Category: Analysis

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Teresa Garrido-Tamayo, Visiting Researcher in Speech and Language Sciences, Newcastle University

Six-year-old Antoni, born in the UK to Polish parents, speaks only a few English words in class and often looks confused when the teacher gives instructions. He could simply be adjusting to English – or the problem could be developmental language disorder (DLD), a condition that severely impairs a child’s ability to learn, use and understand spoken language.

Such challenges are increasingly common for parents and teachers. In England, for example, around 21% of schoolchildren are growing up with a first language other than English. While most children’s language development – whether monolingual or multilingual – is typical, the average classroom includes two DLD-affected children. DLD’s prevalence, roughly 8%, is similar worldwide, from China to Mexico.

Even so, DLD remains under-recognised and under-served – especially compared to other developmental conditions, such as dyslexia, autism or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Identifying DLD in multilingual children can be difficult. Each language a child learns develops at its own pace, depending on factors such as how often they hear and use it. For example, multilingual children may temporarily lag behind their monolingual peers in vocabulary in one language, but this should not be mistaken for DLD.

Children with DLD show problems across all their languages and need specialist help. In contrast, those with typically developing language only struggle in the language they need more exposure to, like English at school.

Learning two or more languages promotes linguistic, social and cognitive strengths in all children. Contrary to longstanding myths that multilingualism harms language development, learning multiple languages does not cause or exacerbate DLD. Support for DLD should sustain all of a child’s languages, as these are critical for wellbeing, identity and family relationships.

The impact of DLD is lifelong and extends far beyond language. It has consequences for mental health, socialisation, literacy, academic performance, and quality of life. Accurate, timely diagnosis and support are essential, not just for individual life chances, but also for society. Adults with DLD are more likely to have difficulty getting a job and have a criminal record.

Addressing DLD

These are key signs that a multilingual child may be at risk for DLD, suggesting an approach to a speech and language therapist. These if they:

1. are slower to say first words, or put words together, than siblings

2. struggle to understand what others say or follow instructions

3. have trouble expressing thoughts or telling stories

4. rely excessively on gestures (like pointing) to communicate instead of words

5. are slower to learn English in school than peers with similar age, cultural and linguistic backgrounds

6. struggle to interact with children who speak the same languages.

Following referral, speech and language therapists gather information from parents, teachers, tests and other sources, aiming to understand the child’s abilities in all their languages.

In linguistically diverse countries, there are still considerable obstacles, however. UK-based speech and language therapists, for example, still lack reliable tools to equally assess English and the children’s additional languages. With few speech and language therapists having multilingual proficiency, and a shortage of appropriately trained interpreters, DLD can be missed – or typical multilingual development mislabelled as disordered – thus delaying or misdirecting support.

Progress is being made, with promising new tools like the UK bilingual toddlers assessment tool and the language impairment testing in multilingual settings battery. The former uses two-year-olds’ vocabulary in British English and their other language, alongside their exposure to each language, to determine whether their language development may be at risk.

Similarly, the Litmus battery includes tools for assessing the language skills of multilingual children from a range of ages and language backgrounds, such as phonological memory and storytelling.

More recently, our team is developing a dynamic assessment resource at Newcastle University that uses enjoyable activities to detect DLD. It explores multilingual children’s learning potential – not just their existing skills – in language and communication areas affected by the condition, such as telling stories or recognising emotions in people’s voices.

Detecting DLD is the first step. Support from family, schools and speech and language therapists can then transform a multilingual child’s life outcomes, helping them grow up healthier and happier.

Teresa Garrido-Tamayo received PhD funding from the Economic and Social Research Council via the Northern Ireland and North East Doctoral Training Partnership from 1st October 2019 to 31st May 2023.

Laurence White received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council from 1st August 2013 to 31st July 2016 (ES/K010123/1 – “Lexical Development in Bilingual Toddlers” – Principal Investigator, Caroline Floccia, University of Plymouth).

Carolyn Letts does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Developmental language disorder can have life-long effects – and it’s easily missed in multilingual children – https://theconversation.com/developmental-language-disorder-can-have-life-long-effects-and-its-easily-missed-in-multilingual-children-263059

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Emrah Atasoy, Associate Fellow of English and Comparative Literary Studies & Honorary Research Fellow of IAS, the University of Warwick and Upcoming IASH Postdoctoral Research Fellow, the University of Edinburgh, University of Warwick

There’s nothing new about calling George Orwell’s most influential novel prescient. But the focus has usually been on his portrayal of the oppressive aspects of life in Oceania, the superstate in which Nineteen Eighty-Four is set.

