By Santhosh Srikanth Pattar, Country Director, ADRA India

Extreme heat is rapidly emerging as one of India’s most pervasive climate risks. The year 2024 was the warmest on record, and heatwaves are becoming more frequent, intense, and prolonged across the country. Their impacts extend far beyond discomfort, affecting health, livelihoods, water security, food systems, and urban infrastructure. However, the burden of extreme heat is not shared equally. Informal workers, migrants, women, children, older persons, farmers, and residents of informal settlements face disproportionate risks due to limited access to cooling, safe housing, healthcare, and social protection.

In this context, anticipatory action (AA) offers a promising approach. Rather than waiting for heatwaves to cause harm, AA enables governments, humanitarian organisations, and communities to act on forecasts and early warnings before impacts fully materialise. The growing recognition of heatwaves as a disaster management priority has led to important progress in India. National and state-level Heat Action Plans, improved forecasting by the India Meteorological Department, and increasing collaboration among disaster management authorities, civil society organisations, and scientific institutions have strengthened preparedness efforts.

ADRA India has helped operationalise anticipatory action on the ground. In 2025, ADRA India implemented an anticipatory heatwave response across Delhi-NCR, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh, working with disaster management authorities and local stakeholders to reduce health and livelihood risks before peak heat conditions occurred. The initiative combined early-warning dissemination, community awareness, hydration support, cooling measures, and targeted assistance for vulnerable populations, demonstrating how forecast-based action can translate into tangible protection for at-risk communities.

Recent pilot initiatives have shown how anticipatory action can reduce heat-related risks for vulnerable populations. Measures such as establishing cooling shelters, installing water and cooling infrastructure, creating shaded public spaces, training frontline workers, and conducting targeted risk communication campaigns have helped improve thermal comfort and community preparedness. These interventions demonstrate that relatively low-cost actions, when implemented before peak heat conditions, can protect lives and livelihoods.

While India has made significant progress through Heat Action Plans, improved forecasting, and city-level preparedness measures, the next frontier for anticipatory action lies in making these systems more community-centred. Most heatwave triggers and response actions continue to be institutionally driven. There remains considerable scope to involve informal worker groups, resident welfare associations, women’s collectives, community volunteers, and local leaders in identifying heat risks, validating triggers, and defining context-specific early actions. Such participation can improve the relevance, ownership, and effectiveness of anticipatory measures, particularly for populations most exposed to heat stress.

Another challenge is the uneven availability of localised heat-risk data. While national forecasting systems have improved, translating forecasts into neighbourhood-level action remains difficult. Heat vulnerability assessments, community mapping, and locally defined triggers for action are still limited in many districts. Sustainable financing for anticipatory action also remains inadequate, despite recent policy provisions that allow the use of disaster management funds for heatwave mitigation measures.

Moving forward, India’s heat resilience agenda must place equity at its centre. Anticipatory action should prioritise those facing the highest exposure and the lowest coping capacity. Equally important is the institutionalisation of anticipatory action within local governance systems. Current heatwave responses often remain seasonal and project-based, relying on awareness campaigns, cooling centres, water distribution, and public advisories. Sustained implementation requires deeper integration within Urban Local Bodies, Panchayati Raj Institutions, health systems, and frontline workers such as ASHAs and Anganwadi Workers. Building local capacities, clarifying responsibilities, and establishing pre-agreed early action protocols can help transform heatwave preparedness into a systematic and predictable governance function.

This requires stronger community participation, localised risk assessments, gender-responsive planning, investment in cooling and water infrastructure, and integration of heat resilience into urban development and social protection systems. Extreme heat is no longer a future threat; it is a present reality. Equitable anticipatory action offers a pathway to reduce losses, protect vulnerable populations, and build resilience before disasters unfold. An equity-centred approach also requires moving beyond awareness and cooling measures toward livelihood protection. Existing interventions provide important support through risk communication, hydration assistance, and cooling infrastructure, but often fail to address the economic realities of street vendors, construction workers, sanitation workers, gig workers, and daily wage labourers. As India’s anticipatory action agenda evolves, stronger linkages with social protection schemes, adaptive work arrangements, contingency financing, and livelihood support mechanisms can enable vulnerable households to act on early warnings without compromising income security. This will be critical to ensuring that anticipatory action reaches those who face the greatest risks and the fewest options for adaptation.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of AIDMI.