Disaster relief and the Indian state: Lessons for just citizenship

What does the giving and receiving of disaster relief say about a democratic state's engagement with justice and its responsibilities towards its citizens? This is the question that motivates the following paper, where an attempt is made to characterise the “relief state” through the example of the Indian state's response to the super-cyclone in 1999 in Odisha on the eastern coast of India, and more recently, the devastating floods of 2008. The paper interrogates the norms that guide the state in its relief role, as well as the strategies deployed by disaster victims to access such relief. It enquires into whether the framing of disaster relief as a moral obligation of the state and not a formal justiciable right has any bearing on the dispensation of justice by the state towards its citizens.