Today, however, a different feature – which as recently as 2019, some critics dismissed as “obsolete” – is getting more attention: its vision of a world divided into three spheres, controlled by autocratic governments that constantly form and then break alliances.

In 2022, Vladimir Putin initiated Russia’s full-on invasion of Ukraine. This year began with the US mounting a raid on Venezuela and snatching its president, while Donald Trump speculated about US actions against various other countries in Latin America and Greenland. Meanwhile, Xi Jinping regularly repeats China’s intention to “reunify” with Taiwan – by force if necessary.

“Orwell-as-prophet” commentators began showing more interest in the superstate idea early in the decade, often leading with references to Putin’s imperial ambitions. This trend became more pronounced when Trump’s second term began.

Last year, American historian Alfred McCoy led with a tripolar reference in his Foreign Policy essay: “Is 2025 the New 1984?” A Bloomberg report on the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska last August was headlined: “It Looks Like a Trump-Putin-Xi World, But It’s Really Orwell’s”. The article described Nineteen Eighty-Four’s fictional model of global affairs as “prophetic”.

Many observers now see Big Brother-like leaders wielding power in Washington, as well as in Moscow and Beijing. In her first essay of 2026, Anne Applebaum wrote in The Atlantic that: “Orwell’s world is fiction, but some want it to become reality.”

The American journalist and historian noted a dangerous desire of some for “an Asia dominated by China, a Europe dominated by Russia, and a Western Hemisphere dominated by the United States”. Social media is awash with comments and maps in the same vein.

Orwell’s influences

Analysts have claimed that elements of Orwell’s portrayal of politics inside Oceania paralleled various parts of dystopian novels written before Nineteen Eighty-Four. They cite, in particular, the potential influence of Jack London’s The Iron Heel (1908) and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) – works Orwell discussed in a 1940 essay.

Then there’s Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel We (1921), which Orwell wrote about in 1946, and Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon (1940), which he wrote about in 1941. Both inspired him with their criticism of the real Soviet Union.

Could these or other utopian and dystopian texts – such as Ayn Rand’s Anthem (1938), Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here (1935), and Noël Coward’s play Peace in Our Time (1946) – have given him ideas about future geopolitics?

In fact, most of the works mentioned downplay or ignore international issues. Koestler focuses on one unnamed totalitarian country, Zamyatin and Huxley on a single world-state, London and Lewis on an America transformed by a domestic tyrannical movement, and Coward a Britain conquered by Hitler.

Two other novels provide partial precedents. The first is The War in the Air (1908) by H.G. Wells, an author Orwell read throughout his life. It has a tripolar side, depicting a war between Germany, the US and Britain, and a Chinese and Japanese force. The second is Swastika Night by Katharine Burdekin (writing as Murray Constantine).

Orwell never referred to Swastika Night in any publication, and his most prominent biographer, D.J. Taylor, has claimed there is no definitive evidence that he read it. However, as it was a Left Book Club selection and he was a Left Book Club author, Orwell would at least have known about it. The novel describes a world divided into two rival camps, not three, but portrays allies becoming rivals. The competing superstates are Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, who were on the same side when the book was written.

In his own words

The most satisfying place to look for inspiration for Nineteen Eighty-Four’s geopolitical vision, though, is in Orwell’s own experiences and non-fiction reading. Before the 1940s, Orwell spent a lot of time learning and writing critically about three oppressive systems: capitalism, fascism and Soviet communism.

In terms of capitalism, working as a colonial police officer in Burma in the 1920s left him disgusted with what he called the “dirty work of empire”. Living in England later led him to write works on class injustices such as The Road to Wigan Pier (1937).

In terms of fascism, he wrote scathingly about Hitler and Franco. Orwell was also appalled by accounts of repression under Stalin. His time fighting in Spain reinforced his dark view of Moscow and he saw erstwhile allies become arch-enemies as the anti-Franco coalition broke down, and the Soviets began treating groups that had been part of it as villains.

