The deaths, hospitalization, and the order of ban themselves show that India does not properly care for its vulnerable people under horrific conditions due to rising heat across the country. Nearly all heat action plans are poor in targeting the vulnerable, despite the fact that heatwaves have increased in frequency in recent decades. Extreme heatwaves of 1998, 2002, 2010, 2015, and 2022 have each led to even large number of deaths causing extensive economic damage by reducing labour productivity and affecting water availability, agriculture, and energy systems.

In 2022 heatwave struck the country in March, almost a month ahead, while in 2023 it came even a month early in February hottest since record-keeping began in 1901. A recent study from the University of Cambridge, Delhi has now said that over 90 per cent of India’s total geographical area is in the “extremely cautious” or “danger zone”. Heatwave conditions usually occur in India in April-June, but sometimes also extends to July.
Three-day concurrent hot days and hot night events have risen significantly and are projected to increase between two and four-fold by 2050 under Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5 and RCP 8.5 respectively. Wet-bulb temperature events are also on the rise. Heatwaves are also projected to come earlier, stay longer, and become more frequent with urban heat island effects exacerbating heat impacts.

Heat-related deaths, heat stress, unbearable working conditions, and the wider spread of vector-borne diseases are on the rise. It has been disproportionately impacting economically weaker sections of the population causing high risks on health, mortality, and labour activities. ILO has estimated that working hours lost due to heat stress will increase to 5.8 per cent of working hours by 2030, which is an equivalent of 34 million jobs. Official estimates put number of deaths due to heatwaves at 25,983 between 1990 and 2020. Since 2017 death by heatstroke has been increasing sharply. A Lancet study says that death by heatstroke in India rose by 55 per cent during 2017-2021. In 2021, India lost 167.2 billion potential labour hours causing 5.4 per cent loss to GDP.

The risks of extreme heat are experienced disproportionally by workers under the impacts of heatwaves due to personal risks factors, such as age, living in poorly ventilated or cooled housing. Their occupational risks factors include their working outdoors, and the societal risk factors include urban planning.

India does have numerous Heat Action Plans at the central, states, districts and municipal levels but they have been poorly framed and more badly implemented. The preparatory activities and post-wave response measures are too little to arrest the horrifying conditions.

The Centre for Policy Research has recently studied these action plans and presented a first of its kind critical review. Having analyzed 37 heat action plans across 18 states in the country, it concluded that it is still unclear as to what extent these actions are being implemented, though those have prescribed a balanced mix of short and long-term actions.

The study has found that most heat action plans are not built for local context and have an oversimplified view of the hazard. Nearly all heat action plans are poor at identifying and targeting vulnerable groups. They are underfunded, have weak legal foundations, and are not sufficiently transparent. Moreover, capacity building is sectorally-targeted.

Such a state of affair prevails despite the fact that National Disaster Management Authority have issued guidelines on heat management in 2016 and thereafter, numerous heat action plans have been framed across the country by states, districts and cities. The first heat action plan had come into existence long back in 2013 in Ahmadabad. Though exact number of heat action plans are not known, but according to some estimates they are over 100 in number.

One of the most important function of heat actions plans is to direct scarce healthcare, financial, information, and infrastructural resources to the most vulnerable. These are supposed to be regularly updated for real time intervention, which include - a heatwave warning system sharing alerts with vulnerable populations; means of coordination between several government departments; an awareness, training, and behaviour change component to reduce heat exposure; a list of short-term actions focusing on healthcare or changing work hours; long-term solutions such as investing in infrastructure such as cool roofs, water harvesting bodies; and changes in agriculture practice, or adjusting urban planning such as green corridors.

Though heat action plans acknowledge the cascading impacts on sectors such as energy and power supply, water supply, public transport, education, and animal husbandry among others, assessment of vulnerabilities at localized levels is absent in many of them resulting in a high risk of misdirected efforts.

Majority of the heat action plans primarily assess vulnerabilities on the basis of implications of heat on health. However, only a few has included slum residents or living in hazardously built infrastructure with low coping capacity, or below poverty line people clearly linking asset poverty and vulnerability to heatwave. People working outdoor, casual, or informal workers are not included in many heat action plans as vulnerable, while only about half of the action plans have listed construction workers, industrial workers, street vendors, waste pickers, farmers, rickshaw drivers, door-to-door sales persons, traffic police etc. About 75 per cent of India’s workers are vulnerable to heat exposure since they need to work under the sun for long hours.

Extreme heat could ultimately lead to a 15 per cent decline in “outdoor working capacity” which would reduce the quality of life of up to 480 million people and cost 2.8 per cent of GDP by 2050, the recent University of Cambridge, Delhi study, has said. India is also a climate change hotspot and average temperature is projected to climb by 2.4 to 4.4 degree Celsius by 2100, and summer heats are expected to triple or quadruple by that time, 2022 Global Food Policy Report has said. Hence India urgently needs to rethink about its poorly framed heat action plans to save its people from falling into further horrific conditions including food crisis.