Between May and July 2024, India saw its most intense natural disaster in the north-east in over a decade. In the aftermath of cyclone Remal in Assam came two months of relentless downpours.
PREMIUM
A village inundated following heavy rains in Golaghat, Assam, in September 2025. (PTI)
By July, about 2.5 million people had been displaced, accounting for nearly half the natural-disaster-linked displacements in India that year, according to the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).
Overall, in 2024, India also saw the highest number of natural-disaster-linked displacements in 12 years: 5.4 million.
The flooding that followed in the wake of the cyclone destroyed homes, devastated crops and damaged water and sanitation infrastructure across 19 districts, m…
Between May and July 2024, India saw its most intense natural disaster in the north-east in over a decade. In the aftermath of cyclone Remal in Assam came two months of relentless downpours.
PREMIUM
A village inundated following heavy rains in Golaghat, Assam, in September 2025. (PTI)
By July, about 2.5 million people had been displaced, accounting for nearly half the natural-disaster-linked displacements in India that year, according to the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).
Overall, in 2024, India also saw the highest number of natural-disaster-linked displacements in 12 years: 5.4 million.
The flooding that followed in the wake of the cyclone destroyed homes, devastated crops and damaged water and sanitation infrastructure across 19 districts, many of them along the Brahmaputra.
By all accounts — UN reports, research projections, climate scientists — the storms are set to become more intense and more frequent. India’s densely populated coasts, river deltas and vulnerable mountain regions are particularly at-risk.
While the aim, with any displaced population, is an eventual return home, this may become increasingly difficult.
In Assam, for instance, layers of thick sand still sit atop what were fertile fields. “Assam has a good disaster management system, which is why so many were moved out in time, ahead of the storm,” says Alice Baillat, a climate governance researcher and policy advisor to IDMC.
But, within a month, most of the displaced had returned home, to neighbourhoods and houses damaged or destroyed.
ON THE EDGE
What happens to someone who is forced, in such circumstances, to leave?
The marginalised and devastated in one part of the country often become the marginalised and twice-devastated somewhere else.
“Not only is climate change driving people out of their houses, it is impacting them where they end up. They may move to a major city such as Bengaluru or Delhi, but are exposed to other climate hazards, such as flooding and heatwaves,” says Chandni Singh, associate professor with the private research organisation Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), Bengaluru. “This kind of migration multiplies risks.”
People forced to move in this manner tend to experience a drop across multiple indices: health, income, stability, agency. They are more vulnerable to exploitation.
DISPLACEMENT BY DEGREES
Aysha Jennath, a climate mobility researcher with IIHS, focused her PhD on climate-change-associated migration in coastal Kerala.
“The most striking observation was the nature of mobility patterns. A majority of households preferred to relocate only short distances, often less than 1 km from their original homes,” she says. In the early stages, there is significant reluctance to relocate even short distances, with households preferring to repair damage from slow or sudden-onset events.
In the absence of formal protection structures, she found, communities often collaborate on makeshift solutions, such as temporary storm barriers and sandbag banks. As land values decline due to increasing impacts, relocation becomes increasingly difficult, leaving poorer households dependent on government support to either adapt in place or move.
Most existing efforts in India remain reactive rather than anticipatory, Jennath says.
Even in states such as Kerala, where initiatives such as the Punargeham Project (a government housing initiative to relocate fisher families from areas within 50 metres of the high tide line) do not adequately account for spatial variations in vulnerability. Not everyone behind that line is safe.
WHAT’S THE NEXT MOVE?
What is our plan, then, for the people literally living in the path of some of the world’s biggest storms?
At the moment, India does not formally recognise climate migrants, and does not have a national climate resettlement policy for displaced people.
India has rightly argued, on multiple platforms, that at least part of the onus is on the Global North, as the drivers of the industrial era that has contributed most widely to the climate crisis, and as the parties that profited most from that era.
On October 14, at a session held during the ongoing pre-COP30 climate meetings in Brazil, union environment minister Bhupender Yadav said, “The global community must focus on implementing ambitious climate measures and addressing the most pressing challenge: the urgent lack of resources for developing countries to deliver adaptation and mitigation.”
There is certainly a lot we are doing right too, and more that we could be doing, says Mridula Ramesh, Wknd columnist, climate tech investor and author of The Climate Solution and Watershed.
“The world can learn from Odisha,” she adds. “If you compare what happened in earlier cyclones with the death tolls now, the state is most certainly doing a stand-up job, centered on broadcasting early warnings to the very last mile and keeping communities at the heart of responding to disasters.”
Conversely, there are areas where we can do better, Ramesh adds. “In an effort to accommodate the tremendous in-migration we’ve had to contend with, we are filling up lakes in and around major cities, to “create land” to house people and provide infrastructure. This worsens flooding, and has to stop.”
