Localising the Climate Crisis Through Kerala’s Flood Imaginaries
#PhD-Defence #IITM
29th July 2026 | 4 pm
Today, I was happy to be a part of the PhD Viva Voce Examination of Mr. Achuth Balakrishnan, IIT Madras, whose thesis titled, “Climate Positionalities - The Kerala Floods Imaginaries and Malayalam Cultural Mediations”, was a real eye-opener of sorts.
There are two things in particular that I loved the most about his thesis.
Firstly, while standard ecological imaginaries and climate narratives typically depict distant dystopian end-of-the-world scenarios, Achuth has analysed the depictions of real, localised climate events – grounded in the region - specifically the 2018 Kerala floods - within Malayalam literature.
By analysing such regional fictional and non-fictional texts, the researcher has skilfully explored micro-level cultural responses for macro-level climate issues.
Secondly, the researcher’s study of children’s literature is something that I found highly laudable.
The research specifically analyses three Malayalam children’s novels that deal with the 2018 Kerala floods, namely, Priya’s Perumazhayathe Kunjithalukal, Veerankutty’s Parannu Parannu Chekkuttyppava and Sethu’s Chekkutty. In fact, one of the main research questions investigates how children’s agency is represented in flood-related climate fiction.
Through the thesis, the researcher has studied how child characters exercise agency through their capacity for imagination, social bonding, and active participation in rebuilding society after a disaster, moving away from older, purely moralistic models of children’s stories.
Moreover, the study uses children’s literature to examine gender praxis, specifically looking at how these texts might intervene in conventional gender discourse through models of gender subversion, affirmation, and parity.
Added, the research looks into the specific stylistic aspects deployed in children’s literature to explain complex ecological disasters. It analyses how techniques like episodic formatting, oral narratives (resembling “grandmother’s tales”), fantasy, and magic realism are used to convey climate lessons and resilience to young readers. Most importantly, the thesis examines how the child figure is sensitised to the spatial nature of ecology and their environment when their habitation gets disturbed by the floodwaters.
In short, an impactful micro-response to a macro-issue of alarming proportions.
Hearty congratulations to Dr. Achuth, and to Dr. Divya, his vibrant Research Supervisor for coming up with such an impactful thesis that has a great importance for society.
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