Second world war news stories had an impact as well. In 1939 and 1941 respectively, newspapers were full of reports of Moscow and Berlin signing a non-aggression pact, and then of Moscow switching sides to join the Allies.

And in a 1945 essay, Orwell mocked news of many people on the left embracing the fervently anti-Communist Chinese Nationalist Party leader, Chiang Kai-shek, once he was with the Allies – seemingly having forgetten their earlier disdain for Chiang’s brutal effort to exterminate the Chinese Communist Party.

But perhaps the most notable 1940s news story of all relating to Nineteen Eighty-Four’s geopolitics has been flagged by Taylor as one that broke in 1943. He notes that Orwell sometimes claimed a key inspiration for his final novel were the reports of Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill talking at the 1943 Tehran conference about carving up the post-war world into three spheres.

Nineteen Eighty-Four has had extraordinary longevity as a go-to text for political commentary. There are many explanations for its staying power, but right now a key feature of it may be its relevance to thinking about both repression of dissent and Newspeak-style propaganda in many individual countries – and the unsettling geopolitical tensions in the world at large.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four predicted the global power shifts happening now – https://theconversation.com/how-george-orwells-nineteen-eighty-four-predicted-the-global-power-shifts-happening-now-273122

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gregory Frame, Teaching Associate in Media and Cultural Studies, University of Nottingham

Donald Trump’s victory in November 2024 led to considerable soul-searching among those on the left of US politics. Having failed to defeat a convicted criminal they beat once before, the Democrats spent most of 2025 licking their wounds as Trump launched what they saw as a full-frontal assault on US democracy.

This new year has begun with fresh outrages at home and abroad, with the administration acting with increasingly horrifying impunity.

Coupled with the continued rise of rightwing populism and authoritarianism the world over, Trump 2.0 has felt like an existential crisis for the left.

The country has been here before. Leftwing protest movements in the 1960s in the US contributed to great legislative change – particularly in the area of civil rights – but they were often caricatured as unpatriotic, particularly in relation to the war in Vietnam. The feeling that the country was coming apart at the hands of young, violent radicals led the conservative “silent majority” to deliver Richard Nixon’s 1968 election victory.

Since then, mainstream leftwing politics in the US has recoiled from the idealism of the 1960s and instead offered change mostly in small increments. But this has arguably not proven a particularly successful strategy either over the past half century or more.

In the context of yet another defeat and the latest round of introspection, it seems appropriate, then, that two films concerned with the failures of leftwing revolutionary politics of the 1960s and 1970s should emerge almost simultaneously with Trump’s resurgence.

Exploring leftwing activism

Though very different in style and tone, Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another (2025) and Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind (2025) both critique what they see as the strategic inadequacy and self-indulgence of leftwing activism, as well as explore its personal cost.

One Battle After Another sees former revolutionary Pat Calhoun, aka “Bob” (Leonardo Di Caprio) trying to rescue his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) from the clutches of a psychopathic white supremacist colonel, Lockjaw (Sean Penn). Though Bob had in a previous life resisted the federal government’s cruel, racist immigration policies through a series of daring raids on detention centres, fatherhood and excessive cannabis use have dulled his revolutionary edge.

Instead, Bob is now a somewhat incompetent buffoon. The film mines, for comedic purposes, his shambolic attempts to communicate with the “French 75” – the revolutionary army of which he was once part, modelled on real-life revolutionary groups of the 1960s and 1970s like the Weathermen.

Stumbling around in his bathrobe, he has forgotten all the codes and conventions necessary to navigate this world. From passwords to pronouns, Bob is out of step with the times.

However, the film finds room to poke fun at the sanctimony of the left too. As Bob grows increasingly aggressive when unable to secure information regarding a crucial rendezvous point, the thin-skinned radical to whom he is speaking on the phone informs him that the language Bob is using is having a detrimental impact on his wellbeing. If Bob lacks the competence to support the revolution, the people in charge of it are too fragile to achieve one either.

By contrast, The Mastermind follows J.B. Mooney (Josh O’Connor) in his attempts to evade the clutches of the authorities after he orchestrates the theft of four artworks from a suburban museum. Husband, father, and the son of a judge, Mooney is privileged, directionless, disorganised, selfish and, it seems, oblivious to the impact of the war in Vietnam as conflict rages all around him.

