The Heat Wave in India is an Emergency. And Its Only Going to Get Worse in the Future

Ajouté : 2026-05-31

[00:00:14]Hello and welcome to the wire talks. I'm Siddhad Bhya. India is in the midst of an intense heat wave. Large parts of the country are facing intense heat. And a few days ago, 50 of the world's hottest cities and towns were in India.

[00:00:32]Summers are hot every year, but in recent years, it is getting hotter than ever. Ask anyone, they will tell you they don't remember this level of heat.

[00:00:45]What accounts for th this? Are there reasons localized or is there an overarching reason why India has become so hot?

[00:00:57]Does climate change come into the picture? Is it the construction?

[00:01:03]Is it the trees, the green cover? We don't know. And we have a guest today, Professor Amitab Baviskar, professor of environmental studies and sociology and anthropology at Oshoka University to clarify things for us. Her research addresses the cultural politics of environment and development in rural and urban India. Currently she is studying the social experience of air pollution and heat in Delhi. a PhD in development sociology from Cornell University. She has written a book in the belly of the river, tribal conflicts over development in the Narada Valley and has edited elite and every man the cultural politics of the Indian middle classes with Raqqa Ray.

[00:02:01]Welcome to the wire talks professor Amitita Bariskar.

[00:02:06]>> Thank you Sedat. It's a pleasure to be here.

[00:02:10]>> We read almost every day that India is experiencing a heat wave. The phrase has become so common. But what exactly is a heat wave?

[00:02:21]Well, according to the Indian Meteorological Department, you have a heat wave when the temperature is for at least 4 days over 40° C or 4° more than what is the recorded average for that particular day. So, one day doesn't make a heat wave, but four days do. And as you said, our um experience of heat waves in India is increasing and not only do we have more days where temperatures are decidedly above normal but now these heat waves start much earlier. So for instance, usually you'd expect it to get really hot by say the end of May or June in North India. Now it the heat wave starts in March in end March. So we're just seeing a sort of prolonging of the period when we can expect to experience heat waves.

[00:03:28]So when people say anecdotally when people say there is a heat wave or the newspaper headlines say there is a heat wave they may or may not be referring to the technical and scientific explanation but clearly they are feeling something is that so >> they are certainly feeling something but I also think that you know we are a little too obsessed with the maximum imum recorded temperature and that's to do with the fact that the official index also focuses on how high the temperature gets in the day but I think our experience of the heat wave also depends on two really vital factors one of them is a minimum temperature and if the minimum temperature which is a nighttime temperature goes to 30° C or above then it becomes really uncomfortable at night and that to my mind also is an important part of why people say they experience a heat wave. The other part that's also extremely important is humidity.

[00:04:40]If you have dry heat with winds, um you know your body sweats, the sweat evaporates, you cool down. There's a heat wave but the body has tried and tested ways of dealing with it. But when there's high humidity in the air then sweat doesn't evaporate and when that happens then you really feel hot because the body can't cool down through evaporation.

[00:05:06]So >> I think a heat wave as an experienced as something that we experience is not just about how high the temperature goes.

[00:05:15]It's about how hot it is at night and how humid it is.

[00:05:20]uh humidity would be I mean I'm just picking up on that one point. Humidity would be mainly in places where there is water bodies uh or moisture in the air.

[00:05:33]Would that apply to dry places?

[00:05:38]I think to some extent yes because if places are you know well watered, if you have a lot of greenery that is irrigated for instance, um you will get higher levels of uh humidity. But I think this has to be investigated much more because you could for instance have um construction sites where water is being used in order to cure cement and so on.

[00:06:04]You might have higher humidity there. Uh these are localized factors. They may well be more global factors at work um that are to do with changing patterns of humidity. But I haven't yet come across any research that explains that phenomenon completely.

[00:06:25]>> What could be causing such intense heat?

