2008 was unprecedented, with a change in river course to the extent of 120 km. The primary reason for this horrendous development was the fact that the river Kosi, which starts its journey at a height of about 7000 m in the Himalaya mountain range and whose upper catchment is located in Nepal, has changed its course due to the breach in the barrage which was built in the 1950s on the Indo-Nepal border. The river has shifted over 120 km eastwards, going back to the course it had abandoned more than 200 years ago.

A brief background about the spread of the river and process of controlling its fury will make matters clearer. When the river Kosi enters the plains, its bed widens enormously. The total catchment area of Kosi is 74,030 km², out of which only 11,410 km² is located in India and the rest, 62,620 km², is located in Nepal and Tibet. In addition, the average silt load of the Kosi is 92,400 acre feet. Mishra (2008a) highlights that due to its high sediment load, the Kosi is known to meander and has shifted course by about 160 km between the years 1723 and 1948. The governance, policies and social relations in the Kosi region have been greatly influenced by the impact of the river.

Although there is long history of debate against embanking the river Kosi during the British regime, the deliberation was renewed after India’s independence in the year 1947, and finally a barrage was constructed between 1958 and 1962 to regulate the flow of the river and to facilitate irrigation. However, recurring breaches in the past and the most recent breach in 2008 proved it to be a cruel joke among the vulnerable people of the area. The flooding started at an embankment on Kosi river near Kushaha area in southern Nepal, where the barrage breached and burst. It is crucial to understand that since the barrage was built on the Kosi, following the Indo-Nepal Water Management Agreement in 1954, the Indian government has shouldered the responsibility (as per the terms of reference of the Indo-Nepal Friendship Treaty) for maintenance and repair work on the embankment, in order to protect the people living downstream in Bihar, whereas the Nepal government has been in charge of monitoring the flood waters.

The unprecedented scale and magnitude of devastation due to the breach has rendered useless the embankment of more than 300 km which was built to control the fury of the Kosi. About 1000 villages of 35 blocks in five districts (Araria, Madhepura, Purnia, Saharsa and Supaul) were affected, involving 3 million people, of whom about 1 million were evacuated (United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 2009). The five flood-affected districts are among the poorest districts in India. The floods impacted already vulnerable communities with low human and economic development indicators and relatively low coping capacities. The population is overwhelmingly rural, ranging from 91.7 percent in Purnia and Saharsa to close to 95 percent in Araria, Madhepura and Supaul (Census of India, 2001). The estimation of the actual loss of human lives and cattle was something the administration could not predict. Approximately 493 lives were lost and 3500 were reported missing after the disaster (Government of Bihar (GoB), World Bank and Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery, 2010). However, those who were working in the flood-affected areas knew that the number of casualties was much higher and that the state would never get the figure correct, for obvious reasons of compensation and rehabilitation. Crops had been completely washed away, and the loss of land due to sand casting or water logging was never genuinely ascertained.

Floods, society and social exclusion

The consequences of disaster are often influenced by social structure, prevailing governance system and institutional arrangements (Nambiar, 2015; Schneider, 1992). In most of the disaster situations, specific groups in society are excessively vulnerable to disaster losses. The differential impact has also been specified by Morrow (1999): ‘the impact of a natural event on any given community, for example, is not random, but determined by everyday patterns of social interaction and organisation, particularly the resulting stratification paradigms which determine access to resources’ (p. 1). In the context of the Kosi floods in India, the article captures the narratives of people coming from poor and marginalized sections. It reflects how the disaster becomes more devastating due to social vulnerabilities in terms of caste intersected with gender, age and class. Deprivation and discrimination have been observed at all stages of disaster rescue, relief and rehabilitation processes.

In the immediate rescue operation after floods, it is reported that in village after village, the dalit and backward ⁶ caste people were excluded at the time of boarding the boats during the evacuation process. Socio-economic influence and physical might had influenced decisions as to who would be rescued first. The impoverished in severely affected villages in flood-ravaged districts were denied boats for evacuation; the reasons being that they belonged to the dalit community and they had no money as a bribe to be allowed onto the boat that was arranged by the state for rescue. A dalit community leader, Shyam Sada, ⁷ narrated, ‘Invariably the administration acted through representatives of panchayat ⁸ who cared more for their own families, relatives and supporters’. ‘While dominant people influence the administration and got away safely, we are never counted and left behind’, added Sada. A news report in an English newspaper captures an account of corruption in the process of rescue of flood-affected people. A dalit youth, Siddhi Ram, who claimed to witness several people drowning while trying to cross a ditch to the overtopped highway, said,

