Baadh, Bulldozer and Bureaucracy: Institutional Failure and Climate Displacement in Delhi

Abstract 

This commentary examines the institutionalised precarity of environmental migrants in the Yamuna Khadar, where the seasonal cycle of flooding (Baadh) is compounded by the hostile interventions of the state. Drawing on field observations from Chilla Khadar and Geeta Colony, the analysis argues that the residents' crisis is defined by a double-edged governance model. While the state provides minimal resources through legal documents and subsidized rations, it simultaneously acts as an antagonist through frequent, destructive bulldozer evictions. This bureaucratic failure has created a governance vacuum, shifting the burden of survival from public welfare systems to private NGOs. The article specifically highlights the gendered dimension of this neglect, as women emerge as the primary navigators of displacement, managing household resilience and negotiating for aid amidst the wreckage of their agricultural livelihoods. Ultimately, the piece posits that the lack of a formal political remedy for internal environmental migration transforms a predictable ecological event into a permanent state of socio-economic and psychological vulnerability.

The Grim Reality of Institutional Blindness

The discourse on migration in India has historically been trapped within the binary of distress-driven economic movement caused due to various long-term factors versus aspirational urban shifts. This framework has consistently failed to account for the ecological crisis accelerating these flows. The introduction of the Climate Migrants (Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill, 2022, as a Private Member’s Bill in the Lok Sabha, serves as a critical, although overlooked, triggering event that exposes a grim reality: the Indian state possesses no formal mechanism to recognise, let alone rehabilitate, the millions displaced by environmental degradation. While the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre reported that 38.5 lakh people were internally displaced in India due to disasters in a single year, and projects suggest that over 4.5 crore people will be forced to migrate by 2050, the systemic response remains moribund.

The fundamental challenge, therefore, lies in a deep-seated institutional blindness that treats climate-induced movement as a series of transient, localised anomalies rather than a coherent structural failure. This creates a policy vacuum where the environmental migrants as a category remains invisible. This leads it to being limited to the margins of disaster management and the crosshairs of urban illegality.

The Myth of the Purely Economic Migrant

Our critical observation from pilot surveys in localities such as Shalimar Bagh revealed a profound lack of awareness with regard to the environmental roots of migration. Migrants from drought-prone regions of Maharashtra or flood-affected districts of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh consistently associated themselves with displacement driven by socio-economic conditions. Their decision to migrate towards urban agglomerations (in this case to Delhi) has always been influenced by their search for better opportunities in the metropolitan cities or the inability to earn enough in their native place.

It would be false to argue that climate change has solely been the dominant factor affecting rural-urban displacement in India. While climatic disasters such as drought and floods are very immediate and mostly unpredictable, the socio-economic factors such as unemployment are rather slow and develop gradually. Through our pilot surveys, we noticed that although the migrating population migrated for larger socio-economic reasons, the climatic disasters acted as the tip of the iceberg compelling the population to migrate elsewhere for a better livelihood. Interestingly, a better climatic condition or habitation may not even be the primary factor for the migrants to decide which place to migrate to. 

This gap is a classic case of structural obfuscation. When an extreme drought destroys a farmer’s crop or excessive rainfall renders agriculture untenable, the subsequent move to Delhi is not an aspirational choice but a direct consequence of ecological failure. This lack of institutional identification ensures that the ecological trigger is erased from the narrative, leaving the state's welfare duties unfulfilled and the migration process perceived as a short-spanned and reversible economic gamble rather than a permanent climate adaptation.

Baadh, Bulldozer, and Bureaucracy: The Cycle of Precarity

The Delhi-NCR region remains one of the most sensitive zones for attracting rural migration. However, the displacement patterns in Delhi are not always external. In the Chilla Khadar region of Delhi, we noticed a rather internal pattern of displacement where the people living in the low-lying Yamuna belt have to move to the adjoining higher terrains during the peak monsoon season, which causes Yamuna to overflow its banks. This category of movement particularly highlights displacement induced by climatic factors. The life of a climate migrant here is defined by a triad of structural violence: Baadh (Floods), Bulldozer (Eviction), and Bureaucracy (Selective Welfare).

In the Chilla Khadar region, the environmental context is a lived reality. Annual flooding or baadh forces residents to vacate their jhuggis and shift temporarily to tents under flyovers until the conditions are feasible again. The community has, however, adapted much efficiently to the problem. Upon our visit, we observed several signs of long-term adaptive responses to regular displacement every year including measures such as building local temples at a much higher height with stone idols to survive the water.

