It didn’t help that his workplace was on a burning pavement. He wrapped the roof with a plastic wrap to keep it cool, but—from the street to the concrete buildings around it—everything was letting off white heat.
“Even the drinking water was getting hot, like food fresh from the stove. I couldn’t pass it on to the customers,” she said. So, she ended up spending 100-200 per day to buy ice slabs. “I hardly earn” 10,000-12,000 per month and it only cuts into my savings,” she said. Sahu’s day is usually 17 hours long, as she cooks, cleans and manages accounts, apart from serving customers. Last month the scorching heat left her body with a rash and extreme exhaustion. Her four-year-old son had collapsed in school because of the heat. Working for a 30-year-old woman from a small town in Jharkhand There were too many things to be able to pull off.
About 50 km away, in Gurgaon’s Sector 52, Pooja Maiti, a cook, also decided to cut her working days in half and return home by noon. Even the walks from her home to apartment complexes she used to work made her sluggish and lack energy. “I’ll be earning very little this month, but I can’t help it,” she said.
Severe heat waves in North India this summer are a serious sign of things to come. It is not unusual for temperatures to rise into the forties in May or June, but the heat has intensified over north and central India, with the highest March temperatures in 122 years. Parts of India saw the hottest April in more than 100 years. An analysis by the UK Met Office warned that climate change would lead to such record-breaking temperatures every three years. In the absence of global warming, such heat spikes would occur once in 300 years. According to Roxy Cole, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, a three-fold increase in extreme weather events such as an increase in heat waves, frequent cyclones and extreme rainfall can be traced back to the day. global temperature.
too hot to work
For outdoor workers in India’s hottest regions, the rising extreme heat will make work more difficult, several studies have warned, reducing billions of hours of labor and productivity.
In January, researchers at Duke University estimated that India lost about 259 billion hours of labor annually between 2001 and 2020 due to the effects of humid summer. A 2019 report by the International Labor Organization (ILO)—‘Working on a Warmer Planet: The Effects of Heat Stress on Labor Productivity and Good Work’—estimated that India would lose 5.8% of working hours in 2030 as a result of the heat. could. stress, a loss of about 5% in national level GDP.
Climate scientists predict that the heat and humidity in some parts of India will be so high that the human body will not be able to tolerate the warming of the planet. This means not only mortal risk to vulnerable populations, but also conditions in which the ability to perform outdoor work will drop sharply.
For example, a 2014 study of heat stress on the productivity of brick-kiln workers in West Bengal showed that “an increase in temperature of 1 °C leads to a decrease in productivity by about 2%”, and cardiovascular disease. Symptoms of stress and high heart rate in workers.
This has serious implications for India, as our economy is heavily dependent on people engaged in outside businesses. A 2020 McKinsey report estimates that heat-exposed work produces about 50% of India’s GDP and drives about 30% of GDP growth (based on 2017 figures) – and that heat The waves will move towards “around 2.5-4.5%, or $150″. -250 billion” risk to GDP.
“As per the 2017-18 unit level Periodic Labor Force Survey (PLFS) data, there were about 205 million agricultural workers in India. To this can be added construction workers, policemen/men and security personnel, sanitation workers and street vendors, who number about 50 million. There may be some double counting of seasonal migrant workers, or MGNREGA workers, but by and large it is safe to say that almost half of our workforce is exposed to heat or other harsh climatic conditions,” said Sabina Dewan, president and executive Director, JustJobs Network.
A large proportion of outside workers are also in the informal sector, without access to any workplace safety measures. For example, this summer, landfills across Delhi came under fire in the scorching heat. The pungent smoke burnt Rake Sona’s eyes and throat while collecting scraps such as plastic bottles and other recyclables from a mountain-high garbage dump in Ghazipur in East Delhi. The 18-year-old moved from South 24 Parganas in West Bengal about five years ago. she earns 7,000–9,000 per month from selling scrap, and is one of 4 million rag pickers in India.
Last month, she said she saw two rag pickers near a garbage dump. “Whenever I see anyone falling and falling in this heat, I run home and fetch water. I spray them until the person regains consciousness,” she says. For workers like her under the sun, there is no emergency response.
puts out fires
In 2010, more than 1,000 people were estimated to have died in Ahmedabad, as a heat wave raised the temperature to 46.8 °C. In response, the city’s municipal authorities entered into agreements with scientists and other stakeholders to prepare India’s first summer action plan in 2013.
In addition to an early warning system and regular temperature forecasts, hospital staff were organized and trained to detect early signs of heat stroke, identify vulnerable people, and assist them. School days were shortened, water was distributed throughout the city and the roofs of slums were painted with reflective paint of white color to reduce the temperature by up to 5 degrees Celsius.