We were promised that the rescue boats would come back for us over ten days ago. We saw some people criss-crossing the area. They never touched our village … Even though boats are official and meant to evacuate each one of the marooned, the boatman demand bribes for the crossing. (The Hindustan Times, 2008: 2)

According to villagers from Bohra in Purnia and Rampur in Madhepura, villagers perceived that Government boatmen charged higher prices (as much as Rs 500 − GBP 5) from people belonging to marginalized groups to transport them to safer places (UNDP, 2009). The narratives from the field made it obvious that the poor and the dalits have suffered the most in terms of damage to lives and property. People who lived in pucca ⁹ houses and double-storied structures were able to survive when the flooding happened, as they could live in their terraces until the boats arrived to rescue them. The poor had no option but to wade through the strong currents with the river in full spate to try and survive, leading to many deaths. Asdev Sada, an elderly dalit who had stayed behind to guard the house of his upper-caste employer, shared, ‘I used to work in their fields. They wanted me to watch their house and belongings. I have to listen to them. They will provide food and work to my family once they come back’. He was worried that he could not go to see their house and belongings as the water level was high. On being asked about his house, Asdev said, ‘I had nothing in my house; being a mud house it had already collapsed. My malik’s [employer’s] house is sturdy and they have possessions kept inside’. These expressions of helplessness along with the statement of dependence on dominance reflect the complex web of structured relationships. The hierarchical social structure ensure an old man stays back, taking every risk to guard the house of his feudal lord despite being well aware that in this caste-based society there is absolutely no support system for him and his family. Further elaborating on the discriminatory treatment, a local dalit leader referred to government policy for compensating losses in a disaster situation: ‘the powerful people will get Rs. 25,000 (250 GBP) because they have concrete houses (though they have not collapsed). Our mud house were completely washed away and we will get Rs. 5000 (50 GBP) – this is travesty of justice’. Discrimination in the rescue process and compensation packages reflects how, under the influence of the dominant upper caste, exclusion is ingrained in the government support system.

It was observed and narrated that even in the relief camps, influential people from the dominant caste managed to get a bigger share of relief material. Even at the time when food packets were air-dropped, dalits and OBCs were shouted at and denied access to such supplies. Outside the relief camps, dalits were denied the use of hand-pumps to get water; the upper-caste people had put barbed wire around the hand-pumps to restrict the entry of dalits. The distressed dalit women cried in frustration: ‘when will people understand we are also human beings … we need food and water … our children also get thirsty and feel hungry’.

The deep-rooted caste-based exclusion was found to be the norm of the society. To illustrate, when a health camp was organized in the villages of Bhada, the Yadav ¹⁰ community remained completely aloof because the camp was organized in the middle of the Musahar ¹¹ hamlet. In later interactions with the Yadavs, it became clear that the caste barrier was the only reason to hold them back. Similar was the experience in the health camp at Chandikasthan. This time the camp was held in the Yadav hamlet, and people from the adjacent dalit settlement were harassed and made to wait till their turn in the end. Incidents of caste-based discrimination were also reported from Chhoti Baisa village, especially with regard to forming a queue for entering the health camp. The vulnerability emanating from hierarchical social structure was all the more insidious vis-à-vis women and children. Naila Kabeer (2006) points out that the intersection of gender-based discrimination and economic deprivation means that women from poor households represent a particular category of social exclusion, facing greater discrimination in meeting their basic needs than men from poor households and more likely to slide into greater poverty in situations of crisis. Through health camps, it was found that most of the dalit women were anaemic and children were malnourished. Loss of livelihood of earning members of the family further hampered their access to basic food. Through extensive health intervention in the area, it was found that on average, a woman gives birth to six or seven children. Due to floods, women were not able to gain access to hospitals, because of which home-based unsafe deliveries took place resulting in many neo-natal deaths. Despite having several government welfare schemes for people in need, the Public Distribution System shop was not operational nor was any midday meal provided under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Scheme. ¹² This resulted in malnutrition and wide-ranging nutritional deficiency among children.

