How climate, caste, digital divide are deepening north Chennai's inequality
In the charred remains of what was once his home in Udhayasuriyan Nagar, Vyasarpadi, a student sits cross-legged on blackened ground, hunched over a broken mobile phone. The screen flickers as he watches an educational video in Tamil on YouTube, his fingers leaving smudges on the cracked glass. Around him, the air still carries the suffocating smell of coal and ash, two months after the fire in May that reduced 24 houses to ruins. The device in his hands is more than a phone. It is his portal to knowledge, a necessity in today's era of schooling. But for one of his neighbours, even this fragile lifeline was consumed by the flames. Our phones got burnt. Without OTPs, we couldn't even access basic services, couldn't talk to officials or get school-related updates, recalls Ramarajan, a father of two whose children's education ground to a halt for almost a week after the fire. In the days that followed, as volunteers from Vyasai Thozhargal distributed food and documented losses, the absence of devices emerged as an invisible crisis within the visible catastrophe. The student's broken phone and Ramarajan's burnt device point to a larger pattern of erasure. In working-class Vyasarpadi home predominantly to the lowered caste disasters often repeat. Fire gives way to water, water to the next monsoon, each catastrophe wiping clean not only homes but the digital threads that now determine whether a child can attend school, whether a family can prove its existence to the state, whether survival itself is possible in a system that demands constant electronic proof of citizenship. Designed disasters? Historically, the highlands were occupied by wealthier, upper-caste people, even during the colonial city's expansion, explains Nityanand Jayaraman, a social activist. Marginalised communities live on the margins of the city, the rivers, the wetlands, the sea because no other land was available to them. When well-to-do people build on slightly lower land, they also elevate it. They create an island for themselves and push water to other places, Nityanand says. Vyasarpadi sits just 7-8 metres above sea level, trapped between the Buckingham Canal, Otteri canal, and Captain Cotton Canal. But the flooding isn't a natural disaster it's structured neglect. Sarath Kumar, a first-generation learner and advocate with Vyasai Thozhargal, puts it plainly, In Chennai, the village and colony are separate. North Chennai itself is like a 'colony' an unannounced, unacknowledged area where people from lowered communities live. This segregation exists. Future Amidst Flooding, a report released in November 2025 by the Youth Climate Resilience Movement, Vyasai Thozhargal, and the Chennai Climate Action Group notes that 68.9% of the area's population belongs to Scheduled Caste communities, the highest proportion in Chennai. When floods enter a poor person's house, the damage is completely different from flood water entering mine, adds Nityanand. Even if the monetary value of damage in my house is more, I can replace things, I have insurance. But for the poor, their motorcycle, their autorickshaw, their phone, everything needed for daily survival, gets damaged. In homes where the median monthly income sits at 12,000 roughly 3,000 per person a replacement smartphone is an added wreckage. Nityanand explains. Devices get lost, and replacing them becomes almost impossible. For breadwinners, phones are essential painters and carpenters run their business through their phones. Even a basic mobile phone costs 1,0502,000. Without it, they don't get daily bread. For Sarath, this panic has become a ritual. When floodwaters threaten, he has learnt to move with practiced urgency ferrying personal computers and phones to higher ground, sealing devices in plastic bags, stacking them in relief camps above the waterline. But even those who successfully rescue their devices face another trap. Future Amidst Flooding, notes that nearly a quarter of residents 23.3% lost critical documents to the floodwaters from the past few years: Aadhaar cards, ration cards, and certificates. In an increasingly digital bureaucracy that demands these documents to access relief schemes, their absence becomes its own disaster. The report even points how nearly every single resident surveyed 99.2% has watched floodwaters invade their homes, rising to an average of 3.4 feet inside. The disconnect The state's answer to this manufactured crisis has been digital disaster management apps, online helplines, SMS alerts. While officials tout modern warning systems, 68.3% of Vyasarpadi residents depend entirely on television for flood alerts a lifeline that snaps the moment power cuts begin, outages that residents report last up to 15 days. Only 2.5% receive SMS alerts. A mere 0.8% get information through social media. The digital emergency infrastructure might as well not exist: not a single person surveyed knew the Greater Chennai Corporation's emergency helpline number (1913). Zero residents could name the sewer overflow contact. Zero knew where community kitchens operated during floods revealing a dangerous irony: the government has built a digital safety net that the people it's meant to protect cannot reach. As researchers Dr Vishvaja Sambath and Prasanth J, along with young researchers from the community note in the report, this represents a severe breakdown in the communication chain. The most vulnerable are disconnected precisely when connection means survival The testimonies paint a picture of complete institutional abandonment. No one from the government came to check on us, and we survived five days without proper food, one woman told researchers. The nearby community hall, which could have been used as a shelter, was locked. It was only the local youngsters who broke the lock and opened it for us to stay. The myth of the digital native The assumption is that underlying schemes like Tamil Nadus laptop distribution programme which ran from 2011 to 2018 