“The city supplies electricity and water before the onset of heat waves so that there is no power cut or water shortage. At some traffic signals, they put up green sheets to provide shade to cars,” says Ketki Gadre, consultant at Mahila Housing Trust, an Ahmedabad organization that aims to install climate-proofing solutions with little or no technology for vulnerable households. works with.
Polash Mukherjee of the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) says, “The primary objective of the plan was to ensure that exposure to extreme heat does not result in loss of lives.” in Ahmedabad. On that count, it delivered – a year after the scheme was launched, over 1,000 deaths were averted.
For example, in 2017, Bhanuben Jadav, who worked with the Mahila Housing Trust, contacted a tailor in the Rajiv Nagar slum in the city where she lived. As the heat was forcing them to close shop repeatedly, leading to loss of income, he suggested that they install cool roofs made of coconut husk and paper waste. “His business also picked up in the heat wave. And soon other residents followed,” said Jadhav, who has helped many homes in his slum adapt to the warming city by convincing them to install solar-powered fans and cooling roofs.
For the past five years or more, various state governments have invested in elaborate “climate-proof” plans to protect people, businesses and critical infrastructure from heat extremes, with the NDMA coordinating the nationwide response. In 2020, the Center worked with 23 states and over 100 cities and districts to develop and implement Heat Action Plans. Some experts believe that the schemes are better implemented in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Odisha and Telangana.
The plans that are regularly reviewed by the NDMA vary by region. “Different cities have different limits for alerts. For coastal cities like Bhubaneswar, even a temperature of 35 degrees or 38 degrees Celsius can be a cause for concern because of the high humidity,” says Dilip Mavalankar, director, Indian Institute of Public Health, Gandhinagar.
Coastal areas with comparatively low temperatures are at risk of deadly wet-bulb temperatures, which are a measure of both heat and humidity in the atmosphere. At wet-bulb temperatures above 34 °C, the body loses its ability to cool by sweating. Staying in such heat for a long time can prove to be fatal.
“But summer plans need to go beyond curbing mortality. We also need to improve communication with targeted low-income groups such as street vendors, whose source of communication is simply word of mouth, not transmission. The message or the media has been issued in response to the heat alert,” says Mukherjee.
blind spots
States have a poor record in implementing heat protection measures. For example, Delhi does not have a specific heat action plan yet, although it has seen several heat spikes this year. In 2018-19, Rohit Magotra, president of the New Delhi-based think-tank Integrated Research and Action for Development (IRADe), was involved in preparing a heat action plan for the state. It identified heat zones within the city, analyzed the effects of heat stress on the lives and livelihoods of vulnerable populations such as occupational workers, women and children, senior citizens in urban slums. It recommended an early warning system that would draw on data from the Indian Meteorological Department to predict heat wave events. But in the last two years, the Delhi government did not take any step to implement it.
Experts say that there is a need to make better use of data in all such schemes. “There is a lack of climate-based empirical evidence on metrics such as the number of heat wave days and seasonal variability in Ahmedabad and Delhi that can improve access to impact-oriented climate information, a better understanding of regional impacts and climate resilience-focused policies. , can promote actions and plans. Avinash Mohanty, Head of Programs in the Risk and Adaptation Team at the Energy, Environment and Water Council.
They say the current heat-wave action plan does not explicitly focus on low-income household groups, especially women and children.
Most of the urban outdoor workforce has limited access to cooling systems, but they find themselves increasingly trapped in “heat islands”, not their own maintained. For example, like ACs are cool affluent enclaves, hot air spits out. In addition, in dense, urban sprawl, dark, solid surfaces—roads and buildings and other infrastructure—absorb solar radiation and emit it. The surrounding air heats up, creating large bubbles of heat and moisture.
As cities lose their cards and take over their water bodies by careless construction, it adds to the problem. “Green areas have relatively low heat levels. They provide a natural projection against the sun. Even water bodies are beneficial in terms of heat management.”
Of course, city action plans have limits. At the bureaucratic level, there is no permanent staff enlisted to implement the summer action plans. “Many government schemes will not work unless there is a top-level review, either from the chief minister or the PM. There is a need for a separate climate change and health department within local municipal, district and state governments,” says Mavalankar.
The big question of livelihood remains, as extreme heat is likely to make India’s most common occupations – from farming to construction – even more dangerous. How much can workers adapt? And do they have a choice not to? For example, Vimal Sahu worked in the rising temperatures of May despite fatigue. “I have no other way but to work round the clock to teach my son in a private school. I couldn’t study but I have to make sure that my child is educated.”