The observation and field data demonstrate specific subtleties in exclusion and inclusion through social as well as procedural strategies. The technologies of rule, to paraphrase Foucault, were used in the form of utter chaos, confusion and bureaucratic complexities which were observed in the relief distribution centre (to supply relief materials to villagers) in the flood-affected districts. Certain procedures needed to be followed, which were somewhat like this: villagers had to put in an application addressed to the Block Development Officer (BDO) specifying the name of the village, ward number, name of the panchayat and the block to which they belonged. The application had also to contain a rough estimate of the affected families in the village and type of relief material required. The application had to be endorsed by at least one member of the panchayat. These applications then had to be submitted to the BDO or the District Collector Land Revenue (DCLR) stationed in the relief camp, who then scrutinized the application and issued a receipt or a token number which specified the type and quantity of material to be given. There was no designated area from where the officials were operating; they kept shifting base from one building to another. As people continued following them, it added to the chaos and confusion in the camp. A number of people, many of them women, shared that the ward and panchayat members in their village had shifted out of the village after the floods. They were therefore unable to get their applications endorsed by the representatives concerned. The scrutinizing officer, instead of helping them by identifying a solution or an alternative, expressed their inability to provide relief material to them. ‘Sirf dabang logon ka hi dabdaba tha aur wo sab relief pe kabja kar lete the’ (The powerful and mighty used to capture all relief materials), shared frustrated Nunu Mistry of Kataiya, Supaul. In the affected districts where literacy rate ranges between 30 and 40 percent and where most of the affected dalits are illiterate, it was obvious that the bureaucratic procedure seemed to be a deliberate attempt to exclude a large chunk of already marginalized people. Such a complex system helped the dominant to navigate through these processes and access relief materials, while the dominated were left behind. Through the modus operandi of the state, the relations between care and power get exposed.

The study also reveals how through numerous forms of disaster responses, such as declaring differential compensation packages for flood victims and the procedure to avail the same, and several other announcements, the governmentality and physicality of politics are predisposed and played out by the dominant caste. Post-disaster intervention of the governmental agencies in handing out ex-gratia payments, procedures of verification of claims, use of police and so on seemed to be based on mistrust and designed to dispossess the people who are supposed to be in some kind of social contract with the state, and in turn the state is obliged to take care of them. The experiences of dalit communities highlight the fact that the everyday life of a significant segment of society is in permanent emergency, and disaster situations further accentuate their vulnerabilities. It is obvious that society is made up of groups whose interests are in variance but at times portrayed as harmonious by the dominant actors. More often than not, power not only takes the form of ownership of resources and monopoly of lethal forces, but also, the ability to define agendas (Lukes, 1974). The power in society not only disciplines the bodies (Foucault, 1977 cited in Wisner, 1993), but also the minds and imaginations of the majority of the people (Margin and Margin, 1990, cited in Wisner, 1993). Some of the expressions of helplessness along with statement of dependence on the dominant reflect the complex web of structured relationships. The above-mentioned narratives expose the vulnerabilities and consequential exclusion of communities and social groups that are largely dependent upon their position in socio-political and economic entrapping.

Premised on these observations and experiences of social exclusion in flood-ravaged districts of Kosi, this study documented experiences of exclusionary practice encountered by underprivileged communities and could convince the administration to respond to these issues more seriously and specifically. There were around 300 families from the Musahar community from Ward No. 2, Panchayat No. 2 in Madhepura block who had not received any supplies even after a fortnight of disaster. At another place (Kattaya Power plant), roughly over 1000 families were squatting in a makeshift refuge, with an additional 100 Musahar families sheltering on the periphery of the area. They were the last to receive any relief material. ‘It would have been better if we would have been washed away, it is too much to cope with humiliation even in getting minimal relief’, narrated an agitated Tunu Sada, belonging to the Musahar community. When the team inquired about supplying relief materials to these communities, the government official quipped, ‘they are habituated to relief every year; they want to eat government relief by sitting idle’. The attitude and reaction of government officials revealed an insensitive disposition premised on conventional distrust towards subaltern masses.

Furthermore, one of the dalit women at the site, Sanichari Devi, told one of the members of the international aid agency, ‘The locals always accompany the people who come here to give food and they know very well whom to give. Even when food packets were dropped they shouted at us and did not allow us to go ahead’ (Khosla, 2008). The denial of humanitarian aid in situations of emergency reflects a deep-rooted exclusionary social structure along with the attitude of the state representatives. The exposure and vulnerability to floods were indeed differential within the communities and certainly skewed in favour of the relatively powerful.