before being discontinued enables digital competence. It doesnt. The unavailability of strong Wi-Fi, data back-up, and access to digital skills are to be taken into account. Virgil D Sami, executive director of Arunodhaya, who has worked with marginalised communities since 2015, saw the same transformation. The laptop scheme was very helpful. When it stopped in 2018, it affected many children. I've seen students bring laptops for projects and learn to use them. Otherwise they have no access. But she quickly adds, But it must be supported by proper internet connectivity and awareness on how to use it. For first-generation learners, the convergence of climate disaster, digital divide, and institutional neglect creates what Sarath, a first generation learner, calls a rap. Career guidance is not available. They don't know what they want, what job they should go into, or how they can achieve their aim, he explains. Second, a very major one is the financial problem. Even if they go to college, they aren't aware of the realities. Suddenly, the atmosphere is new, it's challenging, and they can't adapt. By the time college finishes, being first-generation graduates, they are already tied to household responsibilities. For women particularly, the family situation is such that the father says, 'If you go to work, only then the family runs.' So even if they decide to pursue further, their aim gets blocked. That caveat points to the deeper problem. Joy, founder of the Ambedkar Reading Circle in Chennai, echoes this reality: Many young people don't know about opportunities. They don't know how to apply for scholarships. They don't have CVs, not even email IDs. Sometimes, I would sit with them and create email IDs, prepare their CVs. Digital literacy itself is a big gap. Joy himself faced this isolation and confesses to having no direction after college. I did not know about IIT or NIT. Virgil sees this pattern repeatedly, Children in government schools in underprivileged areas lack awareness of what is happening outside. They don't know career opportunities or how to apply to colleges. They go to e-service centres or internet cafs where they often get wrong guidance. Applications get rejected. She also describes how digital exposure arrived suddenly during COVID, without the infrastructure to support it properly, Digital exposure really came during COVID, when classes were online. Many children had no access to mobiles because of economic reasons and also gender. If there was one mobile at home, it was given to the boys. Girls told us they wouldn't get it even if the boy was younger and not using it for studies. Most live in one-room houses. Parents watch TV and tell the girls to go outside and study with the mobile. Nityanand advocates for a fundamental shift. What needs to be emphasised is inequality structural casteism. Any policy must address that. He connects this to broader systemic discrimination, The state cannot be discriminatory. It discriminates by not repairing, not investing, and not ensuring the safety of north Chennai the way it pays attention to places like Gopalapuram and RA Puram. Why have the backwaters in Ennore, polluted since the 1980s, not been cleaned up? But in Adyar, around MRC Nagar, things are cleaned and beautified the moment FSI is relaxed. The solutions require recognising community knowledge. We invite IIT to study flooding in Vyasarpadi, but when floods happen, local people know exactly what is blocking drainage. They go, use crowbars, break open a hole, and let the water out. Why is that knowledge not being used? Nityanand asks. What must change The 2015 floods left deep scars. Cyclone Michaung in 2023 created fresh wounds. Each disaster resets the clock, pushing students weeks or months behind, destroying devices that took months of savings to acquire, severing connections to scholarship deadlines and exam preparations that won't wait for flood waters to recede. The Future Amidst Flooding report offers concrete, community-led demands: early warning systems co-designed with residents using mobile alerts and loudspeakers; immediate clearing of fly ash choking the canals; economic safety nets with community-led price monitoring during disasters; documentation assistance centres for rapid replacement of lost identification cards; and crucially, letting community members who know which elderly residents need medicine, which pregnant women need urgent care help run relief operations. To bridge the gap of digital divide, on the other hand, Sarath envisions basic infrastructure, We need integrated learning spaces, like a library with digital access and equipment, a combined workspace. We need many such small, mini-formal centres in various places. There's no facility like free Wi-Fi in places like bus stands here. Virgil's demands are similarly grounded. She says, Schools should have access to digital technology computers, internet connectivity and teachers should be trained. Children must be given knowledge on how to use technology in a positive and productive way. Career guidance programmes should be effectively implemented. Schools in south Chennai are much better than those in the north. That kind of discrimination still exists. All schools should have equal access to infrastructure, quality education, qualified teachers, and proper teacherstudent ratios. Joy's vision is clear, I strongly feel that in another one or two generations, there should not be first-generation learners at all. This 'first-generation learners' category must end soon. We need to ensure education, employment, health, all of this, reaches everyone. Sarath's words provide hope. The village and the colony must become one. Only then can we say caste is gone. Caste must end. That is very important. Every aspect will then automatically change. Note: CE reached out to multiple government officials for a comment but did not recieve responses at the time of publishing. This story will be updated if and when they respond.
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