Why India’s heatwave is more prolonged and dangerous than ever before

For over a month now, the northern states of India continue to struggle with scorching heat which has claimed over 60 lives so far. But blistering heat is fast becoming a pan-India phenomenon.

Western India as well as the east zone, and also some some southern states have not been spared. The heatwaves that covered much of May, might well continue till the middle of June until the south-west monsoon reaches north. Strikingly, heatwaves this summer have been longer.

Unlike about a decade or two ago, when only some urban pockets used to turn into ‘heat islands’, now the entire urban sprawl in major cities has turned into an open-air oven.

“Paradoxically, despite strong winds, neither the hot-air pockets get blown away quickly nor the hot air moves up in convection, but the hot-air cloud hangs like a balloon over the entire urban space of cities like Kanpur and Prayagraj for several weeks. There is no convection or radiation of heat and though static heatwave is an oxymoron, that is the bizarre reality,” Nilesh Pant, a researcher in Pant Institute, Prayagraj, told The Federal.

What exactly is a heatwave?

The definition of heatwave differs from country to country and climate-zone to climate-zone. In the Indian context, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) defines heatwave as per two different criteria:

One is based on departure from average normal temperature recorded for that area in the past three decades (1991 to 2020). The situation is declared a ‘heatwave’ if the departure from the normal is 4.5ºC to 6.4ºC (‘C’ is Celsius or Centigrade). If the departure exceeds the normal by more than 6.4ºC, then it is declared as a ‘severe heatwave’.

Two, in terms of absolute temperature, if the maximum temperature of a region crosses 40ºC (which is equal to 104º Fahrenheit) in the plains or if the temperature crosses 30ºC in hilly areas or 37ºC in coastal areas, then also it is declared a heatwave.

In a FAQs note on heatwaves, the IMD adds that the heatwave intensity can be aggravated by additional factors like high humidity, high wind speed and duration of the heatwave conditions etc.

The IMD further classifies the intensity of heatwaves into different levels and it issues daily colour-coded alerts for each of these levels for the next five days. For instance, if the temperature is expected to remain normal the IMD would issue a green alert. Yellow alerts would be issued if heatwave condition would persist for 2 days, orange alert would be issued if heatwave conditions are expected to persist for 4 days and red alert if it is expected to last for 6 days (See the graphics for more details). The adverse impact of the unusual heatwaves is also unusually high and varied.

The impact of heatwaves

Heatwaves have a debilitating impact on the economy.

The productivity of workers in the shop-floor as well as offices goes down considerably during such periods. Business is dull as customers avoid going out and start depending more on online shopping and home delivery for food and eatables. Arti, who owns a gift store in Nagpur suffered a heat stroke while going to her shop and had to close it for a week at a stretch. “Even at 10.30 am, I suffered a sunstroke, and have lost almost Rs 40,000,” she says.

Mahenra Chaudhury, a farmers’ leader in Rajasthan, told The Federal, “Heatwaves are not just an urban issue but also a farmers’ issue. Heatwaves affect crop yields and in some cases simply destroy some crops entirely. The farming community incurs heavy losses. Some of them are even dying here on the fields due to sunstroke. The cattle, the second most important source of livelihood for small and marginal farmers, simply die due to absence of adequate water. In the land of cow-worshippers, they are sold to butchers at throwaway prices.”

Heatwaves spell increased trouble for labourers working outdoors.

“The labouring poor suffer disproportionately more due to heatwaves as hard physical labour, often in hot outdoor conditions, makes them highly vulnerable to heatstrokes. Workers, both in the organised as well as in the informal sectors, do not get any protection against the heat comparable to the minimal safeguards they were getting during the pandemic. The least the state governments can do is to not force the contractors and e-commerce employers from making the civic workers and delivery workers work between 11 am and 4 pm.”

The heatwaves deplete the water level in the waterbodies as well as the groundwater level. In drinking-water-stressed areas, the poor are forced to pay even up to Rs10 for a pot of water. The water crisis in Bengaluru and Chennai has worsened this summer.

As hydel power sources get dried up, power generation declines and power-cuts become longer. As they cannot afford inverters, the sweltering conditions due to 6 to 8 hours of powercuts make life hell for the poor.

Health impact

Heatwaves have proven to have far-reaching adverse impact on public health.

The National Centre of Disease Control (NCDC), under the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, has a programme of active surveillance on heat-related illnesses under Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP). As per the latest data put out by the NCDC, between March 1 and May 24, India recorded 16,344 heatstroke cases and reported 60 heat-related deaths.

Heatstroke is a severe condition associated with nausea and vomiting and often leading to fainting, because of prolonged exposure to temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius. A heatstroke occurs when the natural cooling system of the human body through blood circulation is overwhelmed by the excessive heat in the surroundings. After a spell of high pulse rate, the dehydrated person becomes unconscious and if not treated immediately the heatstroke can affect the brain, heart, kidneys and the body muscles and, in some cases, can even lead to death.