Having observed and understood that unequal power relationship are the driving force behind exclusion in relief and compensation process, the TISS social work team developed a model of a socially inclusive plan and a strategy for relief distribution processes. It partnered with the administration in undertaking social exclusion analysis whereby the location, community, livelihood, assets and resources, participation, decision-making, needs and priorities and so on were mapped. This was done by including socially excluded caste groups in exclusion analysis, relief planning and distribution committees. Wisner et al. (2003) had identified key variables that explain variations of impact including class (which includes differences in wealth), occupation, caste, ethnicity, gender, disability and health status, age, and the nature and extent of social networks. These variables were used by the TISS team to help compose a group that was given the responsibility of planning and organizing relief in camps as also in village clusters. Active and assertive community members from among women, dalit, minorities and extremely ¹³ backward communities were identified and included in relief and rehabilitation committees subsequently set up by the different government and non-government agencies. Listening patiently to and engaging with the narratives of those ‘invisibilised’ in disaster response facilitated their inclusion. This team, therefore, provided evidence of exclusionary practices and suggested a plan for undertaking disaster response in an inclusive manner. The inclusion of dalit women and men along with people from other castes, government staff, NGO representatives and TISS students was initially resisted. Subsequently, the group realized that the team had better political clout to pressurize administration for better relief and compensation mechanisms. Active partnership that was forged with dalit women and youth had the potential to help in reducing their frustration and sense of unease with the government system and bolstered their confidence to engage with a variety of stakeholders. The process facilitated a bottom-up approach towards planning and the implementation of relief and reconstruction processes in a post-disaster situation. Locality-specific training around the issues of child nutrition, women’s health, welfare provision and access mechanisms, use of right to information, team-building and leadership and so on was undertaken by leveraging local knowledge with outside experts. The enhanced awareness and understanding of the group could facilitate claim-making by the community. The fact that disasters are embedded in the political structures, economic systems and social orders of the societies in which they take place (Bankoff et al., 2006; Kreps, 1984) was acknowledged and worked upon by using the socially inclusive strategies of participation and decision-making by the TISS team. The disaster response once again reminded social work educators and practitioners that all field engagement needs to be informed by structural aspects of deprivation and exclusion, and that there is a particular need to support the most excluded and vulnerable sections of society.

Discussion

The exclusion which is linked to deprivation of the socially disadvantaged groups, particularly the dalits, accentuated their vulnerability during the Kosi floods. Since the deprivation of these groups is deeply entrenched in the social structure, there are diverse ways in which exclusion can cause deprivation and poverty. While analysing the various meanings and dimensions of the concept of social exclusion, Amartya Sen (2000) draws distinction between the situation where some people are being left out and where some people are being included on deeply unfavourable terms, and described the two situations as ‘unfavourable exclusion’ and ‘unfavourable inclusion’. He also differentiated between ‘active and passive exclusion’ where by active exclusion he meant fostering of exclusion through deliberate policy decisions by the state or its agents, and passive exclusion he deemed as that which works through the social processes which are not deliberate attempts to exclude, but nevertheless may result in exclusion in some or the other form. In this frame of analysis, the socially disadvantaged communities in the Kosi region had to face unfavourable exclusion along with active and passive exclusion.

While analysing the perspective and experiences of social exclusion, Thorat (2009) underscores that social exclusion essentially refers to the processes through which groups are wholly or partially excluded from full participation in the society in which they live. It emphasizes two crucial dimensions involving the notion of exclusion, namely, the ‘societal institutions’ (of exclusion) and their ‘outcome’ (in terms of deprivation). Although social exclusion has been articulated and analysed by several scholars in varied forms, one cannot deny that it deals with the situation of poverty, discrimination and deprivation squarely. In the context of the Bihar floods which were a catastrophic disaster for millions of people, social exclusion provides a powerful lens to analyse how certain communities and individuals were excluded even in a situation of emergency. Their lack of access to power and resources and the inability to participate in decision-making became the root cause of vulnerability. Several instances of despair and deprivation of dalits in post-disaster rescue and relief during the Kosi floods, as cited earlier, highlight communities’ marginality, dispossession and destitution. It was evident that the process of exclusion revolved around the hierarchical social institution of caste that discriminates, isolates and dispossesses some communities on caste-based identity. Whether it is Tunu Sada’s agitation against everyday humiliation, or Sanichari Devi’s narration of caste- and gender-based discrimination, or the tale of Asdev Sada about feudal hegemonic command, elements of social un-belonging and disaffiliation from conventional society is all-pervasive. In the quagmire of undignified existence, the Kosi disaster exposed the crude reality of discriminatory social structure sustaining rampant unfavourable social exclusion.

The study confirms the point made by Blaikie et al. (1994: 5) that social factors such as economic imbalances, disparity in power among social groups, knowledge dissemination, and discrimination in welfare and social protection accentuate vulnerability. The vulnerability conditions include weak housing structure, insecure livelihood, migration to uncertain and insecure places, and lack of disaster preparedness by the state and its agencies. The everyday experiences of dalits in the region show that the social systems are stressed to breaking point by disaster situations because of the problematic structure that allows systematic discrimination against marginalized groups. The devastating flood aggravated pre-disaster inequalities, ‘raising important questions as to the social implications of disasters and response policies, as well as the need to examine natural disasters amidst the overall socio-political context in which they occur’ (Pentaraki, 2012).

