Paper short abstract:

This study argues for the rational climatization of human vulnerability, particularly emerging from colonial Plantationocene, exploiting the labour force with employment crisis and hunger-driven difficulties in the sub-Himalayan frontier geography of India.

Paper long abstract:

There is a growing debate on the scholarship of superfluous climate rationalization of social issues and the notion of climate change vulnerability. Decolonising the reductionist ways of interpreting climate change vulnerability, this study argues for the climatization of human vulnerability, particularly emerging from the angle of colonial Plantationocene, the establishment of tea garden colonies and forest villages, exploiting the labour force with employment crisis, and hunger-driven difficulties in the sub-Himalayan frontier geography of India. Specifically, it addresses how planned hunger erodes human resilience to climate change and leads towards vulnerability. The survey villages have roots in colonial tea and commercial timber plantations; for example, the forest and tea plantation villages were established in different parts of the sub-Himalayan Bengal by forcefully bringing labourers. The colonial rulers displaced these families from dry and semi-arid climatic sub-divisions to sub-Himalayan Bengal, a highly humid and flood-prone area. The displaced families have been struggling to adapt to new geographies. Further, the empirics show that the people’s right to work and the fundamental access to food from the tea plantation owner have been eroding through a systemic mechanism. The denial of the responsibilities by the plantation owners and the state to provide food security leads to the production of planned hunger. Therefore, the inadequacy of food in the dysfunctional tea estates and forest villages signifies the state of vulnerability, which has been aggravated by climate change. Furthermore, the intensity of climate-induced vulnerability remarkably depends on the household's position in hunger intensity along with a primary source of income and housing conditions. The environmental calamities and the growing scarcity of natural resources in forest villages in sub-Himalayan West Bengal resharing the struggle for rural livelihoods. Based on the empirical findings and historical evidence, the study argued that today's climate vulnerability is not a stand-alone problem; it is linked to the colonial past and understanding that ‘past of present vulnerability’ along with today's prevailing inequalities would help us to climatize the human vulnerability. Further, we argue and broaden the idea of climate rationalization of relevant social problems from historical, institutional economics, and geographic perspectives rather than a reductionist explanation.