[00:06:30]uh especially we are talking only about India though there are people saying that you know there there is a lot of heat in uh even the summers are becoming very strong in places like England in uh other places but let's concentrate on India what is causing such intense heat is it normal summer or something else is happening is it local factors or something much much bigger >> well Climate scientists have a way of disagregating what can be attributed to global warming and what is due to local factors. And uh what is interesting of course is that climate change is experienced differently in different places because global factors always interact with local environments, local weather patterns, um local air pollution for that matter. So, um, climate change is indeed responsible for the fact that the seasons that we'd grown to expect around the year. The fact that we thought there would be winter and in North India, a spring in March or April leading into summer in May, June, the monsoons in July, the monsoons receding and cool weather starting in September, October. that sort of you know stability of the seasons has now gone away. We can expect untimely rain at any time. We can expect unusually high temperatures as I said earlier even as early as March which should be beautiful you know spring weather and uh these changes in rainfall and in heat and in cold affect everything. They affect what plants grow when they flower. They affect the interactions between plants and insects and you know key biological processes like pollination that therefore affects you know certain crops which depend on insect pollination and so on. So, uh, we're looking at a whole series of irregularities and unexpected fluctuations becoming the new normal and that new normal happens to coincide with the ways in which we have built our environment.

[00:09:02]So there is something called the the urban heat island effect which is the combined effect of all the materials that we use our roads our buildings uh the the fact that they trap heat and they release that heat in a way that adds to the solar radiation that we are experiencing as a part of summer. uh the fact that we have a lot of traffic, a lot of motorized vehicles that are releasing exhaust fumes. The fact that now uh most of our cooling is also using forms of refrigeration like air conditioning which works by throwing hot air out. So there is increasingly hot air that is locally produced from traffic fumes from air from air conditioning exhaust from the materials that we use that you know store and capture heat and release it slowly. All of that contributes to the urban heat island effect as does the fact that you know we don't have enough greenery and as equally important as greenery is ventilation. you know, the fact that you should be able to move a breeze through a particular environment. Circulation of air is really important to whether you feel the heat or not. So, all of these things come together in order to create the heat wave that we're all living through right now.

[00:10:35]>> We we were talking about the urban uh uh urban situation, but there is a lot of heat even in shall we say not exactly very rural but say semi-rural semi- urban places where these factors may not be apply applicable it's it's such large numbers uh people may not be using air conditioning people may not be using uh you know the trees there may be some greenery etc but even there from what one understands it's getting very very hot so that can only be because of from the climate change uh climate the effects of climate change.

[00:11:22]So that means uh these things in urban habitats are being exacerbated but even there they are feeling the heat so to say.

[00:11:35]>> Absolutely. Across um central India across the north Indian plains temperatures are indeed very very high and they're also undergoing climate change. So you're absolutely right that there is a global phenomenon that is affecting the entire Indian subcontinent. Even places which are in the mountains are no longer as cool as they used to be and that too is partly a consequence of global warming.

[00:12:13]Um but as I said the other phenomenon that interact with global warming are the ways in which you know we have organized our lives um in even in cities, small towns I would say even in villages.

[00:12:30]So uh whether pe whether people have access to water, whether people have access access to electricity, all of these also affect how one deals with heat and how one experiences it.

[00:12:45]>> In your lecture, one of the statements you made was which you have been just now talking about but I would like you to expand on couple of thing. Uh you said uh social, economic and political factors have played a role. I was quite intrigued. Uh you did explain the shall we say the economic factors and social factors. You know I have a refrigerator at home. Um glo I have a uh air conditioner traffic is intense etc. By political do you mean policies?

[00:13:23]Are policies also somewhere playing a role?

[00:13:27]>> Absolutely.

[00:13:29]I mean if you look at the you know I actually call it the Indian anthroposine the f the the point at which the Indian economy in a way generated its own climate change started in the 1990s with economic liberalization.

[00:13:47]What liberalization did was that it led to a boom in the construction industry.

[00:13:54]All of which is no no doubt very good because you know you want more work workplaces. You want people to have more homes. All of that is an improvement in people's lives. But the direction of the improvement was very much towards the privatization of amenities as well. So the choice that we made was to give a boost to the automobile industry, own your own two-wheeler, own your own car. You know, this is how you you're comfortable. You know, it's something that is a matter of pride. consumerism consumerism durables.

[00:14:36]>> Consumerism, but especially the fact that consumer durables became much more affordable thanks to changes in financial systems where you could take loans. Um there was just much better outreach from these companies. All of this meant that there was a revolution in terms of our consumption of particular sorts of things which are as I said earlier directly or indirectly responsible for increasing the heat burden that we generate. So I'd say that political economy is absolutely central to this and uh one just has to compare it with other countries for instance countries like China which have really managed to regulate their um automobile industry. They've you know made a big move towards renewables, non-polluting sources. public transport is emphasized there's strong disincentives from owning private vehicles it's a different direction so I would certainly say that what we're living with right now uh can be actually traced to a particular moment in time where certain policies were put into place and that's what we have to uh reckon with >> but interesting ly um interestingly we look back on that and see the consumer boom it created and made consumerables consumer durables desirable.