In the Kosi floods, complete negligence towards disaster preparedness, total absence of an early warning system and inefficient evacuation mechanisms were followed by exclusion during the relief and compensation process, thereby accentuating the vulnerability of the assetless dalit community. The field engagement and the study expose the deep-rooted social inequality contributing to vulnerability. It helps in identifying the contributory sequence of events and processes at varying geographic scales in a post-disaster situation. The analysis is premised on the fact that the degree of vulnerability experienced by societal groups is a function of political economy, iniquitous social structure and its causative role in social exclusion of the dispossessed. Vulnerability, which is a state of defencelessness that renders a community powerless to withstand the debilitating effects of events commonly perceived as disaster (Anderson and Woodrow, 1989), becomes perpetuated through the process of social exclusion which was observable in so many dimensions.

The disaster response followed by this study lends itself to some precise learning for social work intervention in a disaster situation. Similar to the observation of Wisner et al. (2003), it was observed that power-elites would rather choose to focus on the natural or technological aspects of hazards than on issues such as social vulnerability or inequality. In order to ensure effective, transparent and inclusive systems of relief and rehabilitation, social workers should develop socially inclusive models and strategies by factoring in the reality of continued discrimination and exclusion from the beginning and should deal with it systematically. The social, economic and political mechanism that perpetuate exclusion and heighten risk need to be blocked through collective action and advocacy. Collective action can mobilize communities that enhance the personal and collective capacity of people to respond to and influence the course of social and economic change. Collective action facilitates socially inclusive access to resources and power structure, thereby promoting equitable and unbiased disaster response. Concerted efforts in community organization and long-term engagement with communities are essential to ensure a non-discriminatory rehabilitation process.

Conclusion

The Kosi flood response confirmed that in the context of marginality, disaster situations push vulnerable communities to the limits of subsistence. The process of relief and rehabilitation either reinforced the status quo or further accentuated structural inequality. A large proportion of aid during recovery was appropriated by the upper echelons of society, leaving those marginalized to suffer active and passive exclusion. In fact, one agrees with Walker (1989) that disaster increases the number of marginalized people – people who have survived but are unable to recover their livelihoods, who are destitute and forced to live in even more vulnerable situations. It was evident that caste background, class position and spatial location of the communities had implications for unfavourable exclusion reflected throughout the ‘clusters of disadvantage’ (Chambers, 1983: 108–139, as cited in Wisner, 1993). In the Kosi region, it was manifested in the form of lack of access and entitlement to food, basic services, deplorable health conditions, widespread cases of malnutrition, anaemia, tuberculosis and other diseases. The general sense of powerlessness was too obvious to explicate. Noted liberation theologian and poverty crusader Father Sean Healy aptly describes the meaning and manifestation of social exclusion:

Exclusion is experienced in many ways … Ultimately, it is not only the feeling but the reality of powerlessness … Generally speaking poverty is the companion of exclusion. People on low incomes have a struggle even to provide the necessary food, clothing and health. (Cited in Powell, 2001: 90–91)

Innumerable accounts of social exclusion (discrimination, lack of preparedness and high handedness of the state) during the river Kosi floods show that the institutional discourse and governmental praxis are influenced by a hegemonic and condescending relationship between the state and vulnerable communities. The technologies of rule are such that people are forced to remain in a culture of silence and accept disaster situations as what Nair (1997) refers to as ‘acts of god’. The narratives of scores of flood victims and the efforts made to capture the understanding of the people’s despair bring out stark realities about societal hierarchy as well as about the post-disaster intervention of governmental agencies. The intersection among and the consequences of inequalities on dimensions of caste, community, power and influence raise critical questions around the phenomenon of social exclusion in the disaster situation.

Through this article, I have tried to analyse cases of exclusion and extreme instances of vulnerabilities in a disaster situation. Individual and communities’ powerlessness as was encountered immediately after floods was put in the perspective of the structural situation in the region. The article brings forth an understanding that power and its interplay is the structural contributor to the heightened vulnerabilities of the marginal groups in situations of disasters like flood. The article emphasizes that disaster response will never address the concerns of marginalized communities until and unless it is conscious of the active and passive unfavourable exclusion built in and perpetuated by the normative social structures and institutions.