Abstract: How do disasters reshape citizen-state relations? While disasters can undermine social cohesion and diminish political trust among survivors, they can also create opportunities for citizens to make new demands on governments. This project examines how climate risk intersects with household political strategies to shape accountability mechanisms in weak institutional contexts, such as urban slums and remote villages. Drawing on an original face-to-face survey of over 2,000 households, 18 focus groups, and 75 in-depth interviews with citizens, civil society activists, and local government officials in two Indian states, Bihar and Gujarat, we find that disaster exposure increases political activism even under resource constrained settings. Specifically, households that experience more intensive  exposure to floods are significantly more likely to participate in protests, attend community meetings, and get involved in campaign activities during local elections compared to households with little or no exposure. These associations remain robust across a range of model specifications, including household and individual-level controls for socioeconomic status, ethnic identity, and migration. Our findings also suggest disasters can reveal to states their own capacity constraints and encourage them to invest in building institutional capacities across a range of administrative and policy domains.