The heat is on

Substantive, practical adaptation policies can help

A large part of the country is grappling with heatwaves. The consequent threat to public health and productivity can be severe. Almost 75 per cent of India’s workforce depends on heat-exposed labour in agriculture and construction, a World Bank study said, and reckoned that India might account for almost 43 per cent of global job losses from heat stress-associated productivity declines by 2030. The government data shows the spread and incidence of heatwaves are also rising — from nine states in 2009 to 23 states in 2020 (and this when the pandemic lockdown had stalled economic activity). In the same period, the number of average heatwave days has risen sharply, from 7.4 to 32.2. The encouraging news is that the Centre and state governments have taken cognizance of the problem and acted with some urgency. Since 2016, for instance, after heatwave deaths exceeded 2,000, the Centre drew up national guidelines for preventing and managing heatwaves as a broad framework for states to create heatwave action plans. The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) stipulated that heatwaves should be declared when the actual maximum temperature remains 45 degrees Celsius, irrespective of normal maximum temperature. Among the most useful practices have been regular heatwave warnings by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) and a standard package of Dos and Don’ts for managing them.

Employers have responded by shifting heat-exposed work to cooler night-time hours, a transition that agricultural labour had made some time ago. The upshot has been a rapid diminution in heatwave-related deaths from 2,040 in 2015 to 27 in 2020. Though these numbers are creditworthy, the bigger challenge is to expand and institutionalise heatwave management as an ongoing imperative. Doing so will require much more than issuing heatwave warnings and advisories; substantive and practical adaptation policies at micro and macro policy levels are called for. For instance, with reservoir levels falling to 35 per cent, a water crisis is imminent, as Bengaluru demonstrated earlier this year. This calls for an urgent exercise by urban authorities to enforce water harvesting in all high rises, a mandate that appears to be observed more in the breach in water-scarce cities. At the policy level, state governments may need to bite the admittedly hard political bullet and reconfigure incentives given to water-guzzling crops such as sugarcane and rice in irrigated areas in Punjab, parts of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra in favour of water-maximising grains such as millets that also have the potential to improve public-health outcomes.

Other obvious measures would include planting more trees in public spaces as cities such as Dubai and Singapore have mandated and stipulating architectural standards that reduce the pressure on air conditioning. At the same time, white-collar work hours could also be reworked to start earlier in the day and end before day temperatures peak. With polluting coal-fired plants doing the heavy lifting as demand for electricity peaks, there is some urgency in accelerating the adoption of battery-storage technologies so that renewable sources such as wind and solar can play a more significant role in power generation. With the risk of heatwaves likely to grow exponentially in the decades to come, India, one of the epicentres of this trend, will need to adapt at a faster rate than ever.