[00:16:25]But we have despite evidence, despite the desperate need for it, we have not changed direction.

[00:16:33]And now in fact we are moving in that direction with even more like in a turbocharged manner as it were to say yes incentives for all of this. So, so there is no sense in terms of the political will or policy direction to say wait a minute look at let's look at what it has caused and see what we can do about it. So I feel sometimes and I want your opinion on this. I feel sometimes that climate change or this heat wave which is an urgent crisis in a sense has not given pause to our uh the those who manage the political economy.

[00:17:24]Would you say that's a fair assessment?

[00:17:28]>> I think it's fair. I think what happens is that if you look at what we learn from disasters, environmental crises of different kinds, be they cyclones, be they earthquakes, we have a system in place. There's a national, you know, disaster management authority, there is there are now state level action plans to deal with heat.

[00:17:51]Um, we have an infrastructure in place that's meant to help us, but what that system is good at doing is responding to crisis.

[00:18:05]So, it's good at doing disaster relief.

[00:18:09]It's not good at putting in systematic and systemic changes that need to happen to prevent those crisis.

[00:18:20]So you know anytime there's a heat wave uh you will have people distributing cold water, people giving, you know, the government issues advisories saying stay indoors which of course is you know impossible for people uh who have to work for a living and be out in the heat, delivery agents, construction workers, you know domestic workers, street vendors, all of those people. But um there are some things in place. There are now cooling stations being put up where uh people who are out in the sun can rest and uh get some you know some brief uh relief. But uh none of this actually dismantles all the larger structures that keep places hot. None of it helps people have water in their homes so that they can have a bath you know at least once a day if not twice. Um basic kinds of concerns. Do you do you live in a if you live in a one room tenement somewhere? Um do you have air circulation so that there's some breath of air or not? Or is the room like this suffocating oven? And when night temperatures rise, uh, are we able to create what I call a thermal commons where we can say, you know, here are these large spaces, we will cool them and we will, you know, allow people to sleep there. You can repurpose a number of existing structures to do this. Be they metro stations, be they school buildings, be you know, lots of there there lots of possibilities there. But we don't really think about uh the longerterm changes we need to make in terms of building technologies in terms of changing uh what we prioritize on our roads in terms of street layouts infrastructure the relative space for parking versus for you know shady um place shady places where people can walk etc. I think all of it goes back to that question of economic liberalization as a set of policies that brought in this idea of having a worldclass economy, a worldclass infrastructure.

[00:20:44]But that was a blindly imitative idea because worldclass means that we should be like say Singapore. We should have tall airond conditioned buildings, people wearing, you know, suits and ties and closed shoes because that's supposed to be the professional look around the world in temperate places. And in that quest to world class, we didn't say, you know, what does it mean to be um to be acclimatized and to work with what one's elements are rather than treat them as a hostile environment and insulate ourselves from them in that very energyintensive polluted way that we do.

[00:21:36]a way that ends up making life a lot worse for everybody else who doesn't have access to those air conditioned spaces, those fancy buildings and and apartments.

[00:21:50]No, I'll give you uh the you I mean while you were speaking I was kind of just uh thinking that what you are talking about would should appear to be so comensical to somebody who sitting there and saying this is India this is the temperature we are a hot country where you temp uh our summers are getting hotter. Let's kind of rethink how we can imagine. So we say zoning laws do not allow buildings with glass and steel uh glass that is doesn't allow the you know the weather to get in and you have more uh investment to air condition the place. I was just thinking also about Mumbai where I live.

[00:22:51]There is there is this almost overzealous drive to cut down green spaces.

[00:23:02]The green spaces that we have are being attacked.

[00:23:07]And you know there was an irony because some government uh worthy some minister or the other made a speech at some convention saying we are very conscious of the environment and that day or the day before his government was announcing plans to cut down x number of trees.

[00:23:29]Building permits are given left, right and center. Redevelopment has become a rampant monster in this city. There's construction. There's dust rising everywhere.