Paradoxically, the role of the state here is viewed by the community as a greater threat than the flood itself. While the Baadh is seasonal, the Bulldozer reflecting state persecution is persistent. Residents in Chilla Khadar reported monthly harassment by eviction drives that destroy shelters and livelihoods. This active persecution marks these displaced people as encroachers, stripping them of the protections which were supposedly guaranteed under the Constitution. Moreover, the community—which itself is fragmented based on ethnicity and caste—is always under the threat of being viewed by the state and local population as external migrants.

The role of the bureaucracy, therefore, is a double-edged sword. Upon conversing with the community and a local head with political contacts, we observed that while some migrants possess AADHAR and Ration Cards, these tools of social protection are often insufficient during acute distress. Even after possessing proof of their legal residence in Delhi, the government has failed to act on public rehabilitation measures. This failure has created an ‘NGO vacuum,’ where the community, housing over 200 people, must rely on private actors for food and ration distribution. This evidently highlights the state's abdication of its role as a primary provider.

Looking from a Gendered Lens

While to the layman eye, the crisis of environmental migration may seemingly be androgynous and more resource concerned, it actually is deeply gendered. While men are often absent from the site seeking alternative daily wage labor (mazdoori) after environmental shocks, women are left to manage the immediate fallout of displacement, thus in the settlements of Chilla Khadar, women are not passive victims; they are the primary agents of household survival, yet institutional responses remain gender-blind.

Women act as the primary interlocutors with researchers and aid agencies, exercising a sociological agency to secure resources for their families, and influence policy makers or commentators to the best of their ability. 

However, this very agency comes at a high cost. Upon our visit, we explicitly noted that women bore a disproportionate share of the household and caregiving responsibilities, though that is something present in their well settled contemporaries as well. This workload increased significantly due to the climate induced displacement with occasional disruptions from aforementioned sociological and political commentators and actors. Like any commonly cited situation of abrupt displacement, poor conditions around the demography concerned are present. The lack of safe, sanitary provisions in temporary shelters under flyovers exposes women and children to severe safety risks, including vehicle accidents and gender-based vulnerabilities. The interruption of education for children, particularly girls who attend schools irregularly due to unstable living conditions, ensures that the precarity of the climate migrant becomes intergenerational and temporally extended.

Institutional Rupture and the Legislative Void

The failure to acknowledge climate migration stems from a deeper institutional and legislative void in India. In 2022, Lok Sabha MP Pradyut Bordoloi introduced the The Climate Migrants (Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill, which proposed a comprehensive framework including a National Climate Migration Authority and an initial Climate Migration Fund of ₹1,000 crore. It specifically aimed to address slow-onset climate change events—such as desertification, sea-level rise, and riverine erosion, which are currently excluded from national disaster policies. Despite these detailed provisions for monitoring, adaptation, and resettlement, the Bill’s failure to pass reflects a broader political unwillingness to engage with the long-term quagmire of environmental displacement.

The Private Member’s Bills, as has been a larger convention, are usually only limited to discussion and rarely ever get passed in the House. And so has been the case with this bill. While the bill managed to get sufficient traction and discourse on climate migration, the larger purpose to integrate climate induced migration into existing legislative frameworks remain unachieved.

Current legislation remains focused on immediate relief at the disaster site, while the rehabilitation or support at destinations remains an unaddressed concern. This institutional rupture leaves millions of internal migrants without legal standing or specialised protection. The estimated recurring expenditure of ₹3,000 crore per annum for the Bill's implementation underscores the scale of the crisis, yet the state machinery continues to prioritise standardising urban identities through evictions rather than integrating these vulnerable populations into a rights-based welfare framework.

Conclusion

The findings from Chilla Khadar and Shalimar Bagh re-affirm that environmental hazards are already a primary and recurring driver of displacement. The challenge for the Indian state is to move beyond the current moribund approach of eviction and toward a comprehensive, nationally integrated strategy that acknowledges the ecological triggers of migration as a matter of urgent institutional reform. Only by recognising the invisible exodus can the state fulfill its constitutional duty to treat all persons with equality, fairness, and due process.

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About Authors

By Lavisha Bajaj, Rishi Raj Sharma and Vaibhav Kumar Mallawat

Lavisha is a second-year student of Political Science, at Hindu College with a keen interest in public policy. She has engaged with issues at the intersection of climate and policy, and contemporary political and social affairs.

Rishi Sharma is a second-year undergraduate majoring in Political Science at Hindu College. His interest lies in policy, research and understanding how governance interacts with grassroot politics.

Vaibhav Mallawat is a third-year undergraduate of Political Science & Sanskrit at Hindu College, University of Delhi.