A good place to start would be data. “Every good policy starts with good data,” as Jennath of IIHS puts it.
Climate change is going to change how we live, work, dream and educate our children, adds her colleague, Chandni Singh. “Some people will end up having no choice but to move. Enabling dignified, safe migration, and planning on-site adaptation, will both be key.”
Between May and July 2024, India saw its most intense natural disaster in the north-east in over a decade. In the aftermath of cyclone Remal in Assam came two months of relentless downpours.
PREMIUM
A village inundated following heavy rains in Golaghat, Assam, in September 2025. (PTI)
By July, about 2.5 million people had been displaced, accounting for nearly half the natural-disaster-linked displacements in India that year, according to the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).
Overall, in 2024, India also saw the highest number of natural-disaster-linked displacements in 12 years: 5.4 million.
The flooding that followed in the wake of the cyclone destroyed homes, devastated crops and damaged water and sanitation infrastructure across 19 districts, many of them along the Brahmaputra.
By all accounts — UN reports, research projections, climate scientists — the storms are set to become more intense and more frequent. India’s densely populated coasts, river deltas and vulnerable mountain regions are particularly at-risk.
While the aim, with any displaced population, is an eventual return home, this may become increasingly difficult.
In Assam, for instance, layers of thick sand still sit atop what were fertile fields. “Assam has a good disaster management system, which is why so many were moved out in time, ahead of the storm,” says Alice Baillat, a climate governance researcher and policy advisor to IDMC.
But, within a month, most of the displaced had returned home, to neighbourhoods and houses damaged or destroyed.
ON THE EDGE
What happens to someone who is forced, in such circumstances, to leave?
The marginalised and devastated in one part of the country often become the marginalised and twice-devastated somewhere else.
“Not only is climate change driving people out of their houses, it is impacting them where they end up. They may move to a major city such as Bengaluru or Delhi, but are exposed to other climate hazards, such as flooding and heatwaves,” says Chandni Singh, associate professor with the private research organisation Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), Bengaluru. “This kind of migration multiplies risks.”
People forced to move in this manner tend to experience a drop across multiple indices: health, income, stability, agency. They are more vulnerable to exploitation.
DISPLACEMENT BY DEGREES
Aysha Jennath, a climate mobility researcher with IIHS, focused her PhD on climate-change-associated migration in coastal Kerala.
“The most striking observation was the nature of mobility patterns. A majority of households preferred to relocate only short distances, often less than 1 km from their original homes,” she says. In the early stages, there is significant reluctance to relocate even short distances, with households preferring to repair damage from slow or sudden-onset events.
In the absence of formal protection structures, she found, communities often collaborate on makeshift solutions, such as temporary storm barriers and sandbag banks. As land values decline due to increasing impacts, relocation becomes increasingly difficult, leaving poorer households dependent on government support to either adapt in place or move.
Most existing efforts in India remain reactive rather than anticipatory, Jennath says.
Even in states such as Kerala, where initiatives such as the Punargeham Project (a government housing initiative to relocate fisher families from areas within 50 metres of the high tide line) do not adequately account for spatial variations in vulnerability. Not everyone behind that line is safe.
WHAT’S THE NEXT MOVE?
What is our plan, then, for the people literally living in the path of some of the world’s biggest storms?
At the moment, India does not formally recognise climate migrants, and does not have a national climate resettlement policy for displaced people.
India has rightly argued, on multiple platforms, that at least part of the onus is on the Global North, as the drivers of the industrial era that has contributed most widely to the climate crisis, and as the parties that profited most from that era.
On October 14, at a session held during the ongoing pre-COP30 climate meetings in Brazil, union environment minister Bhupender Yadav said, “The global community must focus on implementing ambitious climate measures and addressing the most pressing challenge: the urgent lack of resources for developing countries to deliver adaptation and mitigation.”
There is certainly a lot we are doing right too, and more that we could be doing, says Mridula Ramesh, Wknd columnist, climate tech investor and author of The Climate Solution and Watershed.
“The world can learn from Odisha,” she adds. “If you compare what happened in earlier cyclones with the death tolls now, the state is most certainly doing a stand-up job, centered on broadcasting early warnings to the very last mile and keeping communities at the heart of responding to disasters.”
Conversely, there are areas where we can do better, Ramesh adds. “In an effort to accommodate the tremendous in-migration we’ve had to contend with, we are filling up lakes in and around major cities, to “create land” to house people and provide infrastructure. This worsens flooding, and has to stop.”
A good place to start would be data. “Every good policy starts with good data,” as Jennath of IIHS puts it.
Climate change is going to change how we live, work, dream and educate our children, adds her colleague, Chandni Singh. “Some people will end up having no choice but to move. Enabling dignified, safe migration, and planning on-site adaptation, will both be key.”
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