[00:23:44]It's only going to get hotter, isn't it?

[00:23:46]So, nobody is really thinking in terms of, as you said, intense heat as a crisis. There is no would you not say that there is no political willingness to invest time and attention to it?

[00:24:09]>> Look, I think there's two uh things that work at different scales.

[00:24:15]The first part of it is of course the climate change part and on the ground uh in the immediate term or even in the next 10 years 20 years there's very little we can do to change that. You know that ship has sailed. It's going to get hotter globally and we cannot even if we go to net zero emissions by some magical you know turn around suddenly we're not going to see that heat extreme heat abate.

[00:24:53]The thing that we need to focus on is adaptation. adaptation at the local level that if you're stuck with this, if this is the trend, what can we do to make sure that we are not as vulnerable to deadly heat as we are right now and as we are likely to be even more in the future. So that's the bit of hard thinking that we need to do.

[00:25:24]But there is certainly organizations doing it. For instance, uh SEPt in Ahmedabad has been working for a long time on building technologies that are more climate friendly that are uh you know better all around. But they're not going to get any encouragement from private developers unless you know there's a big government push to promote it, to subsidize it, to mandate it.

[00:25:54]Private developers are going to go with what works best for them, which is the cheapest solution.

[00:26:01]And that means, you know, steel, concrete, build it fast. Never mind if it is thin walls. Never mind if it's, you know, unlivable from the climate point of view. Everybody's going to put in air conditioners anyway. That's their thinking. So, if we're thinking about needing to adapt, there are a series of planning measures that we need to put into place which should be starting now and unrolling over time and getting, you know, faster.

[00:26:36]But I think the problem with intense heat is like the same problem that Delhi has had with say air pollution. We only talk about it when it's at its peak.

[00:26:50]A month from now when it is late June say and say the monsoons the premons shows have started over northern India we're not going to be talking about heat. It's like it's an issue that's over for this year and if that is a public sentiment then that is what the government also takes its cue from. So we just sort of lurch from crisis to crisis year after year and we're not doing anything to address these really important ways in which we can prevent ourselves from you know broiling in the heat that is to come.

[00:27:33]So it has not at all become a issue which a politician will think excites the voter at all.

[00:27:45]The photo op is in standing at a at a cooling station, the chief minister handing out gamchas or bottles of water to poor, you know, irrig sha pullers.

[00:28:01]That's what gets you that moment of political attention.

[00:28:07]Um all the measures that one would like the government to take if in the long-term interest of the country of the nation are going to be unpopular measures with powerful constituencies with people who are car owners, private vehicle owners, with um you know the building industry which is extremely powerful as you know in terms of uh backing electoral politics.

[00:28:37]Um there is, you know, it it's it's a it's a very tangled problem and uh it's very hard to talk about what it would take to systematically untangle it and to say we'll address this particular thread in this way and this and the other. Um you would need a series of plans for different sectors for transport for building for uh power generation for cooling technologies for um you know changing people's people's habits. All of these things would have to be undertaken at different scales. It would be not only the government, it would also have to be the media, you know, civic, civil society, NOS's, everybody would have to come on board and say we need to do this. But we haven't had that kind of consensus.

[00:29:36]Even though this is what is a classic, you know, binding crisis, a binding crisis is one that affects everybody irrespective of class and cast and region and gender and religion.

[00:29:50]Weion all affected.

[00:29:53]>> Yes, exactly. Like pollution, we are all affected.

[00:29:56]>> So, we should all be acting together.

[00:29:59]>> But because our country is so divided and so unequal even when we're all affected, we're still finding, you know, private escape routes so that we don't have to deal with the tough problems that need to be tackled.

[00:30:19]So you did mention 10 20 years from today that ship has sailed as far as climate change is concerned we can't do much to change the situation in the next 10 20 years just give us a kind of a uh imagery of something that could well happen 10 or 20 years from today with this heat.

[00:30:45]I mean >> I I am >> how would I how would I as a citizen be experiencing it?

[00:30:56]>> Uh is it going to get really I mean you're talking 48° 50° that kind of thing.

[00:31:05]>> Yes, very much. And that's not in the future. That's you know that that has 47 48 has happened in north Indian cities year before last.