His disorganisation is obvious from the moment he realises his children’s school is closed for teacher training on the day of the heist. His privilege is clear when all he has to do is mention his father’s name when first questioned by police to get them off his back.

Even his attempts to convince his wife, Terri (Alana Haim), that he did this for her and their kids is inadequate, as he stumbles into admitting he also did it for himself.

While on the run from the authorities, Mooney appears ignorant of what is really going on around him, from the young Black men who discuss their imminent deployment to Vietnam, to the news broadcast of the realities of the war. Without spoiling anything, Mooney is, in the end, unable to avoid the effects of Vietnam on US society altogether.

Telling moments in both films also suggest the wavering commitment to revolution among its former acolytes. In The Mastermind, Mooney hides out at the home of Fred (John Magaro) and Maude (Gaby Hoffmann), a couple with whom he attended art college.

Despite her activist past, Maude refuses to let him stay for longer than one night for fear of unwanted attention from the authorities. In One Battle After Another, Bob’s willingness to take risks with his safety and freedom declines when he becomes a parent, and he is – rather problematically – quick to judge Willa’s mother, Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), for continuing to do so.

Political cinema of the 1970s

Both films can’t help but recall the similarly political work produced in US cinema in the late 1960s and early 1970s, such as Five Easy Pieces (1970), Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) and Chinatown (1974). In the midst of the Nixon-era backlash to the radicalism of the 1960s, these films have a tone of defeatist resignation, featuring directionless protagonists and unhappy endings.

The Mastermind’s conclusion is comparable to these earlier examples: its conclusion sees the police at a Vietnam protest, patting each other on the back, having rounded up another bunch of protesters and sent them to the can.

Though One Battle After Another is considerably more effervescent in its style, it too sees leftwing revolutionary politics as something of a dead end. Smaller scale victories are possible, with Sergio (Benicio Del Toro) continuing to fight the good fight for undocumented immigrants, and Willa running off to join a Black Lives Matter protest at the film’s end.

But watching both films from the perspective of a new year in which the Trump administration threatens violent upheaval at home and abroad, I think of Captain America’s (Peter Fonda) mournful lament towards the end of counterculture classic Easy Rider (1969): “We blew it.”

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Gregory Frame does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How two acclaimed US films reveal the failures of leftwing revolutionary politics – https://theconversation.com/how-two-acclaimed-us-films-reveal-the-failures-of-leftwing-revolutionary-politics-270729

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Wouter Poortinga, Professor of Environmental Psychology, Cardiff University

Cities across the UK are investing in new cycle lanes and traffic restrictions to cut congestion, improve air quality and promote active travel for better health. Yet, if recent debates are anything to go by, you might think such measures were deeply unpopular.

The introduction of protected cycle lanes and low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) often sparks vocal opposition from local groups, who call for schemes to be delayed or scrapped.

For instance, in London, Kensington and Chelsea council removed cycle lanes from Kensington High Street after a short-term trial in 2020. Meanwhile, in Oxford, there have been calls to reopen residential streets to again allow through traffic during emergencies. Concerns often focus on cycle lanes taking up valuable road space and on LTNs displacing motor traffic onto surrounding boundary roads.

These discussions may give the impression that the public is firmly against cycling initiatives and traffic restrictions. However, our research suggests that strong support for them can be found, but how schemes are designed and introduced is crucial.

Our recent study, which analysed more than 36,000 UK-based tweets about cycle lanes and LTNs between 2018 and 2022, found that most social media posts were positive. There were 10,465 negative, 14,370 positive, and 12,142 neutral tweets.

Sentiment about the measures did shift over time, with a spike in negative reactions in the summer of 2020 when the government announced the emergency active travel fund, a scheme that provided rapid funding to local authorities to deliver walking and cycling infrastructure to support social distancing during the COVID pandemic. However, overall, positive tweets outnumbered negative ones.

The analysis also showed that criticism focused less on the principle of cycling itself and more on the design and implementation of measures. Complaints about poor quality cycle lanes or lack of consultation were far more common than outright rejection of active travel, and were made by both cyclists and drivers.

Our other recent research tells a similar story. We showed more than 500 people images of different street layouts and asked them to choose their most and least preferred elements. The designs varied in how they combined cycle lanes, traffic restrictions, and parking, with different amounts of space reallocated from roads or pavements.