Preventive measures can help in avoiding heatstrokes and heat deaths.

Preventive measures against heatstrokes

“Unless absolutely essential, people should not go out in the sun. Surface cooling of the house is also essential using creepers like Vettiver (Khus in Hindi) or by providing natural insulation to the house with some other creepers and keeping them wet by regularly sprinkling water on them,” Dr Joseph Amalorpavanathan, a public health activist, who is also a member of the Tamil Nadu State Planning Commission, told The Federal:

Dr Swaminath Yadav, in-charge of a government hospital on the outskirts of Prayagraj, suggests government should distribute oral rehydration salts to people to prevent deaths.

“Heatwave is predominantly an urban phenomenon in UP and its impact on the predominantly rural Poorvanchal is not as severe as in Kanpur. Consuming lots of fluids and electrolyte-rich Electral or other oral rehydration salts in prescribed quantities is also an essential preventive measure and the government should freely distribute them widely and set up more potable drinking water booths in cities,” Dr Swaminath said.

These, of course, are preventive measures that can be ensured at home. But what are the public health measures to be taken by the state against heatwaves?

Mitigatory measures against heatwaves

It might not be possible to completely prevent occurrence of heatwaves altogether as they are products of complex interaction of environmental factors. But the possibility of their occurrence as well as their intensity can be extremely narrowed down by prior human endeavour.

For instance, drastically reducing carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions can considerably bring down the probability of a heatwave in the longer run.

In the immediate context, to address heatwaves directly, the governments at the Centre and States prepare Heat Action Plans (HAPs) through the disaster management authorities at respective levels. On paper, these HAPs talk of issuing early warning systems preparedness strategies that address public awareness and community outreach, mechanisms for inter-agency coordination, roles and responsibilities of different levels of governing institutions during heatwave response, capacity-building among health care professionals, mitigating heat exposure and promoting adaptive measures among the vulnerable population in the concerned region and so on. Unfortunately, in practice, only an early warning system is being followed and alerts are issued promptly.

Jaya Khanna, a scientist from the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, told The Federal: “In coastal states like Odisha, though the peak temperature levels are not as high as in Rajasthan or UP, the problem is more severe because of high humidity. You cannot use room-coolers here. The agony indoors is as much as the suffering outdoors. The Heat Action Plans are not effective. People should not be allowed to work between 11 am and 4 pm, not only outdoor workers but even domestic workers. In the National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER) here in Bhubaneswar, students do not want to go back to their hostel rooms but stay in the academic building because AC is there. The HAPs should ensure that all students get vacation when the heat reaches a certain threshold.” In fact, even competitive exams like NEET are conducted amidst heatwaves in educational institutions with only fans in UP.

Larger climate measures like emission control involving huge climate funds are ongoing efforts but unfortunately, adequate focus in integrating heatwave mitigation measures with the overall framework of climate measures is missing. For instance, the World Health Organisation prescribes 9 square metres (sqm) of green space per capita in urban areas. But in India, even large cities like Chennai and Pune have a green cover of only 0.81 and 1.4 sqm per capita respectively.

The Urban and Regional Development Plans Formulation and Implementation (URDPFI) Guidelines, 2014, recommended a minimum of 12%–18% green cover in an urban area in India. Other grandiose plans like MoHUA’s Urban Greening Guidelines, 2014, the National Mission for Green India (GIM) under National Action Plan for Climate Change (NAPCC), and the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) prescribe similar targets for green cover. But out of 4,300 cities in India, each with more than 1,00,000 population, only 65 meet these targets. These are also concentrated in cooler hill areas and not in the hot plains.

The grossly inadequate remedy

Union Minister of State for Environment, Forests and Climate Change Ashwini Kumar Choubey informed Lok Sabha on August 7, 2023 that under the Nagar Van Yojana (Urban Forestation Scheme), to increase urban green cover, Rs 9.3 crore, Rs 115.81 crore, Rs 95.35 crore and Rs 18.25 crore were allotted for 31 states in 2020–21, 2021–22, 2022–23 and 2023–24 respectively. This is just pittance.

But the Indian cities are becoming concrete jungles, and the dense concrete structures absorb enormous volume of heat and prevent circulation of air and keep radiating heat even during nights. Most of the cities have no fixed norms for the ratio of constructed versus free, open space and with the pittance being granted there is no scope for the urban green cover to increase.

Some climate activists have demanded that heatwaves should be declared a national disaster so that greater funds can flow to mitigation efforts.

Health infrastructure

Unfortunately, it is a Covid crisis redux. In the worst-affected state of Rajasthan, show-cause notices were issued to officials of 12 hospitals affiliated to medical colleges on May 25 for not ensuring proper arrangements to meet the heatwave contingency in the state. The conditions in UP are no different. Awadesh Kumar Singh, a noted author from Kanpur, told The Federal that there were numerous cases of sun-stroke and there was a scramble for hospital beds in Kanpur.

One can only hope that the bureaucracy and government leaders in India learn from their major lapses.