[00:31:21]Um you know we're talking about birds falling down from the sky dying. We're talking about that kind of heat. Um we are not good at documenting deaths from heat because often you know the cause of death is recorded as something else recorded as heart attack or some you know whatever seems to be the medically approximate thing. Uh but there are people who have done the analysis by um looking at the sort of average death rate in a city like Ahmedabad.

[00:31:59]and they've seen how much that death rate climbs um in correlation with temperature increases.

[00:32:13]And that particular study showed that when there is a heat wave at least 100 more people die in Ahmedabad every day.

[00:32:25]So extrapolate from that to other places.

[00:32:31]We're talking about a serious death toll.

[00:32:36]And those people who die are going to be the people who are already, you know, a bit vulnerable because they're elderly, because they're frail.

[00:32:46]um people who are malnourished, people but yet who must work physically in the heat.

[00:32:55]We're going to see many many more deaths of workers on on uh building sites or you know they get a heat stroke, they die from that. This is going to increase.

[00:33:08]So, we're talking about huge levels of distress, including fatalities, including people dying. But for those who are living and enduring, uh, it's going to be really incredibly hard. It's going to be much harder than it has been.

[00:33:30]And, uh, I think people are already struggling. I my imagination fails me but I I can see that uh there will be violence around water because water is going to become more scarce.

[00:33:49]Imagine the stress on people who are not able to sleep night after night because the nights are so hot. What condition are they to work? What condition will they be to be cheerful and patient and resilient?

[00:34:08]People are going to snap. I think we're going to see huge amounts of psychological distress which is related to the physical distress.

[00:34:20]This is not something we you know can really fathom. I think >> this is a frightening scenario. uh Amitita and uh one that by now would have uh should have come to the you know notice of uh as you said the problem is there is no coordinated effort in terms of everyone coming together the media the civic society civil society the government and the powerful vested interest because they don't see It happens during the winter a bit when you see you know uh deaths because of the cold wave but even there we don't see any kind of solution uh we see repoag so uh this is a frightening scenario and uh I hope uh somebody is listening to this somebody is listening to Sept's uh uh you know plans or ideas. Someone somewhere is saying, "Look, this can't go on. We've got to do something about it."

[00:35:36]My experience based on what I am seeing in this city is that short- termism is a you know is a endemic uh in the politician's mind and in the you know mind of let's say the builder or whoever uh who says I've got to think in terms of this year's profits.

[00:36:06]Uh so uh my experience I'm a little pessimistic on this. Normally I look when I talk to people I look for some sign of hope but I'm a little pessimistic on this. Unless uh unless there is a crisis we don't react. So there has to be either global pressure or something else.

[00:36:34]So that the crisis the crisis is upon us and even >> no no but the crisis is defined as something that will happen tomorrow morning or happen yesterday that kind of crisis short- termism >> true but I think there are emergency measures this is an emergency I think there are emergency measures which could really help people and those need to be undertaken too. It's not enough to just you know say stay out of the sun because it's going to be really hot today. I think we could be doing much more as a society as you know as a country uh just even in terms of dealing with the worst few days. I agree with you completely that I think the larger questions of you know do you live in decent housing? Do you have decent work?

[00:37:28]Do you have enough to eat in the morning before you go out into the sun and work so that you don't feel dizzy with uh you know with hunger and dehydration? All of those things we also have to fix. But you know we have to go beyond what is currently the lowest hanging fruit which is that you paint everybody's rooftop white.

[00:37:50]That's supposed to you know it does help but it's nowhere near enough.

[00:37:57]>> Yeah. Well, if you're not ready to do even the simplest task, anything complex becomes impossible for you or un either you're you're unwilling or unable or just unseen.

[00:38:11]So, uh I just hope uh as I said somebody is listening to this not because this podcast but because there are so many similar people who probably have begun talking about this. I hope somebody listen. So because this is not a question of the heat in 2026 but much much more than this.

[00:38:36]So thank you Amitita for this uh very very detailed explanation analysis of what is happening and what should be done and what could happen which will harm uh or benefit each citizen of this country. So thank you for uh joining us.

[00:39:03]Uh that was Amitab Bhaviskar uh professor at Ashoka University talking about the heatwave and she clearly has said that uh to put it colloally you ain't seeing nothing yet because what we are seeing now is perhaps going to get worse and worse. So I hope you heard the show and you thought about what the point she has made. We'll be back again next week with another guest. Till then from me Sedat Batya, goodbye.