The results were clear. Segregated cycle lanes – those physically separated from cars – were popular with both regular cyclists and regular drivers. Painted lanes on the road were far less liked, while the option of having no cycle lanes at all was the least popular with both groups.

Where the space came from also mattered. People strongly preferred schemes that took cycling space from the road rather than from pathways. But there was one consistent red line: parking. Even participants who identified as regular cyclists were reluctant to support layouts that involved removing car-parking spaces.

This suggests that resistance is less about cycling infrastructure itself and more about specific design trade-offs. Taking a modest amount of road space is widely accepted but removing parking risks triggering backlash.

Why do some people oppose cycle lanes and traffic restrictions so strongly? Part of the answer lies in identity. Our study found that those who strongly identified as “drivers” were more hesitant about giving up road space to cyclists, while self-identified “cyclists” were more supportive.

But the biggest divide was not between cyclists and drivers. Both groups often preferred the same measures. The strongest opposition came instead from a small group who see new cycling infrastructure as an infringement on their “freedom” to travel the way they want. This group consistently preferred the status quo over all options that would reallocate space to cyclists or restrict vehicle access.

This way of thinking may be rooted in what researchers call motonormativity, a deep-seated assumption that roads exist primarily for cars and that drivers’ needs should come first. Within this context, giving space to cyclists is seen as taking something away from motorists, not expanding people’s freedom to travel as they choose.

Our social media study sheds further light on the themes that shape public debate. Positive posts often focused on community benefits and safer streets. Negative conversations, by contrast, were dominated by concerns about how schemes were put in place. Tweets frequently criticised councils for poor consultation, accused politicians of ignoring local voices, or pointed to schemes being rolled out in confusing or inconsistent ways.

This matters because it shows that frustration is often directed less at cycle lanes or traffic restrictions themselves than at how they are introduced. In other words, there may be opposition not because people reject the idea of safer streets, but because they feel decisions are imposed on them or poorly managed. This underlines the importance of early and meaningful engagement if new infrastructure is to win lasting support.

So what are the key lessons of this research? First, visible opposition is not the whole story. Protests and headlines may give the impression that cycle lanes are deeply unpopular, but most people – including both drivers and cyclists – support new infrastructure and even traffic restrictions, as long as they are well designed and involve only modest changes. Parking is a sensitive point, but overall support for change is broader than the noise suggests.

Second, the strongest opposition comes from those who see new cycle lanes and restrictions as an attack on their freedom to drive. This group is relatively small but may be among the most vocal. Their concerns need to be acknowledged, but also reframed in light of the reality that limited road space must serve everyone: drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians alike.

Finally, it is not just about what gets built, but also how it is introduced. Much of the online debate considered in our social media study focused not on the principle of cycle lanes or low-traffic neighbourhoods, but on whether local people felt they had been consulted properly. Listening to communities can make the difference between a scheme being welcomed as a local improvement or rejected as a top-down imposition. This should involve everyone and not just the loudest.

Wouter Poortinga receives funding from ESRC, NERC, EPSRC, Welsh Government, and European Commission.

Dr. Dimitrios Xenias receives funding from ESRC, UKERC, and the European Commission.

Dimitris Potoglou receives funding from EPSRC and the European Commission.

– ref. Why do people support or oppose bike lanes? Our research sheds light on public opinion – https://theconversation.com/why-do-people-support-or-oppose-bike-lanes-our-research-sheds-light-on-public-opinion-271455

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ipshita Basu, Associate professor (Reader) in Global Development and Politics, University of Westminster

In the early hours of July 30 2024, a landslide in the Wayanad district of Kerala state, India, killed 400 people. The Punjirimattom, Mundakkai, Vellarimala and Chooralmala villages in the Western Ghats mountain range turned into a dystopian rubble of uprooted trees and debris.

A coalition of scientists that quantifies the links between climate change and extreme weather, known as World Weather Attribution, highlighted that human-induced climate change caused 10% more rainfall than usual in this area, contributing to the landslide.

Known for its welfare achievements such as universal literacy, public health and education, Kerala’s disaster management involved a swift relief response and the announcement of rehabilitation measures. But our research into the consequences of long-term environmental change reveals the crevices in this state-citizen relationship.

