Presentation short abstract

This paper traces the relationship between the spatiality of environmental pollution and the encoding of ‘proper residence’ in the south eastern Indian city of Chennai. It calls for attending to the politics of inhabitation in contesting and remaking this polluted world.

Presentation long abstract

In Dec 2023, when residents of Ennore mobilised against the poisoning of their air and water by hazardous industries, they were met with a bewildering response. Ennore was not a residential area, how could factories be held responsible poisoning where people were expected not to reside?

A predominantly fishing town woven into a rich estuarine ecosystem, Ennore is now heavily polluted by industries, power plants and ports. Now, Chennai is no stranger to watery environs, as much of the city has been unabashedly built over marshlands, canals & former irrigation tanks.

Yet, it is the north Chennai wetlands, inhabited by working classes and oppressed castes; coastal sands that are home to fishing communities; canal and river banks historically settled by workers without access to land that are marked as sites of improper inhabitation. The logics of extractive pollution and a caste-inflected social geography construct these as spaces of ‘non-residence’ and environmental vulnerability available for development and displacement.

This paper traces the particular encoding of ‘residence’ to the social difference produced along the axes of land and water. What then does it mean to dwell in this ‘already polluted’ world? The paper posits that transgressions of the code through fishing, foraging, drying, cooking from the sea and its many estuarine inlets - in Ennore and all along Chennai’s seashore – constitute acts of asserting coastal residence, including for more than human inhabitants. They present an eminent practice of not only making home but also building worlds in an ‘already climate-changed landscape’.