By Priyanka Thirumurthy, Head of Communications, Asar Social Impact Advisors, Karnataka, India

In a single-room home in New Delhi, a middle-aged woman stands over a chulha, trying to finish cooking lunch before the afternoon heat becomes unbearable. Outside, temperatures have crossed 40°C. Inside her tin-roofed home, the heat is even more intense. She has fainted twice in recent weeks while cooking. Her husband, whose work requires long hours outdoors, has been falling ill more frequently as temperatures rise. Together, they face a cruel reality: the activities that expose them to dangerous heat – cooking, working, and earning a livelihood – are not optional.

Their experience illustrates a fundamental truth about extreme heat in India – while everyone experiences the rise in temperatures, the risks are not shared equally. Those with access to cooling, healthcare, insurance, and flexible work arrangements can often reduce their exposure. But those without such protections face growing threats to their health, income, and dignity. Building resilience to extreme heat, therefore, requires addressing the inequalities that determine who is most exposed and least protected.

Protect Outdoor Workers

Around three-quarters of India’s workforce works in heat-exposed conditions, and the country could lose the equivalent of 34 million full-time jobs to heat stress by 2030. Research on informal workers in Delhi found that net earnings fell by nearly 40% during heatwaves. In Bengaluru, a study of waste workers showed that 60% suffered from headaches, dizziness and rashes due to working in extreme heat.  But the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 does not require heat protection – it leaves it to the government to decide. Binding work-rest standards, wage-loss protection, and parametric heat insurance can ensure that life and dignity is not threatened by extreme heat.

Heat Resilient Neighbourhoods

India must prioritise investing in heat-resilient housing and neighbourhoods. Studies from Chennai, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad show that indoor temperatures can remain 2–5°C hotter than outdoors at night, denying vulnerable residents relief from daytime heat exposure. While affordable interventions such as cool roofs and low-cost cooling materials have been shown to significantly reduce indoor temperatures, broader reforms are equally critical. Building by-laws and city planning must incorporate and enforce heat resilience through better ventilation standards, permeable paving, ventilation corridors, ward-level thermal mapping and community cooling spaces. Yet these measures remain thinnest in the low-income neighbourhoods where heat risks are greatest, making targeted public investment essential.

Heat must be treated as a public health emergency

An analysis of the Union Budget’s spending on heatwaves shows that there is no budgetary scheme for heat emergency preparedness or mitigation in the health sector. It also highlights low spending under the Health Sector Disaster Preparedness and Response scheme. Rs 14.92 cr was spent in 2024-25 against the allocation of Rs 94 cr. Heat-related illnesses and deaths, meanwhile, remain underreported and poorly understood. India certifies only deaths from direct heatstroke, capturing a fraction of the true toll; independent monitoring recorded more than 700 heat-related deaths across 17 states in a single summer that official figures missed. Without data disaggregated by occupation, gender and caste, the most vulnerable stay invisible to the very plans meant to protect them. Strengthening heat-health surveillance, training frontline healthcare workers, linking forecasts to public health action and protecting vulnerable groups must become central components of India’s heat response.

Recognise Heat as a Slow-Onset Disaster

Finally, India must formally recognise extreme heat as a slow-onset disaster at the national level. Unlike floods or cyclones, heat rarely leaves visible destruction in its wake. Instead, it gradually erodes health, productivity, livelihoods, educational outcomes and wellbeing. The absence of a national disaster classification limits access to dedicated resources and institutional attention. Recognising heat as a slow-onset disaster would acknowledge the scale of the crisis and enable a coordinated and adequately funded response that prioritises those most at risk.

As extreme heat becomes a defining feature of India’s future, success should not be measured by the number of Heat Action Plans adopted, but by whether the most vulnerable people can live, work, and thrive safely despite rising temperatures.

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