The Kerala government’s response to the landslide has focused on two townships – one in Kalpetta and the other in Nedumbala – that are promised to be of high-quality construction, with facilities characteristic of upmarket, private housing projects. Of the total 430 beneficiary families, each will be given a 93m² concrete house in a seven-cent plot (a cent is a hundredth of an acre). There will be marketplaces, playgrounds and community centres at both sites.

An AI-generated video of the Kalpetta township promised a glittering new life for its residents. Construction of the two sites was entrusted to the Uralungal Labour Contract Cooperative Society, a labour union known for building quality infrastructure, to raise credibility.

A man we spoke to as part of our ongoing research in Vellarimala was happy about the money he will make from rising property prices once his household receives a new home. “It is a great deal,” he told us. “We get seven cents of land and a new house. We estimate the property [will] hit a value of 10 million rupees (£85,600) in a few years. Also, since the government provided the house, we just have to protest if there is a complaint.”

We also spoke to two citizen groups that mobilised victims after the landslide, enabling settlers – who came to the area as plantation labourers during colonial rule in the 20th century – to voice their grief, loss and trauma. This highlighted their history of migration from the plains of Kerala. Although they sought optional cash compensation initially, they have largely accepted being given a new home in the township, drawn by its future value.

But while township development seems to be an apt response, Kerala will struggle to cope with recurring cycles of disasters and disaster management without addressing the factors that trigger or amplify these calamities.

The townships are being built on 115 hectares of two tea plantations that have been bought by the Kerala government. With roots in British colonial rule, plantations represent a significant alteration of Wayanad’s ecology. The landslide’s route was full of tea plantations and most affected families were non-Indigenous plantation workers.

Tourism is also booming here, with hundreds of resorts, homestays and hotels, and a glass bridge that welcomes tourists to visit the forests and plantations of Vellarimala.

Less than three miles away, a landslide in 2019 in Puthumala killed 17 people. Although it was a warning, construction of buildings has continued unchecked. A tunnel that connects Wayanad with the plains of Kerala has been proposed, despite a state government committee report highlighting it would pass through areas that are at a moderate-to-high risk of landslides.

Differing values

Resettlement plans that focus on glitzy townships can fail to consider the most marginalised people, especially in societies like India that are marked by social hierarchies. A couple of Indigenous families, referred to as Adivasis in India, were initially offered space in the township. They refused it, citing their separation from the means of livelihood and cultural resources that the nearby forests provide.

For a long time, they have resisted efforts to relocate them from the forests – first in the name of animal conservation, and now because of the threat of climate disasters. This is despite the efforts of the government’s forest department to portray the shifting of these families as a heroic rescue effort.

Two versions of the value attached to land are clashing here. Settlers see land as a commodity, so prize the two townships announced in Wayanad for their increasing land value. But Indigenous families hold deep cultural ties with the lands they are being asked to leave behind.

This is not just a romanticised connection with nature. Indigenous families will have to forgo hard-won forest rights. Leaving means losing access to honey, resins and medicinal plants that they trade for cash when food from the forests is insufficient.

Disasters like the Wayanad landslide expose the faultlines in both crisis management and state-citizen relationships. How a disaster is handled shows the state believes people can be easily moved from one site to another, while extraction and capitalist accumulation must continue.

Disasters also reveal whose loss is valued by the state and whose is not. While settlers’ losses were compensated through townships that hold the possibility of rising property value, Indigenous citizens’ loss of deeper ties with the land and forests remains unaddressed.

We believe this calls for an urgent rethink. Disaster responses demand more than relocation of people from one vulnerable site to another, perpetuating an endless series of calamities and reconstruction. It demands a fundamental change in the model of development.

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Ipshita Basu receives funding from the British Academy Knowledge Frontiers: International Interdisciplinary grant for the project Planetary Health and Relational Wellbeing: Investigating Ecological and Health Dimensions of Adivasi Lifeworlds.

Mary K. Lydia, Reshma K.R., Anusha Joshy and Manikandan C. have provided inputs for the research.

Sudheesh R.C. receives funding from the British Academy Knowledge Frontiers: International Interdisciplinary grant for the project Planetary Health and Relational Wellbeing: Investigating Ecological and Health Dimensions of Adivasi Lifeworlds.

– ref. Indian townships are rebuilding after landslides – but not everyone will benefit – https://theconversation.com/indian-townships-are-rebuilding-after-landslides-but-not-everyone-will-benefit-267381