8 - Climate Change: Weather, Climate, Caste Economy, and Dalit Experiences

Summary

At the United Nations Conference on Climate Change at Copenhagen in 2009 (COP 15), Narsamma Masanagari, Manjula Tammali, and Sammamma Begari – Dalit women from Medak district of Andhra Pradesh – burnt their accreditation badges in protest against the lack of recognition of caste and Dalits in climate discussions. Coming from Medak district, where extreme heat and erratic rainfall impacts the everyday village life, Sammamma, a small farmer of Bidakanne village, explained: ‘Climate change does make it more difficult. If there is drought or unseasonal rainfall, the first thing that suffers is crop cultivation. If there are no crops, it is difficult for us.’ Narsamma, farmer and activist of Pastapur village, claimed that ‘upper-caste farmers use machines to plough their land, heightening the climate crisis with fertilizer and other things. Our impact on the climate is much smaller. Larger farmers grow money, we grow food’. Standing outside the Conference Centre, Dalit women demanded ‘to bring in the voices of the small and the excluded. If you really want to understand climate change, then come and talk to people like us’. During COP, they also spoke about untouchability and occupational hierarchy still being practised in the villages, and how a group, Deccan Development Society, was trying to organize Dalit women farmers’ collectives by pooling financial and human resources, sowing local rice varieties and diversifying crops in small farms, to mitigate the impact of volatile weather and increasing water scarcity. On another occasion, ‘Dalits Dignity March’ in Delhi, organized every year on 5 December by the National Confederation of Dalit Organisations (NACDOR), a network of grassroot Dalit groups, displayed prominently the banner of ‘Dalit Climate Justice’. Ashok Bharti, the chairman of the organization, submitted a memorandum to the prime minister, asking the Indian government not to compromise the interests of Dalits in the country's commitment to cut carbon emissions, and suggested fair share and special care for the community in climate change mitigation policies and budget allocation. Of late, a few Dalit and anti-caste writers have begun articulating their views on climate change. They have critiqued the trend to overlook the ‘correlation between climate change and social exclusion’, the ‘hidden casteism of climate change reporting’, and have explored ‘a broader framework to situate caste in the climate change/climate justice discourse’.